Longest layover ever

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  Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 7, 2010

Well, it's easy to say that I'm familiar with the international departures gate at Toronto Airport. I've certainly had enough to sit, check things out, walk around, check things out, and browse all shops three times over. And I am fairly familiar with the surrounding area as well. Milton, Ontario is my birthplace. If you are able to see Oakville on the map, Milton is just to the north-west of it. Good ol' Milty... full of your Medevil days theme park villages, top Old English Sheepdog breeders, and snow-hills (not real mountains by BC standards). Good times.

Here is some fun facts regarding Canadian geography. To give an idea at just how large Canada is, and to how long I've had to travel already (Vancouver to Toronto, a 5 hour flight) I'll try to give some international perspective. With almost 10 million square kilometers of land, Australia would fit 1.3 times into Canada. Great Britain would fit almost 41 times into Canada. India would fit about 3 times over. We have a lot of area. Population... that's another story. 

So I had decided to get the most out of my flight by watching as many movies as possible. I don't think I've made back the price of my ticket yet, but I'll keep working on it. Perhaps the complimentary alcohol on the international flight will help.  

Back to the waiting in an airport. One would think that waiting around, sleeping on uncomfortable chairs, sleeping on the ground, and generally being in an uncomfortable situation lead to an unfavorable opinion of said situation. To be honest, I really don't mind airports. There is something absolutely amazing about an international airport. Even after 10 hours of waiting in one I really hold this to be true (including the 2 hour delay from the moment I landed). What amazes me is the shear number of people from all over the world that move through a single place in such a short period of time. People going/returning to Zurich, Rome, Kingston (Jamaica), London, Paris, Lima (Peru), and Rabat (Morocco). It is truly amazing to try to even phantom what each person had done to get to this one place and time. The different paths everyone's lives had taken to get here. If there is ever a place to remember what a global village we live in today, its here.  

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