The lock on the door proved to be quite useful in my Montreal hostel last summer. Easy enough to open if your roommate wanted to lock you out, at least.

Punta Cana beach at sunrise

I went today somewhat on a whim and took my “Learner’s Exam” as we refer to it here in Alberta and I passed!!! I can start (legally) learning to drive and in a year I can take my driving exam and cross off #42 on my list.

I actually miss Vegas. Or maybe I miss travelling in general. I’m not sure anymore.

Past: Drinking, gambling, Grand Canyon, doing whatever I want
Present: Sitting in class, listening to someone speak the same sentences I read in my textbook the night before, wondering if I start work at 5 or 6
Future: Laying on Mexican beaches

The periods in between traveling are pretty much terrible.
I have absolutely nothing planned that will fulfill anything on my list. I guess in a month I am seeing a live comedy show, but that is about it until December 27th, when I hit Mexico (or Cuba?)

I want to say that I’m not dead, but it certainly doesn’t feel like I am living at the current moment.

I’m sitting at the Las Vegas airport, taking advantage of the free wireless, and have decided to combat boredom by wiritng my first post regarding Las Vegas. Here’s a brief list of things I realized whilst in Sin City.

1. You walk on naked ladies everywhere on the Strip. The amount of people handing out the little call girl cards on the Strip is insanity! The ground is littered with pictures of naked women, quite literally. It’s bother disgusting and amusing. Do men actually call for these women while in Vegas? I mean, they must, otherwise they wouldn’t be in business. But SERIOUSLY?

2. It’s impossible to find anything here. I’m convinced most places in Vegas should be charged with illegal confinement, because it seems the main goal of all the major hotel/casinos is to make it very hard for you to leave. I spent several hours lost in them while trying to get back to the Strip or to a different hotel. The only place with decent signage was the MGM Grand.

3. There are more McDonalds than people in the city. Ditto for 7-11s.

4. The build out instead of up. In most cities, as they grow population-wise, you get a boom of tall apartment and condo buildings, so you don’t end up with a city 8 hours across. Apparently Las Vegas either missed the memo on how awesome multi-story buildings are for living accomodation, or they have some law against building high-rises off of the strip. The tallest condo building I saw was maybe 10 stories, which even by small Canadian town standards is small. We have grain silos bigger than that!

5. Drinking is so much more fun when done out of drink-ware that is shaped like the building you are in.

6. If there weren’t topless women dancing, you didn’t actually see a show in Vegas. I reccomend you get your money back or demand topless women.

7. Las Vegas is a black hole in which time stops. After about an hour here, you’ll already be trying to figure out what day things happened on.

I crossed one more thing off of my list this summer. I’m excited for when September 8th rolls around and I can officially see how many things I accomplished in the last four months. Yesterday I put a big strike through #43 which was to donate blood. I had planned to do this shortly after my vacation out east, but I was suffering from breathing problems when I got home and did not end up donating. Since I had a day off yesterday, I rescheduled for a morning appointment.

I arrived late thanks to pretty much every road in downtown Calgary being under construction. They weresuper nice regardless at the 737 13 Ave location, the main office for Canadian Blood Services in Calgary. I went through the normal procedures and was taken into the donation room, where I saw the size of the needle and had to avert my eyes from the vein puncturing. I can take needles without blinking and normally watch, but this was a freakin’ huge needle!! Of course, no trip anywhere with me is complete without drama, so I half passed out after they removed the needle. Yeah, everything was fine until I was completely finished and they took the needle out. It got all bright and loopy, and then I was suddenly aware I was wet (cold damp cloths to help you come too) and people were staring at me. Completely embarrassing. Completely. Regardless it is off of my list, and I have another appointment booked in October. I think I can donate two more times before going to Mexico in December/January.

If you live in Canada and aren’t a donor yet, call 1.888.2.DONATE to make an appointment. It’ll take about an hour in total but you could add years to someone’s life.

picture courtesy of jasondunn.com

Sign in found on the backroads of Southern Ontario, near St. Catharines.

I don’t know why I was so fascinated with the prospect of seeing a giant figure of a Mennonite boy, but I assume it has something to do with my interest in Hutterites. When I saw on Road Side Attractions that in Cambridge they had a Mennonite boy, it was added straight away to my list. Since Cambridge is only about 30 minutes away from Guelph where I was spending about two weeks, I figured this latest excursion out east would be an appropriate time to cross this particular item off of my list.

Located next to a giant bed in a field out between the Mennonite furniture store and the 401 high way, there is the smiling, waving Mennonite boy, who actually isn’t that big, but I will forget that fact because he was just so cool! What a random thing to make into a big sign…Mennonite boy. Haha.

I just got back in from New York City and am crashing at my friend’s house in Oakville, Ontario before making my way tomorrow morning to Kingston to stay with my grandparents. I felt I should make a quick post here to break up the continuous scheduled posts I wrote a week or so ago. After a quick shower and some food, I feel a lot better from my 15 hours of travel today.
I absolutely loved New York and have alright mentally ticked it off as somewhere I have to return to. Our hostel was sketchy at best (cockroaches in bathrooms at night with French women screaming – yes), but it did not deter me at all from the city. In fact the cockroach factor ADDED to the experience if anything. It felt so authentically NYC, so real, or something.

I did a lot of tourist stuff, Empire State Building, Guggenheim and the likes, but sitting in Central Park with a cool breeze watching the fire flies glowing under the drooping trees; that was my New York.

5:00 am wake up call tomorrow to catch my via rail to my hometown. There will certainly be a more descriptive post regarding my journey to the U.S. once I get back home and recover from my month away. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to post while I had computer access.