it was a cold one in Toronto!

Today was chilly.

We've been rather lucky that we haven't had such a bad winter, actually it's been spring like conditions for the past couple of days, but goodness, today was a cold one. Particularly a bummer for Aiden as he just recovered from a high fever and a bit of a cold only to have to leave the comfort of our cozy home to venture off to Burlington for the day because mama has lecture and daddy's gotta work. He looked so cute all bundled up, scarf, toque and tiny red mittens.

My day consisted of lunch with Ryan at South St. Burger Co., which I don't think I can handle again because of the size of the damn burger. Ryan always craves pizza, burgers and subway. I rarely eat pizza, can chow down on the occasional burger and get sick of subway fast. After lunch, I drove down to the city for my lecture (when you're driving, it's hard to feel the wind chill, so I never realize how cold it is unless I'm walking from Union Station to campus and vice versa).

In class today, we had about 30 students from Amsterdam sit in on our lecture. They were in Toronto for the week to experience the retail atmosphere of the downtown core. They shared with us about their visits to various retailers naming Nike, Walmart and Loblaw as stand outs, tourist retailing in Niagara Falls, the incredible vision that is the Toronto Eaton Centre and told us how ecstatic they were to watch a Marlie's game and see the Raptor's defeat the Miami Heat! Something I thought was so cute: "we just don't quite understand the concept of, uhhh, a what is it, called, there's so many food choices, a food court - we don't have food courts, we've never seen so many people eating in the same place at the same time". Hehehe. What I thought was particularly interesting was the fact that they were 3 year students all working fulltime in management roles while doing their Bachelor's degree. Such a different mindset and concept then here in North America. Takes much determination, time management skills and focus to be in such a competitive atmosphere. Definitely a pleasure to have them attend. Such an outing bunch of individuals who provided us with some insights on retailing in the Netherlands.