I’m back! What a trip!! 7,000 km, two interviews, two nights with less than 2 hours sleep, tons of public transit, tons of food.

I’ll just start with Friday for now.

My flight to Toronto was not great. WestJet seats are tiny, do not book for overnight flights!!! Also it seems like you can pick your seats ahead of time, which I did not know about, so when I got to the airport there were only about 5 seats left and they were all middle seats!

When I was boarding the plane I got stopped by a body builder in the first row who was wedged in beside a rather fat guy. They both looked very sad and uncomfortable and the body builder somehow convinced me to take the window seat next to him and for the fat guy to take my middle seat a couple rows back. Woohoo, then I was only squished on one side, instead of both. Unfortunately the body builder stayed up all night teaching the girl on his other side about protein powder and I barely got any sleep at all.

I arrived in Toronto at 6:00 AM and my interview was not until 2:30 PM so I had a lot of time to kill. I was so tired I just stayed at the airport and lay down on a bench, occasionally watching bits and pieces of the royal wedding. Eventually I left the airport and headed towards Michener where I got some lunch and then took a nap in a study booth in the library.

The interview was quite intense, but went well I think! This one had 8 stations and even had one with an actor, and one where you had to work with another interviewee.

It was the same format as the Calgary interview but SO much better because instead of the interviewer just staring at you, even when you finish talking, these ones had follow up questions and actually smiled and stuff. That makes such a huge difference… it’s really hard to have a ‘conversation’ with someone when they are not providing ANY feedback cues. Very unnatural.

Anyway we all left smiling and they said we could start hearing from them this week.

After the interview I did a little wandering downtown and then I took the subway to meet up with my aunts and my cousins. We had thai food (I had thai basil mango beef and shrimp with rice) and then I headed to Janine’s where we chatted for a bit until couldn’t hold my eyes open any more.