zhangling❤photography

Exciting news, everyone! Earlier this week marked the 5 year anniversary of my blog **hooraaay!** It also means I've been in Ottawa for almost just as long, as I moved to the capital a few short months afterwards. I've posted about my activities in Ottawa a couples times in the past but in this special "travel" post, I'll be sharing some newer photos as well as some others that I never got around to posting :) Starting off with some shots I took on a evening stroll by Dow's Lake. yes these are tulips!  Sometimes I genuinely forget how long I've been in Ottawa, notably whenever my Uber driver asks and I'm like, "oh I haven't been here that long, just since -- oh my god it's been like 5 years??" I was talking to my parents a few weeks ago and they asked if I plan on staying in Ottawa forever and if I think it's better than Toronto. And honestly, I get asked this question a lot . Everyone wants me to PICK...

April was a difficult month for both this year and last. Coming out of March being sick, feeling behind and scrambling trying to catch up and make up for lost time...struggling to get back in the groove of things, it just felt like there was never enough time to do it all. Even this blog post, in all its brevity, still didn't manage to make my self-imposed month-end deadline. boat at West Lake (西湖) Meanwhile, last year in 2018, following the events of my last blog post , I had just left my hometown Chongqing and Wuhan and was about to embark on the second half of my China trip. I was really excited because I was about to visit cities that I've never been before and cities in China have so much variability from one to the next, it was almost as if you were visiting a totally different country each time. Of course, nearly right off the bat, I got incredibly sick. So sick in fact, when I went to take a painkiller, I put the bottle of meds I brought with me down on the groun...