Where are the bells and confetti?

Welcome, everyone, to my 100th post, entitled:

"O, Canada."

I've decided that Canada is what happens when America and Great Britain have a baby. Stuff is mostly the same here, but different. For instance, today I bought some gum:



Not so unusual, but vaguely reminiscent of something I recall from back home:



I also was shocked to realize that here, to end transactions, they don't always thank you. The first time I went to the grocery store here, I lingered at the counter for a good ten seconds after my transaction had ended, thinking I'd missed signing the receipt or something, because the cashier didn't thank me and wish me a good day. I left feeling cheated.

There's also matters of semantics, like calling them "washrooms" instead of "bathrooms." This is all good and well, but when your "washroom" looks something like the one in my dorm, you begin to wonder how much good it's doing you to wash there.

And then there's the luxurious room in which I'm privileged to stay. At least it has a bed, and a desk. The chairs are nothing to sing about . . .



The other thing about my dorm is that its layout is really confusing, at least to me and my already weak sense of direction. The other day, I tried exiting the building through a stairwell I thought I'd successfully used earlier that day. It turns out that it was actually an emergency exit, which somehow means that you actually CAN'T exit through it--at least not without setting off an alarm. I walked all the way up and down the stairs several times, and all of the doors to every floor were locked. I wasn't too encouraged when I saw someone else had been there before me:



Thankfully, after a relatively brief period of banging on the door, some girls working on the fourth floor came to my rescue (though they were looking at me strangely). All in all, it's been an adventure so far. Onward ho!