(I guess another title for this post could be MOT 2006)
Overall, I really had a great time this weekend.
My train trip to Toronto was great (I LOVE trains) even though I, ahem. "missed" my early train and had to take the 9.40 one.
So, I arrived at Toronto station at 15.25, as scheduled. Sandhya (one of the people providing shelter for me, the other was Benjamin) greeted me there and gave me instructions how to get to York.
Well, since it took me a while to get there, I only managed to attend the final discussion period for that day. Being tired from the trip and a bit hungry, I and
Bubbles headed to downtown for a quick dinner.
Saturday was the "big day" since I would give my talk in the afternoon. Overall, I think it went O.K., (at least this is what GP and KR) told me) and I DID get feedback for my research questions, although not really exactly what I wanted to hear. Later this evening, we went to a party organized by some of the profs. We really enjoyed ourselves, the Thai food was superb and the selection of music was good. The music was multicultural and actually one of the profs put an LP (yes, they still exist) with 60's Greek music. (That was so nice!)
On Sunday, GP and
Syngirl gave their talks. Once again, the McGill team achieved top levels of performance!) The conference ended with a nice pizza lunch at the U of T Linguistics Department.
Since I had some time left (my train would leave at 18.30), I decided to do some sightseeing. So, what did I do?
Well, I took some
pictures of the U of T campus (mainly the buildings close to where MOT was held) as well as of the downtown (and the not so downtown) area of the
city.
But, of course, where I really wanted to be was the CN tower.
So, after waiting in line for 20 minutes to get my ticket and waiting another 20 minutes to get in a lift, I reached my first stop, the glass floor. It was absolutely AMAZING. (That is as soon as I convinced myself that this is perfectly safe, btw those children jumping on the glass do not really help!) The view was breathtaking especially when I got to my final destination, the Skypod.
So,
here are some pictures I took (they are not the best, but I am still learning!)
I only regret that I did not have enough time since I had to get my luggage from Benjamin's place before I got to the station.
The trip to Montreal was uneventful and (since I could not use my laptop, but this is another, unfortunately sad, story) boring. After all,, when it is dark, you can't really see anything...
So,overall I really enjoyed my first North American conference experience.
Many thanks to Benjamin and Sandhya for being terrific hosts and to the people of U of T and York University for a successfully planning.
So, until next time....(that can be very soon)
