(Handsome fella wrote this post. Taking a break between jobs has been really great for all of us. In many ways.)
We’re in Toronto! Hooray! It’s been 15 years since I was last in Toronto and I was SO EXCITED to share it with my family. You may be wondering about our itinerary today (a grocery store? Korea Town?) and why we’re not going someplace iconic like the CN Tower first thing.
So let me give you a brief explanation 🙂
From 2005 to 2007, I was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Toronto Canada. I worked with a Korean congregation and as part of that service, I learned Korean. At the time, there were only four Korean Speaking missionaries in my area, so unlike a lot of Mormon missionaries, I spent a LOT of time in one place.
I also got to spend a lot of time in Korea Town and the parts of Toronto that are less iconic. So, for this Nostalgia day, I really wanted to go check out all the places I used to hang out before we did tourist things for the rest of the week.
We started our day by driving over to the Stake Center on Ferrand Drive. This building is notable for a few reasons:
- It is the largest non-temple building in North America (at least that’s what I was told 15 years ago).
- I lived down the street from it for over a year
- The Mission Office used to be on the third floor.
We also drove by the apartment where I used to live and it brought back so many memories.
We used to live in the basement with a senior Missionary couple living above us and our mission president and his wife living next door. We used to joke that the mission revolved around us because while other missionaries would switch areas and companions, we never did.
We then wandered over to the church and Jill spotted some sister missionaries who were kind enough to let us into the building! They were on the preparation day and were doing a missionary get together, so it worked out for us.
It really is a huge building. It’s three stories tall, and has a basement parking garage, which is really unusual for normal meeting houses.
We walked across the weird bridge on the second story that looks out over the gym and then up to the third floor with the unfinished chapel and the old mission office.
The signs for the old Canada Toronto East Mission are still there, but the office itself has been dismantled and moved up to Brampton sometime in the past 15 years.
Again, SO MANY MEMORIES! I remember vividly coming over to the mission office on our days off and picking up mail from the post room. Crazy.
After saying thank you to the nice missionaries who let us in, we headed down to Korea Town for lunch via the Subway. I used to ride the subway all the time, so it was interesting to have all the stop names come back to me as we rode along.
When we arrived at Korea Town, we had lunch at “Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu” (부창동 순두부). We had bibim bap and bulgoli and pork bone soup and really good kimchi. Clara especially loved the food and has now announced that bibimbap is one of her new favorite foods. Jonas liked the bulgogi and Evie at the Miso soup, so there may yet be hope for our picky eaters 🙂
After lunch, we wandered around for a bit and visited a couple of stationery stores, bought some awesome new pencils and laughed our heads off at some of the amazing English printed on things. 😂
We then visited the Korean Market (P.A.T., if you’re wondering), and I picked up a bunch of Korean snacks and things that I had enjoyed as a missionary (foreshadowing!).
We were all in need of a bathroom break at this point, so we dropped into the local public library branch and hung out a for a few minutes while taking turns using the “washrooms” (There’s a Canadian phrase for you!).
Feeling much refreshed, we headed back to the subway and rode back to our car. At one point as we were negotiating with steps and narrow corridors, Jill and I noted that this probably wasn’t ADA approved … then we remembered we were in Canada. 🙂
Once we had arrived home, we had dinner which was basically a bunch of different kinds of Korean Ramen … and Korean snacks. The kids liked everything and have decided that Milkis (think carbonated milk/yogurt) is the best soda ever (it’s pretty darn awesome).
After dinner, we chucked all five kids in the huge bathtub at this airbnb and then headed for bed!
