Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is one of the most important museums in Toronto. Since I came here a month ago I wanted to visit it, but nobody would come with me! my homestay family said it was too boring, so after trying so hard they woudn't be convinced. I decided to go by myself.I knew I had to stop in Museum subway station, but after leaving the station I just didn't know where to go. I saw a police officer that was having lunch with some partner, I think, and I asked him where the museum was. He explained it to me, I was veeery close! so close that I was embarrased because I didn't see it before asking him. I said "thank you" with my head down and continued walking :-S
I found the entrance to the museum and a canadian old man received me. He was very nice. We talked for a few minutes and he noticed my foreign accent, so he asked me where I was from and I told him "Venezuela", immidiatly after that he asked me "ooohhh do you speak italian?"... I was shocked! I tried to control my laghter so hard :D and I told him that in Venezuela we speak only Spanish. He drew a dumb smile on his face and showed me the way to the front desk.
After I payed for my ticket I came into the museum. The first thing I thought was "this is big" and then I tried to find out where I wanted to go first. At this point an immigrant woman, from India I think, came to help me. She explained to me that the museum was devided in two parts: the old one and the new one. Also, she told me where were the different expositions, where the elevators and escalator were, where I could eat, etc.
I decided to go to de newest part first. I loved this part because I found the work I liked the most. It was a work of art made by some japonese guy whose name I can't remember. It was an audiovisual presentation. There were two different very big screens placed face to face to each other. In one of them a video with a japonese girl was being played. She took a big amount of air and then she blew aaaall the air at one time. While she was doing this, in the other screen images of Tokio were being played so that every time the girl blew all her air out of her lungs, the Tokio video increased its speed and then, when the girl stopped blowing, it come back to its normal speed. The two videos worked together. Amazing!
I was impressed looking at this beautiful work of art; and while I was trying to figure out what it meant, a security guard came to me. He started talking to me, I think maybe he was bored and decided to talk to somebody to avoid falling asleep :D Well, we talked for a few minutes and we concluded that the japonese artist wanted to show the way people live in Tokio. It is a big, important city nowadays. Maybe he wanted to show how fast people have to do things in order to improve whatever they are doing, specially when it comes to economy, business or science. I have to start looking for information about how people live in Japan in order to draw a better picture of their culture and to get to understand this work of art better. After that I walked for 4 hours all around ROM.
At the end I was really tired, but I enjoyed ROM very much... I still don't understand why my homestay family said it was boring! It has been one of the most beautiful experiences I've had since I came to Toronto!
