I think I've seen this before in books

This is a North American city that can still hawk items on the sidewalk, not fake Louis Vuittons like they do in New York, but homemade things. I've walked by children on the sidewalks of the busiest street selling lemonade and men dressed in suits buying from them. I've walked past people selling jars of jam, and rode past a family sitting on their porch yelling, "75 cents for a bike wash!" People don't have to wait for official sidewalk sale days here, nor do they have to open a store. This kind of thing died in the suburbs long ago (because no one is on the streets there! ha!), and in the cities people are too suspicious of each other to stop.

I think I've read about this kind of selling in books, but I don't recall seeing it so frequently. This place is so foreign to me, this place called community.

Surrounded by Farms

So, I inevitably landed in a place that has one of the most active community garden communities in Canada, a place where a university has its own gardens, and a place that is surrounded by farmland and where I know a bunch of people who work in farming or has farms and goes out on the weekends to farm. I didn't know that Trent University has such large environmental science and food systems programs, like Guelph does. I almost feel like I owe it to my roots to be interested in food growth, what with my mother having studied nutrition and my dad studying microbiology in Nebraska, of all places.

I am such an cold-climate urbanist that I must say this: I like the idea of gardening. I just don't worms nor insects. Yes, I am depending on others for my livelihood, but I just can't get over the idea of insects and things that pop out at you. Would this be the place to get over this fear? I don't know...I've always wanted to go WWOOFing, again, the idea of it is incredible...but would I ever do it?

So...will Peterborough make me into the permaculture enthusiast I've always been in my dreams? Or will I keep on going to farmer's markets as an urbanist crazy for farm-to-table restaurants?

Strange Place for the Summer

I haven't managed to mention this to anyone else yet, but Peterborough, because I'm arriving in the summer, seems to me like an eerie mix of Esteli and Edmonton (the two places I went on my Canada World Youth exchange) - its lush greenery reminds me of the climate of Esteli, while its used bookshops full of paperback romances and buses always zooming around remind me of Edmonton.

By the way, everyone and their dog seems to have a vacation or escape plan scheduled for July, and I'll be working. For a person who used to be swept up by wanderlust, this is torturous. Can't complain about money rolling in, though.

In Toronto Again

So I'm in town with some folks who hate Toronto and think that Torontocentricism is a thing (which it really is). Yes, there are too many suits, too many cars and too much noise. But I see moments in which, amongst the anonymity, I observe a nod from one subway driver to the next upon shift changes. Amongst all those people craning their necks into their smartphones and stuffing their ears, I observe a woman reading a book, and the woman next to her looking over her shoulder to take a peek at what she's reading. These are hardly what one could call intimate moments, and yet I feel that because, within a crowd, they are silently shared between two people, they are heartbreakingly beautiful - they slow time down amongst the bustle.

Wake Up and Smell the Artificial Sweeteners!

One thing I do notice as I settle into Peterborough is the wafting smell of the Quaker factory as I walk down the street. The first time I noticed it, I had already read a post about the smell. But I at first did not connect it to what I had read. I passed by someone and thought, "What strong perfume they've put on!" but then the person had gone far away and I still smelled it. That's when it clicked that it was such a weird strawberry-like artificial smell. Today, on my way to work, I smelled a sort of burnt toast, and then on the way back it smelled like maple sugar. I've written before that I associate smells strongly with places - Hong Kong with sewers, Reykjavik with sulfur and the like, but what will I associate with Peterborough? Breakfast?