If nothing else, being on a coach journey for a long period of time gives you plenty of time to think. I've been thinking about what's important to me, and I've been thinking about things I'd like to do when I finish my trip. It also puts a lot of things into perspective.

I've only been away 5 weeks but it feels like a lifetime. The first 3-4 weeks flew by and I think it may be the fact that we haven't really done anything particularly interesting or exciting this past week that's making me think a lot more of home and the people I'm missing. I'm thinking that this trip will be both the most amazing and the hardest thing I'll have done.

I've also been thinking about my own background and history. Due to meeting so many people from different countries who speak different languages it's really got me thinking about how I'd like to learn a new language, especially when so many people , for whom English isn't their first language can have a conversation with me in my language but I could not have a conversation with them in theirs!

Not only that, I'd like to look into my own past and have been thinking about tracing my family tree's when I return home, and also looking into Irish history. It makes me feel quite ignorant and a bit sad that I'm half Irish and yet I know nothing really of Ireland's history- come to think of it I probably don't know very much about England's history. It's funny because these are things that don't really occur to you when you're back at home going about your daily business.

Time and distance have been put into perspective for me too. After spending time in Canada (at the time of writing this I was on a 52 hour bus journey from Calgary to Toronto) I don't think I'll ever complain about having to make a journey back home again! Obviously we've all seen Canada on a map, we know it's big, but it's not until you start travelling it for yourself that you realise just how massive it is. We travelled 630 miles from Vancouver to Banff and the distance was like a dot on the map. If you travelled 630 miles back in the UK you could cover a fair distance! We complain about doing a 1 or 2 hour journey but people here do 6,7,8 plus hour journeys all the time without thinking anything of it because their country is so big and they need to get around just like the rest of us! It's made me think about why I haven't seen/travelled more of the UK with it being so incredibly small! I suppose the small matter of work gets in the way of a lot when you're at home.

I just want to get to Toronto now. We set off at 12.15pm Sat 23rd and we're due to arrive at 6.15pm Mon 25th!! (As I was writing this I hadn't even been on the coach for 8 hours!!)

We do make stops roughly every 2-5 hours and they range from 10 minutes to 1 hour.

It hasn't even been an interesting journey, the scenery is so dull, just flat land, the odd cow and lots of motels. It's amazing how the landscape and the time of day can evoke so many different feelings in you- it's quite eerie around here. It's dark now so it may be time to try and get some sleep, although I think we have a transfer coming up in a couple of hours.