Area Spotlight: Salt Pump Climbing Company

For all you climbers, or aspiring climbers, here's a place you should definitely check out; Salt Pump Climbing Company on Haigis Parkway, in Scarborough!

A beautiful facility, in a convenient location, with a gorgeous pond view, it's an excellent place to go to climb, or just to hang out. Which is encouraged. It's not just a climbing gym, they have all kinds of other things they are planning on offering. It's a place to go to learn, climb, and be part of a community.

For climbing they have a bouldering, top-rope, and lead climbing. The rope climbing walls go up to 45'. They are also offering Intro to Climbing, and lead climbing classes. The Intro to Climbing are two hours long, five days a week.  The Lead Climbing classes are three parts long, two hours each, and Monday evenings. They have around 90 different routes of varying difficulties to climb, so there's no chance of you getting bored! 

In addition to climbing they are offering yoga classes beginning in early August, and they will be offering more variety of fitness classes, and such soon. They also have some fitness equipment available to use. The goal is not just to focus on rock climbing, but to focus on general fitness, and wellbeing. 

Another goal at Salt Pump is to be as environmentally friendly as possible. The waivers are all digital, a huge paper saver, and most of the light in natural through large windows throughout the facility. Most of the windows look out onto the pond! There is also a deck overlooking the water where you can hang out. 

There are many places to put your stuff, and a lot of seating around so you can just be there. Bring your laptop and work for a bit before or after you climb/tale a class. There are opportunities for birthday parties, there are kid's classes, there will be after school programs, and much more.

One more thing, they actually open tomorrow for the first time! Tomorrow (July 30th, 2015) at 10AM is the official soft opening. The grand opening is set for September, however it's definitely worth it to visit before then! An amazing place, with amazing staff. As with Monkey Trunks, I may be a bit biased, as I am also employed here, but take my word for it and check it out! 

Here's the website!

Teaching

I love working with kids, I always have. Even when I was a kid I loved working with younger kids! It seems as though most of what I want to do is teach, or nanny, so I have decided to look into some teaching jobs abroad.

I have found a couple of interesting programs such as:
Work Away - Suggested to me by a couple people. It's not just teaching jobs either, it's all kinds of jobs all over the world. It's a neat program. You don't get paid, but you do get free lodging and stuff for most of them.
Trek To Teach - This is a little different than Work Away.  It's only in Nepal, you trek to the village where you will be teaching and live there until you're term is up. It costs a little over $3,000 to participate in the program.

There are many more I'm looking into, those are the two I've done the most research into at the moment.

I'm actually considering getting TEFL certified, there are some countries I can teach in with the certification that I don't need a college degree for, there's also more jobs I'll be able to get if I am certified. It's also a lot cheaper, and faster than getting a college degree of any kind.  The only problem is it's apparently a bit more difficult to get certified if you are under 20 years old, as a only recent adult I'd have to wait another 2 years if I can't get it, yet...  We'll see!

Of course, working with animals is also up there on my career choices...

Adding to my List

I'm adding new things to my list today!

• Travel to a foreign country with a friend
• Travel to a foreign country by myself
• Travel to a foreign country with a family member

I have recently discovered that a friend of mine has actually done quite a bit of traveling, and she gave me and another friend some tips on traveling cheaply.  I haved asked her if I can interview her for this blog, so definitely keep an eye out for that!