Leaving The Falls

I'm on a family vacation with the rents and g-ma. We're headed to Virginia for my cousins wedding, but we've decided to make a holiday out of it. I've tried to write in my notebook, but pen and paper, though I love it dearly, is simply too slow for me to record everything I want to say.
Niagara Falls was our first major stop. The other stops have been entertaining, but not much worth recording. Canada was interesting.
The Falls our gorgeous and the environment around them never stopped being interesting. While the hydro-electric and environmental facts and figures were fun, they are all just tourist attractions.
The people flooding the side walks, restaurants, and attractions blew my mind much higher than anything else did. Aside from international airports, I witnessed more cultural diversity then ever before. Families from America, China, India, India, Japan, South America, Armenia, and more I didn't recognize. The varied languages buzzed around me like swarms of bees. Many I could identify, but many more I couldn't.
Crossing the boarder meant no data through my phone, which meant no internet at all (the hotel charged and I despise paying for short connections!). Boy it's painful being without that constant connection. Not necessarily from addiction, but rather the convenience of researching at a moments notice. I could have learned/understood a lot more had I access to the web.
I spent a few hours on the patio in front of our hotel. There was a bar and brick pizza oven. There I found two Canadian girls that were pleasant enough to lean across the counter and answer my questions. I won't take the time to record everything they told me, but some of it I will.

1) The most annoying thing about Americans is they expect, when paying in US (Canada accepts the US dollar on par), their change to be in US. The girls told me many tourists will treat the Canadian currency as worthless (even through at the moment the Canadian dollar is worth more then the US). I apologized for their arrogance. Other then that they had no complaints. :)
I might mention here, when we returned to the states and stopped for gas I asked if they accepted Canadian. They do, but at 5%. I assume this meant they charged an extra 5%. Now this was one gritty gas station, and perhaps other places would have accepted it on par, but I was upset that the Canadians were so generous to take our currency on par (some places took the exchange rate into consideration), but here in America they added extra for giving them a currency that was more valuable. I suppose there may be costs in the conversion.

2) Milk and gas are way more expensive across the boarder. Gas was $4.71/gallon on the Canadian side, and when we crossed over it dropped to $3.77/gallons. Consequently, many Canadians living in Niagara Falls cross the boarder to buy milk and gas. The younger of the two girls (just graduated high school) told me that she was just getting use to crossing for gas alone. And sure enough, when we filled up in Niagara Falls, NY we saw an SUV with Ontario tags pulling away and headed back towards the boarder. :)

3)  I haven't verified this yet, but I will. They told me that teachers make around $90,000 a year in Ontario. Food for thought, maybe I'll move to Canada to teach. :).

[Revision]: Researched the question, and this site says the only place I found $90,000/year was with 6 years of education (that's fine) in the Yukon ... no thanks...  

Oh, and the drinking age in Canada is only 19. But waitresses must go through an actual course to be allowed to serve alcohol. It's called Safe-Serve and the one girl I spoke to that has hers said she did it online. She said, "If I let you get really drunk and you drive away and kill yourself then I'm liable."  Interesting idea, adds incentive for the bar staff to watch their customers' intake.

Now we're headed to a Vineyard named after mom in the "Finger lakes"