Sunday: Campus tour and Free time

8 June 2014, by Heleen de Fooij (University of Twente)

Since most of us went out Sunday night, it was nice that we could all sleep in a bit today. After having breakfast, we met in front of the International Living and Learning Centre (ILLC), where we are staying. Two girls from Ryerson University showed us the campus. The buildings on campus are all very close together. Most buildings we need to be at are within a 5 minute walk from the ILLC.
The first stop was the Engineering Building. Here we will present our cases in only ten days time. The past days felt like a field trip or vacation, but during our tour around campus we were reminded of the task at hand. Most of the time, we will be working in Kerr Hall, a circular building where it is very easy to get lost.

In the afternoon we could decide for ourselves what we wanted to do. Five of us decided to make use of the Toronto City Pass and went to the Royal Ontario Museum. The Canadian and First Peoples sections of the museum were very interesting and we saw some more art and objects from the War of 1812 (if no one mentioned it before: nearly everything Dave told us on our bus tour on Friday was somehow related to the War of 1812). I was especially fascinated by the huge canoe that could seat more than ten in the gallery of the First Peoples.
The ROM is very large and we couldn’t see every gallery and exhibition, but we did make sure we saw the national treasures. This section with gems and stones fed our appetite for nice and shiny things as it contained a large selection of jewels.

When we got back from the museum some people had gathered in the common room on the eighth floor. We decided to get some dinner at the supermarket, catch up with family and get to bed early to be ready for the first day of working on the case studies.