After much ado, I made it to Toronto, then on to Guelph. Canada so far is very rural. I guess I expected Toronto to be more sprawling; about one mile out from the airport, it was just fields. Also, I expected Toronto (major city) and Guelph (a large enough city to have a major university in it) to be connected by, say, Interstate highways (Interprovinces?). Most of the distance between the two cities was covered by small, two-lane roads that reminded me of some back roads in Ireland.

Anyway, I’m here, safe and sound. I made it onto the standby flight, so I didn’t even miss everything. I arrived in time for the very end of the welcome reception thing and then went out to dinner with some colleagues from the MSDL group (a consortium of large universities that use Desire2Learn).
I need to get up and going now. I’ll write more when I get a chance.

One more thing: am I close to an ocean? Just walking from my hotel to the campus building where the conference is, I’ve seen about six seagulls just hanging around on the pavement. The campus kind of reminds me of Iowa State, in terms of layout and architecture. It’s pretty nice, plus free wireless. Woot!

Update: I seem to be about 30 miles from some sort of bay. Those seagulls get around.

Also, the keynote address is being given by a guy who looks like Oliver Stone. I wonder if he’ll get drunk and be gross to me like the real Oliver Stone did that time.

Separated at birth?