Impression to Canada
(2 months later)

Landing in Canada:

On Mar 20, 2001, a cloudy but calm day, taking an Air Canada flight, I left Beijing for Toronto. On that day I had a concern about the residence trouble that I may run into at the check-in. But fortunately, nothing happened. The flight took 15 hours. We landed in Vancouver first and at the airport, we completed the landing procedure and continued flying for another 5 hours to arrive in Toronto. One thing I experienced that day was that the service in Beijing was really cold and made me feel very uncomfortable. There was no greeting and no smile; what the officer cared about was only your passport and document. In her eyes, there's no human being standing in front of her. However, in Canada, the process started with greeting, and the service was warm and friendly. Impressed by an Internet rumor, I expected a strict luggage checking and worried about whether there would be a requirement on the amount of cash the newcomer must carry(10,000CAD per person). But in fact the whole procedure took me only 4 minutes and all my concern turned out to be redundant. Think about the fact: both of them live on income from tax payers.
My arrival in Toronto was not pleasant at all. I contacted my agent before leaving. However when I arrived at the airport, nobody showed up. I can't believe that I paid 6000USD to "overseas XXX" just for that kind of service. Finally someone gave me a ride but charged $30. I stayed overnight in a Chinese immigrant's house and took Greyhound to Kingston the next day. One thing worth mentioning is that I asked the landlord(a Chinese immigrant who has been living in Canada for over 10 years) that how Chinese people are treated in Canada, in other words, whether racism exists. And she told me that Canadian(whites) treat us friendly, but deep inside their mind, they dislike and look down on Chinese.

Kingston:

On March 22, I arrived in Kingston, the city where I was gonna stay for the following year. The first thing I did was to find a place to live. But where should I go first? With 3 pieces of heavy luggage, it was hard to move around. While I was wandering in the campus of Queen's University, a jogger(a good-looking girl) came up and gave me some suggestions and showed me the way. I went to the Housing Service and from there, I got some information. I realized that in March, it was a bit difficult to find a place to live because the students were still in school and vacancies were rare. So all I could do then was to find a temporary living place. After making a few phone calls, I contacted a landlord and decided to go and have a look.
The house was located by the lake(Lake Ontario). The room for rent was on the third floor. It was newly renovated, with a balcony and a very nice view. Everything seemed fine except for the fee, 95$ per day. It was almost a shock to me. After negotiation, the landlord(Jason) agreed to reduce it to 80$, on condition that I stayed there for a whole week. I accepted that. Besides the nice room, I considered that another advantage for me to stay there was, it's a good chance to improve my English. I expected that the language proficiency would be required by my future MBA study. In addition, I could quickly get familiar with this city by staying with a native. All said, there were some non-economical benefits. Come on in and see my room!!!
What is Kingston like? Kingston is one of the most beautiful and historic Canadian city with a small population of 130,000. The limestone city is placed at the mouth of Cataraqui river, where Lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence river. Students and faculty of three post-secondary institutions account for a significant part of the population. They're Queen's University, St. Lawrence College, and Royal Military School. In 1840's, Kingston became the first capital of Canada. But soon after that, British relocated the capital to Ottawa as a result of border crisis with the U.S. In order to defend the city against Americans who were only 80 miles away, Fort Henry was built. The fort was a magnificent project but failed to be put into use as a result of political situation change. Finally the fort turned to be one of the most famous historic sites in Canada. Every summer it is open to tourists. As a city on Lake Ontario and ideal place for aquatic sports, Kingston hosts CORK, the largest freshwater sailing regatta in North America. Come on in and have a look at the city.