Canada 2006

For anyone thinking about a teaching exchange...

2010-08-27T23:04:00.007-04:00

This post is an introduction to what this blog is all about, And yet, it is actually the very last post I will be writing here.

Because blogs are structured in reverse chronological order, this final post is possibly the very first one you'll see if you visit this site, and so it must serve as an introduction even though it was written last.

In 2006, my family and I went to Canada on a teaching exchange. Actually, to be more correct, I went to Canada on the teaching exchange, and my family joined me. We had a fabulous year. We made a lot of friends, saw lots of Canada, and experienced what it was like to live in another place. It was a wonderful experience. This blog documents that entire year, and the 6 months of preparation leading up to it.

When I started writing this blog, many people - including my family - did not see any point in why I was doing it. They told me - fairly reasonably at the time - that no one would read it or be all that interested in what we were doing. But I didn't write this for other people. I wrote it for me. It wrote it as my own personal diary and reflection of a year. I wrote it because I thought I'd enjoy looking back in it in years to come. I wrote it because I thought it might be of some use to others about to take the plunge and do a year of teaching in another country. I wrote it so I could learn to blog. I wrote it for my children. I wrote it for a quite a few reasons.

As it turns out, many people did read it, and it has grown into a fairly thorough chronicle of our time there.

As I look back on the year 2006, it was a good year. There is a sequel to the story that is best left for another time and place, but for now, this blog stands as a record of a wonderful year that was.

You can use the list of months on the right side of the page to jump back in time to any point. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Chris Betcher
Sydney Australia

No Place like Home

2007-01-27T07:00:00.000-05:00

After a long flight from Vancouver via Honolulu, I started counting the hours until I would be back on Australian soil. While it was great to be away, it was also wonderful to be nearly home too. As the aircraft started to get near the Australian coastline I listened to Kate Ceberano singing I Still Call Australia Home on my iPod. It's true... No matter how far or how wide I roam, I do still call Australia home.

Thanks Canada. I loved being there for the year we were away, and would not have missed the opportunity to experience you for anything. We saw so many new things and had so many wonderful moments. A truly life changing experience...

I can honestly say that life will never be the same...

Public Relations

2007-01-25T19:00:00.000-05:00

I’m sitting here in Vancouver airport waiting for my plane back to Sydney. I’ve just taken a three hour bus trip back from Whistler, picked up my bags out of storage, almost lost my wallet, and traipsed from one end of Vancouver airport to the other with a trolley full of bags (and my $175 box) looking for the right check-in to catch my plane back home.

I eventually found the desks for International check-in, only to be told that I had to backtrack over to the check-in for the United States departures because the flight goes via Hawaii. I pointed out to them that Sydney, Australia was not part of the United States and that perhaps it was not very clear, but they just shrugged and went back to what they were doing.

So, I made my way through US customs, and you’ll be pleased to know that the approach to customer relations from the US Border Protection people has been extremely consistent. They are just as humourless and abrupt here in Vancouver as they have been at every other US border crossing I’ve been through. Come on guys, lighten up! We’re not all terrorists, and as the front line face of the United States to international visitors, the public relations damage you guys do to American tourism is just outrageous. It wouldn’t hurt to smile, to say hello, to act like a human being occasionally. I’m pretty sure you can be just as effective at protecting your border and keeping the terrorists out of the country, even if you do occasionally smile. Keep up the great work you’re doing keeping your country secure, just learn to treat your visitors like the valuable people that they are instead of making us all feel like we’re trespassing on your precious American soil.

After a quick snack and a rather delicious fruit smoothie thing from Starbucks, I finally arrived at the departure gate where I plugged my Mac in for a final burst of charge before boarding the long flight back to Australia.

Mountain Dreams

2007-01-25T03:45:00.000-05:00

I was always taught that you should write down the things you dream about in life, and that the mere act of writing them down can sometimes play a powerful part in making them come true. Figuring that I had nothing to lose by trying this strategy, several years ago I wrote a list of things that I wanted to do, have and become. I’m not naive enough to think that I will get everything I dream about, but I do accept that I probably won’t get anything that I don’t dream about. I wrote that list many years ago and to be honest I put it aside after I wrote it and more or less forgot about it.

In the preparation to come to Canada last year I happened to stumble across that list. I was amazed at just how many of the items on that list - things that probably seemed quite unrealistic at the time I wrote it - had in fact come to pass. I won’t bore you with the actual list of things, but just believe me when I tell you that I was very surprised how many of them had come true. Of course there were also things on that list that hadn’t happened (yet), and also quite a few things that no longer really mattered to me. Priorities change over the years, and some things that I thought were important no longer are. I also realised that some things that matter to me just aren’t ever going to happen, and I guess I need to give some thought to how I deal with that.

Anyway, one of the things on that list was “Skiing at Whistler”. As of yesterday and today, I can now cross that one off the list too. (Well, technically I never skied Whistler since I spent all my time on its more advanced sister peak Blackcomb, but it’s considered all part of the one resort so I’ll still claim it as a dream fulfilled.)

I skied on my own yesterday since Pete wasn’t keen to be skiing in the poor visibility conditions. I had a great day on the hills, with excellent snow conditions even if the bumps were a bit hard to see in the misty conditions. It was still great to be out skiing this legendary mountain. Blackcomb starts at 600 metres Above Sea Level and rises to a highpoint of nearly 2600 metres ASL... that gives a total vertical drop of nearly 2 kilometres. That’s a pretty impressive vertical drop! My legs were buggered by the end of the first day.

On day two Pete and I went out for the day to enjoy the ample white snow and beautiful blue skies. This has been a bumper season for Whistler, and the mountain currently boasts an average base depth of 10 feet. You know there is a lot of snow when the little “saplings” growing in the snow are in fact only the top sections of fully grown fir trees.

Pete and I skied the top section of the mountain in the morning since the sun had been hitting it for a while, making it the best snow conditions on the whole hill. We quite literally skied until we couldn’t ski any more, with our quads and calves burning with lactic acid. We took a break for lunch for a while since the place we were staying at was ski-in,ski-out and right at the base of the Wizard Express chairlift. After a chance to let our aching legs recover we went back up to the very top of the mountain, skied again until we couldn’t ski any more and eventually made our way back down the mountain to the village. You know it’s a big mountain when you ski down the hill for nearly an hour and you are still about the cloud line! We finally descended through the clouds to arrive back at the hotel, where we indulged ourselves in a hot tub for an hour or so, chatting with Canadians, Americans and fellow Aussies.

By the end of the day my legs were absolutely killing me, partly from the punishment I’d dished out to them on the moguls and steep slopes, but also because the boots I was using were less than wonderful. Regardless, I decided to soldier on and limp around Whistler Village with Pete on a mini pub crawl that night. Good times.

I’ve got a whole morning to kill tomorrow before I catch the bus back to Vancouver and a plane back to Sydney. I’m not going to ski... they are predicting more dubious weather conditions, and besides, I can hardly walk at the moment. I think I’ll hang around the village for a while, shoot some photos, and maybe even catch a lift to the top of the mountain to take a few pics from there as well. It’s a stunning mountain range.

I’m sure this visit to Whistler-Blackcomb has just been a taster for me... I think I’ll be back here in the not-to-distant future for a bit more time on these amazing mountains. Only next time, I’m going to do a bit more work beforehand in the gym to get my leg muscles in condition, as well as find a decent pair of ski boots!

Still, it’s been great to tick another dream off the dream list.

btw, there are more photos to come with this post... once I get them off Pete’s camera!

Goodbye Toronto, Hello Vancouver

2007-01-22T19:08:00.000-05:00

7:00am. The alarm didn't even need to go off. I woke up before the time arrived and readied myself for my last day in Oakville. It was all a bit of a blur really... I said my goodbye to Dave as he waited for Darrell to pick him up and drive him to school, something that Darrell had been doing for me for most of the past 12 months. I packed the last few things in my luggage and was pleased with the way I'd been able to fit everything into my two bags.

Sean soon arrived to take me to the airport, so I said my last goodbye to Heidi, packed my bags into the back of Sean's truck and headed down the 403 for the last time. We made good time to the airport, thanks to the express 2-person lane, and Sean dropped me at Pearson's Terminal 1 departures, where we said our final goodbyes. Man, this really is hard. I hate goodbyes.

Once in the terminal I checked in, and then the trouble started. Apparently my large bag was overweight - I knew it would be, and I was prepared to pay the $35 overweight charge - but I mean it was WAY overweight, like beyond the point where the baggage handlers would handle it. After a discussion of the options, I was given a cardboard box (not a particularly big one either!) and had to offload about 40 pounds of weight from the big bag into the box. So I'm standing there in the middle of the terminal with my bags open, clothes everywhere and trying to shuffle stuff from one place to the other to balance the weight out. Eventually, I got what I thought was a workable combination and went back to the counter. It only took a little more shuffling of stuff between bags and we finally arrived at a workable combination. The bad news was that the extra "bag" that I now had was going to cost me $175 to get home. (Actually it was supposed to cost me $105 to get to Vancouver and then another $175 to get to Sydney, but the guy at the desk felt sorry for me and tried to bundle it into a single charge... I did appreciate his effort to do that for me.)

With the bags finally taken care of, I made my way through security and went to Gate 143 to wait for the flight to Vancouver. I had a bite to eat and listened to my iPod for a while while I waited for the flight, which was delayed 30 minutes. (How come flights are always delayed in multiples of 5 minutes? How come they are never 27 minutes late?)

The flight to Vancouver was uneventful, which is probably the best sort of flight to have. On arrival, I checked my large bag and my $175 box into storage at the airport, bought a bus ticket to Whistler and made my way up to Canada's number one ski resort.

Skiing at Whistler has always been on my dream list, so when I was planning my trip home to Australia I wanted to drop in there for a few days. As the time got closer though, I started to deliberate about whether I really wanted to go there on my own, not to mention how expensive it would end up being. In the end I'd more or less talked myself out of going there. Then by a complete coincidence I got a phone call from a mate back in Australia who was planning a Whistler trip with his daughter and invited me to come stay for a few days. Done deal!

The bus from Vancouver arrived at Whistler village at about 5:30pm and I made my way to Aspens on Blackcomb where I met up with my friends Pete and Rebecca. They made me feel very welcome and went out of their way to make me comfortable with them for a few days.

More Whistler adventures soon...

The Last Supper

2007-01-21T02:57:00.000-05:00

On Sunday evening, Dave and Heidi held a lovely farewell dinner at home - well it was a farewell dinner to me anyway - and invited the Smiths around to join us. There were many moments that evening that were very bittersweet, sharing a few wonderful memories with people who have become extremely special to me, while saying our goodbyes at the same time. Dave and Heidi were the most wonderful exchange partners I could have wished for... this whole exchange worked so well on so many levels because of the easy going and communicative way we were able to make it happen. And we met so many great people while we were here in Oakville, people that have a permanent place in our hearts, and none moreso than Sean and Kim. It was very special to be able to share my last night in Oakville with these four friends.

We also had a little birthday celebration for Charlee, whose birthday was the day before. Steve K dropped around to say goodbye as well. It was all very much a case of sensory overload to me, and when I gave Kim that last hug goodbye I really lost it inside.

This saying goodbye stuff is so much harder than I ever thought it would be.

One Last Nibble...

2007-01-20T02:30:00.000-05:00

...at the Niblick.

Yes, Donna's old stomping ground was the place for that one-last-drink with my work colleagues (and anyone else who felt like dropping in) My workroom buddies arranged for a final get-together at the Niblick Pub on Saturday night, which was quite fitting since it was the very first place that I met many of them just over a year ago when they gathered there for a farewell drink for Dave. Dave and Heidi arrived back from Australia this morning, so it was great that Dave could also join us at the pub as well. Ah, the circle of life...

Much beer was consumed, although not so much by me. I had way too much to think about the next day to have been doing it with a hangover so I took it pretty easy. I did however have a Grade 11 student turn up at one stage to buy me a shot of farewell bourbon, just for old times sake. Thanks Jorge.

It was a nice evening, with plenty of laughs and shared moments. The girls from my workroom even gathered together to give me a hummer. You had to be there. Thanks ladies!

Sean turned up as the only non-schoolie, but of course he fit right in and was chatting away to people as though he'd known them forever. Eventually though, the night had to end, so I said more goodbyes and got lots hugs and kisses and handshakes. Sean had the munchies so he, Dave and I swung by Pizza Pizza for a few slices of Canadian goodness before we all finally walked home.

Thanks to everyone who organised the night, especially Lorain and Jen who seemed to be the masterminds behind it. I truly appreciated the chance to have just one more final goodbye with everyone who came along.

Pulling the Plug

2007-01-20T01:16:00.000-05:00

On Saturday morning, Sean gave me a hand to do a few things that I needed to do in order to unplug my life here in Oakville. It was a bit sad for me really, as it really drove home the fact that my time here in Canada was coming to an end.

First job was to get rid of the car. Not long after we arrived in Canada we picked up a very nice 2003 Chev Venture minivan, and it was a fantastic little car. It gave us absolutely no trouble all year, was totally reliable and very nice to drive. Considering we planned to do so much driving this year we thought it was important to get a decent car, so we were prepared to pay for something reasonably good. We put 94,000km on the clock (it had about 60,000 when we got it) which was just under the lease limit of 96,000.

After looking at the options of buying as opposed to leasing, we decided to lease the car and I'm pleased we did it that way. We spent about as much on the lease as we would have lost in a buy/sell transaction, but the convenience factor when returning the car made it more than worthwhile. True enough, I drove the van back to Towne Chevrolet on Saturday morning, dropped off the key and signed the release papers. Easy as that.

After that Sean drove me around to the local MTO office to cancel the registration plate. That was painless and easy as well. While I was there, I decided to cancel my Ontario G1 license. If you've been a regular reader of this blog then you probably know the crap I've gone through with the whole licensing issue. I was holding out for the whole $85 refund on the license-that-never-should-have-been, but I figured I would just get my $60 refund and be done with it. The three phone calls I recorded with three different MTO staff members, all contradicting each other and sounding like complete dills, will be priceless enough when I edit it into a finished podcast that it will be well worth the $15.

I'd also cancelled the car insurance earlier in the week, and that was supposed to take effect as of Saturday afternoon.

Finally it was off to the bank to close our bank account. I thought TD Canada Trust were excellent to deal with and their customer service was great. I would have liked to have kept it open - after all, you never know when we'll be back - however, there was a small fee each month to keep the account open so it really didn't make sense to keep it.

So... no car, no rego, no license, no insurance, no bank account. Talk about pulling the plug on my life in Canada. It was starting to feel very real all of a sudden.

No More Teachers, No More Books

2007-01-19T23:34:00.000-05:00

Friday was my last day at Trinity. It was a busy couple of weeks, with plenty of assessment tasks, culminating tasks, exams, etc in order to get everything completed and wrapped up before I left. There will still be reports to write, but at the time of me leaving, Trillium (the reporting software) was not open yet for Semester 1 reports so I guess I will have to do those from Australia. Luckily they are web-based, so that ought not be too much of a problem.

The kids were great too... they said nice things to me and I even got a few cards from some of them. My BTA class turned up with boxes of Tim Horton's donuts and we snacked out. My BTT kids turned up with chips and pop, and I was even treated to a special display of jumprope from two of them who are rather expert in that area. We had an enjoyable last day and I was reminded of just why I love teaching so much. It's all about the kids.

On Thursday, the staff at Trinity held a bit of a shindig in the library after school. It was advertised as a "special staff meeting" and I had no prior idea about it, but a few people made comments during the day that sort of raised my suspicions. It was a nice sendoff with a lovely speech by Angelo and some nice gifts as well - a Team Canada hockey jersey and tuque, as well as a very cool Trinity coach's shirt. There were munchies and snacks and a nice going-away cake too, although I'm not sure about the design on the cake. A bit too "rainbow parade" for me. :-)

I took the opportunity to get around and see as many people as possible. I tried to see nearly everyone, but I'm sure there were many that I missed, so please accept my apologies if I didn't get to you. I did send an email message to everyone just to say goodbye just in case.

There was only one final school farewell to go, and that was for drinks at the Niblick on Saturday night. Dave would even be back for that one!

Saying Thanks

2007-01-18T12:45:00.000-05:00

For what it's worth, this is a copy of the letter I asked to be sent to all the staff at Trinity...

As my time here at Holy Trinity draws to a close I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone here for such a wonderful year. Taking yourself, your work and your family and uprooting a comfortable existence to go and live in another country for a year is a big decision. When Dave Grace and I first started talking about an exchange it was full of unknowns and before we left Australia there were still plenty of times when I wondered if I was doing the right thing.

As soon as we arrived in Canada however, I was certain I was doing the right thing. 2006 has been an absolutely amazing year for my family and myself and I wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything. We’ve travelled to many parts of eastern Canada, enjoyed some of the cottage lifestyle of the Muskokas, experienced different weather and lifestyle, but mostly we got the chance to get to know Canada by getting to know Canadians. It has been the people we’ve met, far more than any other aspect of the exchange that has been the most rewarding and incredible aspect of our year.

I wanted to thank everyone here at Holy Trinity for making me feel so welcomed into the school community, and being so willing to help me, share ideas and talk about life in general and education in particular. I’ve met many people here at Trinity with whom I’ve developed very close friendships and who I hope to be able to continue to stay in touch with in coming years.

The chance to experience a different work environment and a different educational system has been really valuable both personally and professionally, and while I may have expressed my occasional frustration at things that seemed odd or inefficient to me, I have really valued the opportunity to experience those differences. I will certainly return home to Australia with fresh ideas from the many great things that I’ve seen happening here at Trinity.

What really stood out to me though was the warmth and caring that you all show to the kids you teach, and to each other. The teachers at Trinity are what make this place great, and I thank you for allowing me to be a part of your community.

I suspect that I will be back here at some stage, and of course, if you’re ever in Australia I would love to be able to return some of your hospitality.

Thanks again for everything you’ve done for me.

King regards,
Chris

The Big Freeze

2007-01-16T15:02:00.000-05:00

If you asked the average Australian - who generally doesn’t have much experience with really cold weather - what happens to rain that freezes, they would tell you it turns to snow. After all, think about it… if it’s cold enough to freeze the rain, it probably turns to snow, right?

Wrong. Rain that freezes turns to Freezing Rain. It may sound like a minor semantic distinction, but trust me… the difference is huge. I’ve heard it said that the Inuit people (you might know them as Eskimos) have many words in their language for snow, each word used to describe a slightly different version of the white stuff. To those who live in those cold conditions, the subtle characteristics between different types of snowfall must be pretty obvious and important. To the rest of us, it’s just white stuff that falls from the sky.

So the weather finally turned here yesterday, with snowfalls over the weekend – not a lot, but enough to turn the place white – followed by bouts of freezing rain on Monday. Freezing rain is rain that freezes, but not into nice fluffy white crystals that flutter down slowly from the grey skies above. It freezes into tiny bullet-like pellets of ice that spray down from the sky, and as the hit objects like cars, houses and roads, they stick together to form sheets of ice. If that sounds dangerous and inconvenient, you’re right, it is. The roads get really dangerous, and if you leave your car outside for long enough it gets covered in a shell of ice, sometimes freezing over the doors so you can’t even open them. Just yesterday, one of the teachers at work had to go help her mum, whose car had completely frozen over with an ice shell that encased all four doors.

When I left school yesterday, my car was not quite encased in ice to the point where I couldn’t get in, but it certainly was covered with enough ice that I couldn’t see out the windows. I spent about 20 minutes standing in the carpark with an ice scraper trying to chip through the icy shell. Fun! Especially in sub zero temperatures. What was funnier was looking around the carpark and seeing about 10 other people all doing the same thing. Must just be part of being Canadian eh?

Wish I had my camera with me at the time! The photos shown here were taken in the same carpark a few days later...

Not much White, Plenty of Blues

2007-01-07T00:50:00.000-05:00

At the recent Rock and Roll fundraiser night, and in a rather hazy state of mild inebriation, I somehow managed to place a bid in a silent auction on an item which I subsequently won... it was a weekend stay in a nice hotel in Ellicottville, New York. (I'll point out that Ellicottville is in upstate New York just south of Buffalo, not New York City as most Australians would think when you say the words New York.)

The sleepy little town of Ellicottville is in fact a ski town, and is nestled at the base of the ski areas of Holiday Valley and Holimont. When I bid on the accommodation voucher, I was assured that it was a great place to go skiing with plenty of that famous Lake Erie lake effect dumping tons of snow over the mountains for some great skiing. I'd put off booking a weekend there because the snow just hadn't arrived and it seemed like if I just waited a bit longer... well maybe the snow would arrive...

Eventually I couldn't wait any longer, so I booked the place for last weekend and headed down across the border, hoping that some snow would arrive. Of course, my visa had expired so I had to be screened as a possible terrorist... Jeez, I can't get over how paranoid the US border people are. After an hour long wait at the border I was eventually admitted access to the U S of A.

Ellicottville is a pleasant hour or so south of Buffalo, and is a quaint little town made up of beautiful American architecture, wide streets and a village atmosphere. There were pubs and restaurants all through the main street and it was obvious that things were pretty quiet considering it was the middle of the ski season. There was hardly any snow, although the snow making on the hill had been going flat-out and in reality, even though there was no snow outside the main trails, the fact that there were only about four people on the mountain would have probably compensated for the lack of snow. At least you couldn't complain about crowds!

In the absence of the white stuff however, I discovered there was plenty of blue stuff in town. Ellicottville just happened to be celebrating its annual Blues Festival this weekend, so every pub and nightspot in town was humming to the sounds of blues guitar and those unmistakable I-IV-V chord progressions that make up the heart and soul of Jazz and Blues. I do love listening to music, so I took great delight in soaking up as much of the ambience as possible that evening.

After a lazy start the next morning, the GPS led me through a few hilly back country roads, and through some very nice scenery in the mountains of upstate New York, eventually finding my back to the edge of Lake Erie and back into Buffalo. I have to say that I was a bit shocked at some of the "trailerpark" living I saw in the mountains... houses that were clearly still inhabited but looked like they should have been demolished, trashed ve-hi-cles laying around the yards, guys out wandering along the road hunting for deer in full camo gear and rifles at the ready. The living conditions of some of the places I saw in the hills was truly astounding. America certainly is a land of contrasts, and after seeing the sorts of rednecks living in the hills of NY state, I can't believe they are so fussy about letting people across the border and into the US!

Stopping in at Niagara Falls on the way home, I was impressed with the view from the American side of the river. Most tourists only see the falls from the Canadian side, which are clearly more spectacular, but I must say that being on the American side of the falls and taking them in from there was quite a memorable experience. The sheer power of watching all that water pouring over the falls is an amazing sight from any angle.

Finally, I dropped into Niagara-on-the-Lake on the way home just for one more look around, and then headed home after a really great weekend.

Whatever the Weather

2007-01-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

What is the deal with this weather? It's January 5 and we STILL haven't had any snow! Last winter was so mild.. all the locals kept telling me this was not a typical winter, just wait till next year. Well, this is now next year, and we are into January and the outside temp is sitting at 14 degrees! 14 degrees! I went for a run the other day in a pair of shorts for goodness sake! And people still question whether climate change is real or not...

Once it actually snows, I'm sure the novelty of shovelling driveways, sliding all over the road and freezing my ass off in -30 temperatures will wear off pretty quickly, but I still want to experience it. This current weather is just kind of a no-man's land - it's not summer but it's not really winter either.

Time to do a dance to the snow gods I think!

Bang Bang, You're Dead!

2007-01-05T02:33:00.000-05:00

I got a phone call tonight from Darrell asking if I'd like to go play a few games of paintball with the guys from work. I'd been asked out to dinner by Kim and Sean before they fly off to Mexico in the morning, but I'd never played paintball before so I rang Kim and politely excused myself from dinner.

I met the guys a little late, since the original instructions said the place was in Mississauga whereas it was in fact located in North York. After working my way across the 401 in the rain I eventually found the place, thanks to my trusty GPS.

I had a great time running around in the dark shooting people with paint pellets, but man oh man, do they hurt when they hit you! I still have welts and bruises on my arms, legs and hips from being struck by flying paintballs at high speed and/or close range.

After playing 5 or 6 games we eventually hauled our sorry bodies out of there down to the Shoeless Joes Sports Bar in Dufferin Street for a quick beer. All in all it was a good fun night out with the boys - Charlie, Darrell, Chris, Rob and Mike. Thanks for the invitation guys!

I wanted to take a few photos for the blog, but trying to shoot photos and people at the same time just wasn't working so I only got this one of Charlie, ready for battle, just before he got to taste a paint pellet. Good one mate!

More Talent

2007-01-05T00:26:00.000-05:00

A while ago I posted about a school talent night held at Trinity, and mentioned that a few of the teachers, including myself, put together a couple of songs for the show. While I can’t truly claim to have any great musical talent, I can wield a bass guitar well enough to hold the rhythm section together, especially with a great drummer like Charlie. The rest of the band was Rob, Darrell, Alanna and Kevin, all wonderfully dedicated and talented teachers who don’t mind getting up and showing their wild side in front of the kids. The kids seem to really enjoy seeing their teachers get up and “give it a go”, and it’s that spirit that make schools such wonderfully human places in which to work…

Well it turns out that a video of our performance turned up on YouTube. For anyone brave enough to take a peek, here is a clip of two songs we performed on the night… the sound quality isn’t great and the camera work is a bit shaky, but it just goes to show what can be done when a kid in the crowd just happens to capture something like this on his cellphone, and then posts it up on YouTube within a few hours.

It was, I must admit, a lot of fun.

This is your City

2006-12-30T15:40:00.000-05:00

With a little bit of time on my hands, I've been doing some exploring. There are plenty of areas in and around the GTA that we never really got a chance to have a good look at during the year, so I'm taking this opportunity to look around at things. I've been for a drive up into the "northern suburbs" of the GTA and explored new areas. It's been very pleasant.

Yesterday I spent the day in the cit and checked out the underground walkways systems, looked through the post-Christmas shopping malls, visited the St Lawrence Markets, admired the architecture, and even had lunch in a nice little Thai place. I hung about in town for a while before eventually heading back home. Not everyone's idea of a good time perhaps, but I very much enjoyed it. In fact I think I might go back and explore the Toronto Transit system next week, and check out some places like Queen West and The Annexe.

Whatever, it will be fun.

Home again!

2006-12-28T15:58:00.000-05:00

After what I'm told was a relatively good flight from one side of our planet to the other, Donna sent me a couple of photos from their arrival back home is Australia. Her mum, my mum and Natalie formed the welcoming committee at Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport, and I'm sure they were pleased to see Donna and the kids finally back on Aussie soil.

And of course, what's one of the first places you go upon arrival in Australia? Why, to the beach of course! (No it wasn't actually the same day they arrived... Alex just doesn't like to change T-shirts too often!)

Ghosts of Christmas Past

2006-12-27T00:54:00.000-05:00

Well Christmas has come and gone, and it's been an odd one this year. With Donna and the kids not here any more, the place was pretty quiet, and although I'd been hoping to experience a White Christmas, the snow has simply not arrived in Oakville, and so it was a Green Christmas instead - cold, but green. They keep predicting snow, but it never seems to come good on the prediction. It's reassuring to realise that while the experts can't agree on whether global warming is real or not, you can still rely on weather forecasting to be as inaccurate as ever.

However, I was well and truly looked after this Christmas and got to spend it with my surrogate Oakville families. On Christmas Eve, Beth and Grant had me over for a delicious Christmas lunch, and I got to meet Grant's mum and dad from Burlington. Grant's dad is an interesting guy, full of facts and trivia and stories, and an incredible memory for places he visited in Australia nearly 20 years ago. He does a pretty fair impression of Santa Claus too!

After leaving there, I popped into Dave and Claudia's place to share a Christmas meal with them and their family too. It was nice to meet Claudia's brother, sister, parents and the other guests. Dave said later that he thought I was a bit quiet and subdued, but I was really just pacing my eating and drinking! It was really nice to be invited to share a meal with all my Oakville friends, but even I can't have two full-size Christmas meals back to back!

After leaving there I went round to share a quiet evening drink with Dave and Linda, as well as Beth and Grant again and Linda's parents. It was a quiet relaxed affair, complete with delicious home-made Hungarian cakes, but again, I had to take it easy in the eating and drinking department.

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, and really felt very special to think that I was being invited in to share such a special family time as Christmas.

The next day was Christmas Day. I have no idea where the morning went - it isn't quite as exciting without the kids there to be excited about Santa coming by - and I had the biggest Christmas day sleep-in ever. Later in the day I joined Kim, Sean, Laura and Megan for dinner at Kim's brother's place in Toronto. I hadn't met Chris before, or his two delightful kids Brady and Charlotte. Clint and Carol had also come up from Florida for Christmas, so it was extra good to see them again. We had another wonderful shared dinner with what was probably the biggest turkey I've ever seen in my life! This thing was huge! It was a lovely evening, a real family Christmas get-together, with pressie time and all. Thanks to the Smetchers for including me.

Next stop, New Year. Then back to school. Then back home. I'm not sure I'm ready for all this.

All Alone...

2006-12-21T17:36:00.000-05:00

Donna and the kids flew out on Wednesday. It was hard saying goodbye, knowing I won't see them for the next month, but it's just the way things worked out. We had a stream of visitors dropping by the house during the morning, coming by for that one last hug and a photo, and more tears were shed. I also drove Kate down to Sunrise to pick up her reference for doing volunteer work there.

So after a frantic last few days of packing, unpacking and repacking to try and get the suitcases evenly weighted (it didn't work - we still got hit with $105 worth of overweight charges) I finally drove them to Pearson Airport where we said our goodbyes before they headed through the security gates to start their 23 hour journey back to Australia.

See you in a month guys! XXX

Who is Nathan Phillips?

2006-12-20T17:22:00.000-05:00

Donna really wanted to go back to New York City to skate outside at the Rockefeller centre before she went back to Australia. As we reached the end of our time here though, it quickly became apparent that we were running out of both the time and the money to all travel back to NYC, and so Donna's dream of doing some outdoor skating amongst the snow and the lights was somewhat dashed.

Instead, we discovered that Toronto has its very own outdoor skating rink in winter. Called Nathan Phillips Square, the rink is not exactly the Rockefeller Centre but it does have some pretty lights and a great community atmosphere. Unfortunately we haven't had any snow yet so there was not the white Christmas feel we were after, but we decided to drive into Toronto the other night for a look anyway. Kate was not feeling 100% and so we decided not to actually skate in the cold night air, but instead just parked nearby and checked it out.

The verdict was that it was a very nice way to spend an evening, and if we get a decent snowfall before I go I might even try to get back in there myself for a skate. For now though, it was not to be for Donna and the kids. Might have to plan that other NYC trip after all!

The (Almost) Final Hurrah

2006-12-18T17:02:00.000-05:00

We feel very blessed to have made so many friends and built such good relationships with the people in out neighbourhood here in Oakville. It's been an amazing year for us, and despite all the travel to the far-flung reaches of Eastern Canada and the US, had we done nothing of that but simply met the people we've met, it would still have been more than worthwhile. We've made some great friends here, that we will truly miss when we have to leave.

With that thought in mind, we were still humbled by the thought that our next door neighbours Dave and Claudia held a farewell party on Saturday night, and invited many of the people we've become so close to over the past 12 months. We had a fabulous evening, great food, great wine and even better company. It was especially tearful for Donna, who would be leaving for Australia only a few days later.

The human element of an exchange is the part you never really plan for, but we have found it far and away the best part. As I mentioned on the night, when you plan your travel to another part of the world you tend to think in terms of things and places - the things you plan to do and the places you plan to visit - and you don't really think about the people you might meet. But it's been the people we've met that have made all the difference, and we thank them for it.

A huge thank you must go out to Dave and Claudia for so generously opening up their home to us and the rest of the Oakville crew (plus extras!), and the beautiful well wishes of everyone who came. I only hope we can return the hospitality in Australia some day.

It’s not about the Cookies…

2006-12-18T15:43:00.000-05:00

No it isn’t about the cookies, or the fudge, or the lamingtons or even about the peanut butter balls, the cookie exchange is about friendship and community and typifies so much of what this neighbourhood is about.

When I was invited by Beth to join the cookie exchange, I guess my first thoughts were of “OMG, somebody actually wants me to bake for them”. My next thought was, what will I bake? After getting some much needed assistance from my friend Anne back home, the task of making 15 dozen lamingtons was set upon. Yes, it took hours, yes I swore on a regular basis because I would burn a cake or forget to put oil in the mixture, but I was part of this group and loved the fact that I was involved.

There were 16 of us in total and we gathered at Susan’s for a night of Christmas cheer and of course the exchange of our goodies. But whilst the table overflowed with beautifully presented and wrapped treats of all kinds, it was the laughter and the sharing that was taking place in the other rooms that gave real meaning to this neighbourhood tradition of a cookie exchange.

Toward the end of the night as I stood marvelling at the array on the table in front of me, Susan leant over my shoulder and summed it all up. "Its not about the cookies you know...”

How right you are.

Driven Crazy

2006-12-14T19:20:00.000-05:00

Just a warning... this blog post is likely to become somewhat of a cranky rant, and I suspect will be quite long. If that sort of thing interests you, great, read on. But if not, you might as well skip this post... nothing to see here folks, move along. If you're an exchange teacher coming to Canada, you'll find a short summary at the bottom of this post. I suggest you read it.

First, let me point out that motor registries don't have a good reputation. It's little wonder when Simpson's creator Matt Groening wanted to create the perfect stereotype for Homer's lazy sisters-in-law, Patty and Selma, he created them as ignorant, chain smoking drones who worked at the Springfield Department of Motor Vehicles. I'd like to think that the stereotype of motor registries as bumbling, bureaucratic and ignorant was purely for comic effect, but alas I've been finding that it's all too true.

The story began back in Australia, before I left for Canada, and was based on a simple question... what do I need to do to legally drive in Canada for the year I'm here? You would think that should be a fairly simple question, one with a fairly definitive answer. I'd heard that an International Driving Permit was all that was required, but I'd also heard that some Australian exchangees were told to get a local Ontario license. I wanted to know, one way or the other, what I needed to do.

Let me preface this whole thing by saying that under normal circumstances, an Australian who moves to Ontario and wants to drive here can do so using his or her Australian license but only for a period of 60 days, after which time they are required by law to get a local Ontario license. Alternatively, they could bring an International Driving Permit which entitles them to drive here for 12 months, but there was also some contention about whether an exchange teacher living in Canada for 12+ months would still have their International permit recognised by the Canadian authorities after 60 days. A simple question, I thought. Apparently not a simple answer.

So back in January, just before we left Sydney, I rang the local Ministry of Transport of Ontario registry here in Oakville, and spoke to a reasonably helpful lady who did her very best to give me the right advice which was unfortunately all completely wrong. She was adamant that I DID indeed need to get an Ontario license after 60 days in Canada, and ALSO get an International Driving Permit as well. I blogged about this at the time. I even recorded the call. I'm not making this up.

On arrival in Oakville, I visited the local MTO in Cross St, Oakville, and managed to speak to the very same lady I'd Skyped from Australia only a few days before. She directed me to the nearby DriveTest centre. It seems that the Ontario government has outsourced their driver licensing to private enterprise and it is managed by this mob called DriveTest. So off I went. Upon my arrival, I was seen to by another nice lady who again confirmed that I would indeed need to get a local Ontario license because I was staying here for longer than 60 days, so I paid my $75 application fee for my G1 (learner's permit) and got started on passing my tests. I had to buy a local driving rules book, and pay a $10 fee to sit a local driving rules knowledge test. I also booked in to do a driving test, which would hopefully take me from my G1 to a full G license and make me a fully certified Ontario driver.

I ended up failing my first driving test... despite the fact that I stuck strictly to the speed limits, including the advisory signs, the guy said I drove too slowly. How the hell can you fail a driving test by driving too slowly! Especially when his idea of driving too slowly was to actually observe all the speed limits! Thoroughly pissed off, I went back into the DriveTest centre to rebook another test and this time got served by a different person. As she looked at my documentation, she said "Why are you trying to get an Ontario license when you have an International Driving Permit?" She then explained to me that her understanding was that the IDP was valid for a full 12 months and I could quite legally drive on it all year. I told her I'd been told a different story (more than once) I asked her to check this with someone else in the registry office. She did, but they disagreed with her and insisted I would in fact need to obtain an Ontario license. I eventually escalated this to the manager, who after a long discussion agreed that yes, the IDP would be more than adequate for 12 months of driving in Canada.

Because I had already spent $85 to get a license so far, and I still didn't have one, and now I was told that my IDP (which cost me $50 back in Australia) was quite adequate to cover my driving for the year, I didn't pursue the Ontario license any further. I couldn't see any point throwing good money after bad, and if the IDP would do the trick then so be it, I'd stick with the IDP.

Bear in mind that at this point in the story, I now have BOTH an International Driving Permit AND an Ontario G1 license. No problem I thought. The IDP is my legal license and the G1 will make a nice souvenir of my travels.

Just to make sure I wasn't being sold a pup, I got home from the DriveTest centre and rang the MTO hotline enquiry number. I told the whole story to him, and the guy agreed that the IDP would be fine. I asked if he could also just doublecheck that with someone else, and after a few minutes on hold, he returned to say that he spoke to his manager who thought that the IDP would NOT cover me after 60 days and that I'd need a local license after all. I asked which section of the Highway Traffic Act covered this and he eventually referred me to section 15 (I think it was). I found a copy of the HTA on the Internet and after reading it I was still none the wiser.

Back to the DriveTest centre for another clarification on whether I needed a local license. Was again told "Yes you do" by one person and "No you don't" by another. I'd had an absolute gutful of this nonsense by this stage, and since it appeared that out insurance company was going to be more than happy with the International Permit, I decided to say stuff it all and just go with the IDP.

So for the last 12 months I've been driving on my International Permit. I haven't had any trouble, never been pulled up or asked to present it, so there's been no issue.

However...

My IDP expires on January 12, one full year from the day I got it in Sydney. I will be in Canada until January 22. That leaves a 10 day period of being technically unlicensed, and of course you need to be licensed to have valid insurance. So, masochist that I am, I went back to the DriveTest centre last week to see what I needed to do. My plan was to sit the G1 to G2 test, thereby upgrading my G1 license to a proper one, covering my ass for the 10 days, and giving me an Ontario license for 5 years in case I get back here in that timeframe. Seemed to be the obvious solution.

On entering the DriveTest centre, I explained my situation and was given a horrified look by the woman at the information desk when I told her I'd been driving on an IDP all year. "You can't do that!" she said. "It's illegal!" She went on to explain that my IDP was only valid in Canada for 60 days. I tried to tell her that it was valid for a full year, but she insisted that it wasn't. She directed me to another woman to help sort this out.

The second woman calmly looked over my paperwork and said... you guessed it... "You don't need - and never did need - to get an Ontario license. Your IDP is perfectly valid." These two women work in the same office, and were not 30 feet from each other! I called the two together and said we better get our story straight. Woman 2 pointed out that not only was the G1 license not necessary, but if I got pulled up by the police for something, the fact that I had it at all would take priority over my IDP, essentialy meaning that my IDP had been invalid all year because I had the G1. She explained that I had been given the wrong advice right from the beginning, and that my IDP was perfectly valid so long as I did NOT get an Ontario license. I'm really pissed off about this now... because of their misleading and incorrect advice back in January, not only have I been driving on an invalid license all year but it cost me CAD$85 for the privilege!

Ok, so at this point I now have two options to cover the 10 days between Jan 12 and Jan 22. Either get a new International Driving Permit issued from Australia (another AUD$50) or sit the Ontario G2 license test and get a full Ontario license (another CAD$40). Since they were both about the same price, I decided to book in for a G2 test and finally get the damn Ontario license.

With the test booked for December 18, I decided to just check with my insurance company and let them know what I was doing, since they covered us initially on the strength of my IDP. I emailed my contact at Johnson's Insurance and let her know what was going on. She rang me back that day and advised me NOT to get the Ontario license, but to instead renew the IDP. The IDP, she explained, was based on my Australian driving record and gave me a 6 star rating, and therefore a much lower premium. If I had an Ontario G2 I would only get a 3 star rating, and my premium would rise considerably. I'm glad I asked the question! I went to the NRMA website, downloaded the application form and sent it off for a new IDP. That at least solved my main problem of covering my license for those 1o days in January.

I then went back to the DriveTest office today to cancel my driving test, get my $40 refunded, and cancel my G1 (which I never should have held at all). I discovered I could cancel my 5-year-valid G1, and get a refund on the unused 4 year portion - a refund of $60. Then I started to think about it... all this hassle and expense was caused because some drone at the MTO gave me patently wrong advice in the first place. I was out of pocket $85 by trying to get a license issued to me that I not only didn't need, but was actually detrimental to me as the holder of an IDP! Bugger the $60 refund. I want a full $85 refund for the entire shemozzle!

So I went back up to the MTO at Cross Street, where this whole stupid mess got started and told them the story. I insisted on getting my full $85 refund. Once we got past the "Sorry sir, we don't have a policy for that" nonsense, I was given the contact number for the MTO head office and I will be taking it up there, and I won't stop until I am satisfied. As Howard Beale said in the movie "Network", I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!

I'll let you know how I go...

The Bottom Line: To any Aussie exchange teachers coming to Canada, here is what you need to know. An International Driving Permit issued in Australia is all you need to legally drive in Canada for 12 months. The whole confusion arises around the definition of whether you are a visitor or a resident. Residents must get a local Ontario license within 60 days of arriving in Canada. Visitors do not. Despite the fact that some people in the MTO will try to tell you that your 12 month stay makes you a resident and that you therefore need to get a local license, as an exchange teacher you DO NOT NEED an Ontario license. You are classed as a visitor, and can legally drive on your IDP and don't let anyone tell you otherwise, especially the "experts" at the MTO! Be aware that you will need to renew your IDP if it expires while you are in Canada. Good luck!

Some Xmas Bling

2006-12-13T22:49:00.000-05:00

The Smetchers went for a little drive tonight to check out the Christmas lights around Oakville and Burlington. Some people really go the full ridiculous with their lights, and we found a few classics as we cruised around the back streets.

My mother lives in a street in Sydney that, until this year, went all out with Christmas lights, so I'm no stranger to a bit of Christmas Bling Bling. But the lights here in Oakville area seem to be a little more unified in their appearance. I was trying to put my finger on exactly what makes them different, and I think they are probably a little more tastefully executed... mostly.

There was one place in Burlington that we saw, that was very, uh, busy. I'm still trying to work out the links between the Nativity scene, a tin soldier, a fire-breathing Loch Ness Monster, some penguins, gingerbread men, Santa, a moose, Bart and Homer, Pooh Bear and Tigger, a motorbike and a castle... I'm sure they all relate to Christmas somehow. Still, it was an interesting display of colour and movement... colour and movement, colour and movement. So mesmerising!

A pity we didn't have some snow on the ground to reflect the colours a bit more, but they still looked pretty nice. Clark Griswold eat your heart out!

All that Glitters

2006-12-12T08:58:00.000-05:00

If the hard part was finding the perfect tree, then the fun part would be decorating it. We headed over to the Smith's place on Sunday night to help decorate the Christmas tree with them. This year's colour theme for the tree was gold... and heaven help anyone who introduced another colour! We may not know much about art, but Kim knows what she likes.

Before we got the serious business of tree decoration, we had a few other items to attend to... It was also Meggie's birthday, so we had a little birthday celebration for the Megamuffin followed by a cake. Kate was presented with a lovely book of photos of herself and Laura, a wonderful keepsake that Kim had put together from the thousands of photos that have been taken over the past 12 months. Tears were shed. Again.

And then it was on to the tree. So many questions! Where should the tree go? How many lights should go on it? Who put these two similar looking ornaments near each other? What will happen if I dare use an ornament that isn't gold? Do Canadians put gifts under the tree?

In the end though, the tree looked beautiful, all gold and shiny and pretty. Thanks again for a fun night guys!

Dinner for Eighteen

2006-12-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

We felt very privileged to attend a special Christmas dinner party at Wendy and Todd's place on Saturday night. It seems that this event is somewhat of a tradition in the neighbourhood, with all the folk from Linden Lane and the surrounding streets. It was a spectacular spread, with everyone bringing something to contribute to the meal. Donna brought some delicious scallops wrapped in bacon - very yummy, I'll have to get her to make them again! Of course, the rest of the dishes were equally delicious, with all sorts of yummy appetisers, side dishes and mains.

Also attending the evening was Grant and Beth, Steve and Fran, Dave and Linda, Dave and Claudia, George and Ellen, Andy and Gabe, Pete and Jen, Donna and I, and of course Wendy and Todd. It was a big dinner party! I still find it amusing that at winter parties in Canada you don't need an esky... you can keep the beer cold by simply putting it out on the back verandah... the chilly zero degree temperatures keep the grog nice and cold!

Thanks Wendy and Todd for hosting the event. We had a great evening with plenty of fabulous food, great wine, and lots of good conversation.

The Hunt for the Perfect Tree

2006-12-10T10:26:00.000-05:00

My mother is very proud of the Christmas tree she has back home in Australia. It's one of those artificial trees made of wire and green tinselly stuff that folds out from a central stem. It was a very good one apparently, made in Germany, and was quite expensive when it was bought back in 1963 - the year I was born. Mum reminds me every year that the tree is as old as me, and on that basis alone, I suppose it must have been a reasonably quality tree to have lasted all these years. To be fair, it is quite a nice looking tree.

But real Christmas trees - and by that I mean actual real trees - don't seem to be all that popular in Australia. My nan used to occasionally have a real tree when we were little, but I mostly remember them as droopy looking things that shed needles all over the floor, so it's no wonder that most Australians I know have artificial Christmas trees.

Here in Canada, I'm told it's a different story. Perhaps it's because pine trees are quite prolific in Canada, but there seems to be a tradition here that families go out together and pick their tree, chop it down and drag it home, then gather together to decorate it.

With Donna and the kids leaving before Christmas, I can't see the point of putting up a tree just for myself. So when Sean and Kim invited us to go tree hunting with them we jumped at the chance. We drove out to a tree farm near Milton, where we spent quite a while browsing through the various trees on offer before finally finding the perfect tree. It had to be just the right size, height, bushyness, and style. Eventually we think we got one that fits the bill, so we had it tied up and off we went.

Christmas tree hunting is quite good fun, and I never realised there were so many different types and styles to choose from. Some people were out in the hills chopping their own, and others, like us, were choosing from those already harvested. It's a major operation, and there were tons of people all wondering around with their kids, all in search of their perfect tree.

Next step is to decorate it!

The Bitter and the Sweet

2006-12-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

We were invited out for dinner on Friday night by Kim and Sean. They took us to a really lovely little restaurant down in Oakville town centre called Julia - a real "foo-foo" restaurant, as Kim would say. This is not a restaurant review so I won't go into detail about the food, but it was a delicious hybrid of Italian and South American cuisines and was just fantastic. The way they combined unusual tastes like shrimp and lime, or cashews and cranberries, made for an interesting and tasty mix of the bitter and the sweet.

Of course, the realisation that our time here in Oakville is quickly coming to an end was perhaps the most bittersweet thing of all. We've had an amazing year here, and made some great friends. It will be an incredibly emotional and difficult thing to have it all come to an end in the next few weeks. Sean and Kim in particular have become very special to us, and we will miss them like crazy. We gave them a little thank you gift, just a small thing to say how much they've meant to us, and of course a few tears were shed. But mostly we laughed and ate and drank and had a wonderful night together.

Thanks guys. We had a great night, and a great year.

Likeminded People

2006-12-07T09:15:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I went to the final farewell event for this year's crop of exchange teachers. It was run by the Canadian League for Educational Exchange, or CLEE. The event was held at the Toronto District School Board offices in Scarborough... a very large and imposing architect-designed (read 'expensive-looking') building that makes it easy to understand why there might be a lack of resources in the actual schools. I suppose books and computers and other resources probably aren't that important as along as the administrators have somewhere nice to work.

Anyway, it was good to catch up with a lot of other teachers who have been here all year, swap a few stories and share a few photos. The folk from CLEE do a great job of running events and activities for the teachers on exchange, and we were involved in the very first trip to Quebec City back in January, and also to the Wanakita Weekend near Haliburton in February. We had a great time on those trips, and it helped us really start to soak up the Canadian lifestyle very early on and we're very glad we went on them.

I must admit that since those events we really haven't been very involved in the CLEE events, for two main reasons...

Firstly, as much as we enjoyed the company of the other Aussies (and Poms and Scots and Frogs) who are out here on exchange this year, we didn't travel 15,000km to hang out with other Australians. We decided way back before we even left Australia that we were coming to Canada to see and enjoy Canada and the Canadian people. There are some terrific Aussies here this year and I'm looking forward to catching up with some of them back in Australia where we can sit around over a few beers and tell our Canadian war stories, but the idea of hanging out with Australians during our time here in Canada just seemed a bit nonsensical to us.

The second, and perhaps more important reason is that we have made so many great Canadian friends here, we've been flat out just keeping up with them!

But, I do want to sincerely thank the folk from CLEE for the work they put into looking after the incoming exchangees each year. I know a lot of the 2006 exchangees have taken part in many of the CLEE events and had an absolute ball. We were very fortunate to have made so many friends here who all wanted to share "their Canada" with us, and we loved seeing the country through the eyes of those who live here. However, had we not been so readily accepted into our circle of Oakville friends I'm sure it would have been very reassuring to know that CLEE was there with a bunch of stuff for us to make sure we saw the very best of Canada.

I Dare You

2006-12-06T20:05:00.000-05:00

Kate has been taking part in a special drug education workshop at school over the past ten weeks called DARE (Drug, Abuse, Resistance, Education). All the kids in her class were involved in the workshops and they focussed on helping kids make good choices with regard to smoking, drinking and drugs. It's a great initiative that the schools run, and the program is facilitated by a trained police liaison officer.

Well done Katie Bell!

First Snow

2006-12-06T19:56:00.000-05:00

It was only a light dusting, and they are predicting more over the next few days, but we were excited to have our first real snowfall this week. All our Canadian friends say we're crazy to be wishing for the snow, but this might be the only time we get to experience a white Christmas, or at least a white lead-up-to-Christmas. It may be a nuisance to get snow, and it may make driving and everything else a bit more troublesome, but it really is beautiful when everything turns white.

A lot of the houses around Oakville have started putting up their Christmas decorations over the last few weeks. At first, I thought it odd that they decorate their houses so early... it was still mid November and plenty of homes had coloured lights and blow-up Santas out the front. But today I realised why they do it so early... it gets too darn cold if you wait until mid December!

When we get a bit more snow I'll take a few night photos of all the pretty lights...

Six Degrees of Separation

2006-12-02T13:53:00.000-05:00

We've mentioned that we went to dinner a couple of times with Doug and Carmella, the parents of Melissa, a girl that Donna teaches with in Australia. Melissa's godparents apparently also live in Oakville, and so we had good intentions of catching up with them at some point.

Just to prove that there really are only six degrees of separation, here is an example of just how small the world really is...

Melissa's godparents' names are Gunnar and Leisel. Melissa had originally given Donna a piece of paper with their names and phone numbers, and Donna had it sitting next to the phone here in Oakville for ages but had not made the call to contact them. One day, when Kate's friend Laura was over at our house playing, she happened to see the note with Gunnar and Leisel's names written on it, so Laura turned to Donna and asked "Why do you have my neighbour's names written on a piece of paper?"

"What do you mean, your neighbours?" asked Donna.

"Gunnar and Leisel live directly across the street from us." Laura replied. It seems that the world really is a very small place.

Last night, we dropped into a Christmas "street party" at the Smiths (in Australia, when we have a Christmas street party, it's actually in the street, but then I suppose the temperature isn't zero degrees either). Anyway, we got to finally meet Gunnar and Leisel last night, as well as a number of other people who live in Kim and Sean's street.

I wonder what other connections would exist between us all if we delved into it far enough...

Words on a Page

2006-11-30T13:31:00.000-05:00

We hear the term "life long learner" a lot these days, so when school started back in September I decided to enrol in a course at Sheridan College just to keep myself learning. Sheridan has an excellent reputation for their animation courses and although I would have liked to do a course in 3D animation, they are very difficult to get into, not to mention quite expensive.

Instead, I thought it might be interesting to do something a little different and not computer related, so I enrolled in a course called "Writing a Novel". The lecturer was a very nice lady called Lynda Simmons, a published author with several novels to her name. She was a terrific teacher, and gave us lots of great strategies and insights into the writing process, as well as a lot of tips and tricks for getting published.

Although I started to write the first couple of chapters, I must admit that I didn't give it as much focus as I should have, and I lost interest in the story that I originally began to write. I also took a couple of weeks out when Natalie was here, so I can't claim to have made any real progress into writing the "great Australian novel", but I still found the course very interesting and informative and gave me a lot of useful ideas for writing and storytelling... all of which will come in handy in some form I'm sure.

Funnily enough, I had a sudden flurry of ideas for storylines as the course drew to a close, so I'm sure I will put Lynda's advice to good use at some point in the future.

On Wednesday night all the participants of the course went out for a final dinner at the local Eastside Mario's restaurant. They were a nice bunch of people, and I will miss our little Wednesday evening get-togethers to discuss the developments of our novels over the previous week. The group has decided to form a regular critiquing session, and I'm glad to hear that they will be continuing to develop their novels... I'll look forward to reading them some day!

For what it's worth, here's a paragraph from some of the stuff I wrote...

The 341 bus from Balmain to Petersham passed around the shore of Blackwattle Bay before turning up the hill towards Stanmore, crossing over Parramatta Road and then winding its way through the backstreets of Leichhardt and its large Italian population. Elizabeth was always fascinated by Leichhardt. There were always children playing football on the streets and old men playing chess in the park. On the days when she had a late class and had to catch the 5:30 bus, she could usually smell the deliciously rich aromas of Italian cooking as the bus trundled down Norton Street.

Busy Doing Nothing

2006-11-27T00:03:00.000-05:00

Last semester at Trinity I got to work with a lovely lady named Patti. Patti is an EA (or Educational Assistant) and works with some of the kids who needs extra help with their school work. Because she was in my classroom every day we often got to chat about stuff, and I discovered that she and her husband Rob owned a beautiful cottage on a lake just north of Huntsville. I've written a few times about the whole cottaging phenomenon here in Toronto (and to an outsider, it really IS a phenomenon!)

Patti suggested that we come visit her at the cottage one weekend during the Summer, but what with the school break, visits from the Urens and the Robs, and all our traveling over the Summer, we never seemed to be able to find a free weekend. When school returned we tried again to organise a visit and after a few false starts we finally arranged to head up there this weekend. What a beaut spot they have!

The cottage is located on the shore of Bay Lake, a smallish lake about 15 minutes north of Huntsville, which is the northern end of the Muskoka region. It's a funny time of year at the moment, because it's way too cold for swimming and watersports (you can tell it's too cold when the lake has a crust of ice across it!) but it's too early for winter sports because the snow has not yet started to fall. It's that in-between time of year when there's not a lot of active stuff to do. However, we actually thought it was pretty good to just be doing nothing for a change. We enjoyed good food, good conversation and good company.

It wasn't all just laziness... We did go for a walk out the end of the peninsula, we walked down to the lakeshore to stand on the frozen edge of the water, we rode around on the quadrunner, and we chased chipmunks across the yard. The kids played snooker, or some variation of it, while the adults chatted. It was a nice weekend for just kicking back and relaxing.

We eventually said our goodbyes to Patti and Rob before heading back south along highways 11 and 400, back to Oakville. I'm really glad we finally managed to pick a weekend because we thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks Patti and Rob for a lovely weekend, and amazing ribs!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

2006-11-24T23:46:00.000-05:00

Kate was mad keen to have a sleepover with some of the girls from school before we leave Canada, so last weekend she organised for a group of her friends to come over for the ultimate "girls night in".

I originally asked Katey to write this post but since she's still not done it, here's my version of events.

Lots of girls came over. They talked, cooked and ate pizza. They talked and played a bunch of games. They talked while they watched a chick-flick DVD. Then they stayed up till very late talking. I think that about sums it up. Did I mention that they talked a lot?

You can email Kate if you want more details, or to tell her that she should have written this post in the first place.

Meet the Parents, Part 2

2006-11-23T23:36:00.000-05:00

We enjoyed a delightful meal on Sunday night with Doug and Carmella at their home in Mississauga. Anyone who reads this blog regularly and has a good memory might recall that we had dinner with them not long after we arrived in Canada. Their daughter Melissa works with Donna in Australia and we have enjoyed staying in touch with them over the year we've been here.

We also met Caroline, a nice young lady who used to work with Carmella, and who was also invited over to share dinner with us. It was a pleasant evening again, and we talked about lots of things, not least of which was Doug and Carmella's upcoming trip to Australia to see Melissa. We talked a lot about traveling in Australia and I even showed them a few photos and videos that happened to be on my Mac.

Thanks again for a nice evening guys, and we know you'll have a great time Down Under!

And so this is Christmas?

2006-11-22T23:11:00.000-05:00

Can you believe it? It's nearly Christmas. If ever there was a wakeup call to the fact that our year here in Canada is gradually coming to a close, it's realising that Christmas is on our doorstep.

We went into Toronto last weekend for the annual Santa Claus Parade, apparently the biggest of its type in the world. I'm not sure what metric one uses to measures the "biggest" Santa Claus parade; whether it's the most number of floats and participants, the largest crowd, the longest distance covered, or the most amount of trash left on the streets afterwards. Regardless of how it might be measured, there's no doubt that the Toronto parade is a big'un.

We got to see a plethora of marching bands, dancers and acrobats. We saw floats sponsored by all manner of retailers and businesses, and floats that depicted all sorts of things including Harold the Big Red Dog and Ariel the Little Mermaid. We even got to see the jolly red man himself, decked out in his bright red suit, his headset microphone, and his full set of stuffed reindeer. Yes folks, if it was about Christmas, it was all there!

In fact, there was only one float that seemed to be missing. The one for that other guy that we used to talk about at Christmas time... oh, you know the one, what was his name again? Oh that's right, Jesus. Apparently he couldn't make it this year.

Ah well, at least the department stores were all there.

More Rockin' On

2006-11-14T23:29:00.000-05:00

As if to prove that some children never really grow up, a few teachers from Holy Trinity got together and did a short set for the school talent night tonight. In the guise of Level 4 (because we are obviously w-a-a-a-y above the Provincial standard!) Rob, Alanna, Charlie, Kevin, Darrell and myself played three tunes from The Killers, Joan Jett and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

Considering that 5 minutes before we played I were still asking "how does that riff go again?", and "what key is this in?", we actually sounded ok. (Actually, I think Kevin was the only one who knew what key things were in... I probably just asked "what fret does this start on?")

Still, it was fun. Oh, and we were awesome. Awesome I tell you!

Rock'n'Roll All Night

2006-11-12T12:13:00.000-05:00

One of the traditions here in Oakville seems to be an annual fundraiser for important causes. Last year the event raised money for some local mums in the community who had been touched by cancer. This year, the event was raising money for, among other things, a project run by the University of Guelph to increase food yields in Africa called Rocks for Crops. One of our friends, Sandy, is the main organiser of the event.

This year, the theme for the party was a Rock'n'Roll night, so we got dressed in our best muso gear and had a great night for a good cause. No need to go into detail... I'm sure the photos tell most of the story!

The Fallen

2006-11-11T11:00:00.000-05:00

When we arrived in Canada back in the middle of Winter, all the trees were bare. It was wonderful to witness the leaves gradually appear as Spring arrived, come into full bloom and turn the barren looking streets into beautiful leafy green avenues. Throughout the Summer, the trees provided shade and beauty. As the Fall approached, the leaves gradually turned from green to the most amazing oranges and reds and golds.

Now however, the party is over, and the last of the leaves have dropped from the trees, making it abundantly obvious why Autumn in Canada is called Fall.

But what do you DO with all those millions of leaves?

It seems the strategy is to rake all your leaves into the gutters along the edge of the sidewalk... and then just wait. Eventually, a truck with a huge vacuum hose on the front turns up. (Sean calls it Mr Snuffaluffagus, after the elephant on Sesame Street). This huge vacuum truck drives around all the streets sucking up the piles of leaves and making them look neat and tidy again.

Until next year.

Happy Birthday Pete

2006-11-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

We got invited to Pete C's birthday bash last weekend, and had a great night. It seems like all we've done is party lately! Thanks Pete and Jen for inviting us and sharing the event with us.

We feel extremely fortunate to have made so many wonderful friends here in Canada and feel so lucky to have been able to become a part of such a great community and neighbourhood. As the time gets closer to having to say goodbye I can tell it's going to be very hard to do, and am not looking forward to saying those goodbyes at all.

People keep asking me do I miss Australia, and the truth is I just haven't really given it that much thought... we have been made so welcome here and made so many friends that our cups are overflowing just from the experience of being here in Canada... we don't get much time to think about "back home"... this place feel so much like home already.

A Day at the Royal

2006-11-08T11:41:00.000-05:00

In Sydney every April we hold the Royal Easter Show. It's a chance for the Country to come to the City with prize-winning animals, displays of agricultural produce, horse and dog events, woodchopping and of course the showbags and rides. It's a big deal and there would be very few Sydneysiders who have not been to "The Show" many times.

I suppose I should have expected that Toronto - being a lot like Sydney - would also have it's own version of The Show, and indeed it does. It's called the Royal Agricultural Winter Show, and is very much like the Sydney Royal Easter Show except it's all held indoors - which is a good thing, as it could be a bit chilly otherwise!

We visited the Toronto Royal Agricultural Winter Show last weekend with the Smiths. It's a pretty big event, with lots of cows, horses, pigs and dogs on display, as well as all the usual expo-style stands selling everything from saddles to bull semen! We wandered around for a few hours, checking everything out, having a bite to eat and even though we had a rather long wait in order to get a good seat, we also watched the IAMS Superdog show.

It was pretty similar to the Sydney Show, with a few notable exceptions - there were no showbags, rides or woodchopping. Because of the long wait for the dog show we missed out on the horses, which was a shame, but it was still a fun way to spend an afternoon.

So many shops...

2006-11-04T19:51:00.000-05:00

So many shops to visit and so little time! Natalie’s whirlwind visit afforded not nearly enough time to do all of the things we would have liked, but I must admit we covered a lot of ground; she met a lot of people and so I think managed to get a small but significant Canadian experience. I will endeavour to give a short overview of our week together.

I never realised Natalie was such a shopper nor did I realise how easily led I could be with a bit of encouragement and a lot of opportunity. Monday began with a journey down to Niagara on the Lake and on to Niagara Falls with Cathy, her daughter Tovah, Kate, Natalie and I. After a small obstacle at the US boarder, Cathy took us to some of her trusted shopping outlet stores and of course WalMart. There is a huge variety of stores and merchandise and without doing all the math(s) regarding exchange rates, things did seem to be cheaper. We arrived home well after midnight, exhausted but satisfied with our stash. Thanks Cath and Tovah for a fun day.

Tuesday morning we went to Kim’s to say goodbye to her parents Carol and Clint as they headed off for the winter to their home in Florida. We’ve gotten to know them quite well over the past few months and this would be the last time we would see them before we leave. Enough said; I don’t like goodbyes.

After a cuppa and chat, us girls went to lunch and then to have our nails done. Kim will have you believe it was my idea, but I disagree. Of course Halloween in the evening was definitely a high point for us Aussie’s as we dressed up to greet the trick or treaters as they came to our door. We finished the day by going to see Cathy and Randy’s son, Jon, play hockey at the local rink, and stayed around long enough for a few beers and chicken wings in the bar. (Of course!)

Wednesday was yet another shopping day before we headed into to see Toronto by night and to enjoy a pub meal at the Elephant and Castle.

Kim took us back into Toronto on Thursday to do the touristy things like the CN Tower. Actually we sent Natalie up by herself as our aversion to heights made us want to keep our feet firmly planted on terra firma. A spot of shopping and then a great lunch in a restaurant concluded the Toronto part of the tour.

Chris brought Natalie and the kids over to the Niblick for dinner, because they heard there was a waitress working there who they wouldn’t have to tip… I felt bad leaving Natalie on her last night to be ‘that’ waitress, but she and Cathy decided to get together to watch Grey’s Anatomy instead.

Thanks Heidi for bringing Nat over here, as it was great getting the chance to share our Canadian experience with her.

Pumpkins, Spooks and Bad Teeth

2006-11-02T00:05:00.000-05:00

We experienced our first ever Halloween last night. Most of our Canadian friends have been quite surprised by that, and many did not realise that Halloween is not really celebrated much outside of North America (although I think some parts of England and the UK might do it). Australia though, has never really been a Halloweening sort of place. I did see a story on the Sydney Morning Herald website about it though, and I liked the way the SMH story described the simplicity of Halloween. Dress up, demand confectionery. That about sums it up.

I used to think that you had to dress as a scary ghost or witch or vampire for Halloween, but that's not the case. Dress as anything you like. The little kids that come to the door in their cute little rabbit suits or batman outfits or ballerina costumes are quite adorable. For a couple of hours you get continual knocks at the door, and answer it to find these cute little kids there saying "trick or treat." Then you hand them some candy (lollies) or chocolate... anything sweet really. . Alex (dressed as Dr Evil) and Kate (dressed as Shakespeare's Juliet) were both out wandering the streets collecting candy of their own, so Donna, Natalie and I decided to dressed ourselves up just to get into the spirit of things, and apart from scaring some of the little kids (notably Lukey from next door) we had a pretty good time.

We also managed to carve a couple of pumpkins. That was fun. We did carve one at school the other day, but that was mostly my students doing that. Kate and Nat and I carved two more at home for ourselves, stuck a candle inside and put them out of the front porch. I must say they looked really good. We might even have to start celebrating Halloween when we get home just to make some more pumpkins, although Aussie pumpkins are a vastly different proposition to the Canadian variety and would be much harder to carve into a face I think.

When Kate and Alex finally arrived back home after their trick or treating we couldn't get over how much stuff they had! They have enough candy and chocolate to feed a small African nation for six months! One of the houses they visited during the night must have belonged to a dentist, because as well as candy they were also given a tube of toothpaste! Nice to get a bit of balance.

Playing Dress-Ups Again

2006-11-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

We had another fun Halloween party on Sunday at Mark and Sharilou's place. These guys love their Halloween celebrations! The whole clan gets together for occasions like this and make a real party of it... everyone dresses up in costume and Sharilou decorates the house with black and orange colours and she makes spooky Halloween food too. Eyeballs, worms, snakes and dirt cake... yum!

We also played a bunch of games in their newly completed basement; good old fashioned games like bobbing for apples, stuffing marshmallows in your mouth and saying "chubby bunny" and other family favourites. All good fun.

We had a lovely dinner with whole clan before saying our goodbyes and heading back to Oakville. Thanks again guys! We love spending time with you!

Something I drank?

2006-10-30T00:26:00.000-05:00

Halloween is big here in Canada. Really big. Apart from all the pumpkins and skeletons around the place, lots of people have Halloween parties which involve dressing up in fancy dress costumes and having a few drinks. I always thought that the fancy dress costumes had to be scary ones - you know, witches and ghosts and goblins, that sort of thing - but you can actually get dressed up as pretty much anything you like.

Our mates Beth and Grant hold a Halloween party every year and we were really looking forward to going. We'd organised costumes and babysitting and were all excited about our first Halloween party! After we picked up Natalie, our Aussie visitor, we went home and got changed to rock up to the party. Donna dressed as a nun (ye gads! Her alternate career choice apparently!), Natalie was a "midnight siren" (look, just call it what it is, she was dressed as a wench!), and I thought I'd live up the Russell Crowe image that I seem to have acquired here in Oakville and go as Gladiator.

It was a great night, although I must have drunk something that didn't agree with me because boy-oh-boy did I wake up with a sore head in the morning! I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with all the vodka I drank. That was purely coincidental.

I was pleased to find out that the Gladiator costume was a hit, especially with the ladies! ;-)

An Inter-Nat-ional Visitor

2006-10-29T13:35:00.000-05:00

We had our third Aussie visitor arrive yesterday. Out good friend Natalie accompanied Heidi on one of her all-too-regular trips back to Canada for a few days. Heidi, who works for Air Canada, was unable to get a whole year off work and has had to fly back every few months to do a few shifts, and fortunately she was able to bring Nat along with her this trip.

We met Heidi's mum Helga while we were waiting at Pearson Airport. Heidi and Natalie eventually arrived after their flight was slightly delayed in Vancouver. It was great to see them both. Heidi and Helga headed off to spend some time together, while we whisked Natalie back to Oakville where our neighbours were holding a Halloween party. Natalie loves a good party, and something as trivial as a 26 hour flight from Australia was not about to dampen her enthusiasm.

More on the party soon...

Shameless Self Promotion

2006-10-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

One of the other little projects I've been working on lately is a podcast called The Virtual Staffroom. I thought it would be interesting to talk with some other teachers who are using technology well in the classroom, record our Skype conversations and post them up for others to listen to. It's been an interesting learning experience for me, and the feedback has been really good.

If that's the sort of thing that interests you, pop over to The Virtual Staffroom and take a peek at what we're doing.

I Wanna Drive the Zamboni

2006-10-26T00:13:00.000-04:00

Hockey, as I mentioned before, is pretty big here in Canada. Most kids learn to skate at a very young age and many of them skate on a club hockey team at some point. We have about 5 or 6 rinks just in Oakville itself, and they are fairly upmarket affairs - the one we visited the other night had two rinks, good lighting, nice seating, a restaurant and bar and a skate shop, was well maintained and people actually go there to skate. By contrast, the rinks I've been to back home in Australia are a bit sleazy and dodgy and teenagers mainly go there to hangout with their mates, meet girls, or get in fights. The skating is just a front so that mum and dad think you're out on a Saturday night doing something social.

We were invited to the local rink on Tuesday night to watch one of Alex's mates, Jon, skate in a club level game. It was great to watch a hockey game up close like that, and even better that Jon's team went on to win, taking them to a five game winning streak. Good onya Jon! After the game we went up to the bar area for drinks and chicken wings. That's a very Canadian thing to do by the way, and no sporting event should be without beer and wings afterwards.

Anyway, we got to see the Zamboni doing its thing. In case you don't know, a Zamboni is a vehicle that drives around the ice between games and resurfaces the rink to get rid of all the scratches and gouges that the skates put in it during a game. It basically spreads a film of water over the ice which refreezes into a nice pristine surface for the next game.

Apparently, according to Cathy, being a Zamboni driver is a highly sought-after job. At first I thought she was just kidding, but a quick internet search turns up a series of articles and stories, each slightly more bizarre than the previous one, and they do indeed support Cathy's notion that everyone wants to be a Zamboni driver. Check out this one about the dream job of driving a Zamboni, or this one about the Zamboni driver who has groupies, or take a look at the website for a Canadian band called The Zambonis, who released a song called "I Wanna Drive the Zamboni", from their album called "100% Hockey". Seriously, I'm not making this up!

Of course Donna likes to hang with the in-crowd, so she started to wave at the Zamboni driver as he did his rounds between games. He waved back, she waved back, and next thing you know she's getting her photo taken with him. Maybe Cathy's right... maybe everyone really does want to be a Zamboni driver!

Next time though, we want a ride, eh?

Hockeyville

2006-10-22T17:19:00.000-04:00

Hockey season has started again. You see hockey on every TV screen you look at, Don Cherry has a whole new wardrobe of silly suits, and still the Leafs haven't managed to win two games back to back yet. But hey, this is Canada, where hockey is a religion not a sport, so none of that really matters.

Yesterday afternoon, Alex, Kate and I were pleased to take up Dave-next-door's offer to go whack the ball around for a while. Street Hockey is really popular here amongst the kids, and you can see them out playing on the quiet residential roads wherever you go. It's good fun, just grab a hockey stick and a ball and a few mates and charge about trying to knock it into the goal, all the while listening for someone to yell "Carrrr!"

Unfortunately, we still haven't managed to see an actual hockey game yet though. The Leafs' games are very expensive if you can even get a ticket, so we are planning to go see a Farm Team play. (That's what Aussies would call Reserve Grade). We'll let you know how that goes.

Alex's First Job

2006-10-21T10:43:00.000-04:00

I got an email from Cathy, who runs a family business delivering newpapers. She commandeered Alex to help one day, and asked if she could contribute to the blog. Of course, I said yes! Wow, a guest Blogger! Thanks Cathy!

Alex was hired to help with our family business of newspaper delivery. I must say what a hilarious young man he is... filled with all kinds on nonsense information that kept us all amused, and wondering all day...

Why do you play at a recital and recite at a play ?
Why do you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway ?
Why do your feet smell and your nose run ?

And other useless trivial facts like....

Did you know that you were prohibited from catching a whale in Oklahoma?
Did you know that you can't grow a mustache and go to church in Alabama?
Did you know that it is illegal to eat an orange in your bathtub in California?

But the best line of the entire day working with Alex - and I believe that it is his personal mantra - is... Hard work never killed anybody, but why risk it?

Cathy

It's all Downhill from Here

2006-10-17T17:08:00.000-04:00

The Toronto Marathon is an annual event, in which about 10,000 people push their bodies over a gruelling 42 km marathon or a not quite so gruelling (but still gruelling enough) 21km half marathon. (I promise not to use the word gruelling again)

Kim, Jane, Maria, Susanne and I opted to walk the 21km leaving from Mel Lastman Square in North York and finishing up in Queens Park, downtown Toronto. I have never been part of a community walk before and felt excited yet apprehensive as the gun went off. We strategically placed ourselves towards the back of the pack, but I’m not sure what our strategy was. Yes I do. Our strategy was to finish! Training had given us the experience of walking up to 12km, but for Susanne and me, who had not walked a half marathon before, beyond this point was unchartered territory.

As we zoomed along Yonge Street (the longest street in Canada), we were able to periodically window shop as well as move to the beat of the various musicians who were stationed along the way.

Once again I was so impressed by the encouraging spirit of Canadians. This is something which has struck me since arriving here, that people genuinely and often praise and encourage one another, from students in junior years through to adults we have met along the way. Sunday was no exception, as participants openly cheered on other participants and spectators lined the streets urging on the runners and the walkers with cow bells, posters and motivational words.

The microchips attached to our shoes told us we crossed the finishing line 3hours and 16 minutes later (my best time yet!) and we each received a silver medallion for our efforts. From here we headed straight for the heated tent for a much needed massage.

I am SO glad that we did it together and am very grateful to the others in our little team for their encouragement and belief.

Not just any old walk

2006-10-15T19:54:00.000-04:00

I'm sure she will blog about it herself, but I just wanted to post a quick note about how proud we all are of Dons for doing the Half Marathon Walk as part of the Toronto Marathon. Along with Kim and a few other friends, Donna did the 21km walk today from North York down to Queens Park in Toronto.

I dropped all the girls off this morning at the start line and then went back to the city a few hours later to watch them cross the finish line. Kate and I were so excited to see Donna come running towards the line.

I won't say any more, as I'm sure Donna will tell you all about it. You go girl!

Thanksgiving Part 2

2006-10-12T20:39:00.000-04:00

Thanksgiving has a long history in Canada, longer even than the American Thanksgiving celebrations. The two events are celebrated on completely different dates, something I didn't realise before coming to Canada. According to Wikipedia, "Thanksgiving is related to harvest festivals that had long been a traditional holiday in much of Europe. The first North American celebration of these traditional festivals by Europeans was held in Newfoundland by Martin Frobisher and the Frobisher Expedition to find the Northwest Passage in 1578, and Canadians trace their Thanksgiving to that festival." Thus endeth the lesson.

Whatever the beginnings of Thanksgiving in Canada, it's the time when families get together to share a meal together. Because it's such a big time for families to gather, we felt really humbled to have been invited into the Zister household to share their Thanksgiving with them. Sharon and Lou opened their home to us, and along with Jack, Kay, Sharilou, Mark, Rebecca, Trevor, Shelley, Taylor, Caitlyn, Brett, Shannon, Adam, Sean, Amy, Sadee, Jim and Annamay, we were welcomed in as members of the family and we were really glad to have been able to share the weekend together with them.

As the time gets closer to the end of this exchange, it's things like this that make us realise just how much we will miss all our new Canadian friends.

Everyone loves a Parade

2006-10-12T20:13:00.000-04:00

Parades are big in Canada, and the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade is no exception. We had an early start from Mark and Sharilou's place just outside Kitchener and headed downtown to get a good spot to watch the parade go by. (I think Mark must have known that I would have doubly enjoyed this spot since it was right outside the local Apple Store)

The parade featured a lot of the local dignitaries and luminaries going past on floats and on the back of decorated utes, as well as local businesses, schoolkids and just regular folk taking part. There were several very good marching bands, some from the local area and some even coming up from the USA to take part in the parade. The theme was of course very German, since the area has a large German population and it is also Oktoberfest at the moment.

The whole parade lasted a good couple of hours, and was a lot of fun to watch. I think Donna particularly liked the march-by of the Giant Tiger float.

Willkommen zu Oktoberfest

2006-10-12T18:05:00.000-04:00

You may know that Oktoberfest is a world famous Bavarian cultural festival held in Munich, Germany each year with plenty of beer, music and dancing. But did you know that Kitchener Ontario is actually the host of the second largest Oktoberfest in the world outside of Munich? Ja meine Freunde, es ist zutreffend.

Sharilou's family has a German heritage and they have always been big fans of the Kitchener Oktoberfest, so they were very excited about getting us down there to join in the celebrations. The local German clubs, such as the Concordia Club, host a huge party where they erect an enormous tent and fill it with lots of tables for drinking, a big dancefloor for dancing, and a genuine oom-pa-pa band for music. We had a great time there, having a few beers, dancing to a few polkas, and taking in the whole Gemutlichkeit.

The whole Zister clan joined us for the day and it was good to see them all again after the weekend we spent together at their cottage a few weeks ago. They are such a nice family, and we are very thankful for them including us in their Oktoberfest.

Picking Pumpkins

2006-10-12T17:46:00.000-04:00

Halloween is pretty much a non-event in Australia. Although most Australians would probably be well aware of Halloween in as much as they know it involves dressing up as a spooky ghost, goblin or witch, carving a pumpkin head, and wandering from house to house saying "trick or treat", that's about all they'd know. Most Aussies couldn't tell you what Halloween represents, what it celebrates, or even when it is. And they have almost certainly not ever wandered the streets knocking on doors, saying "trick or treat" or carved a pumpkin face.

So it's been quite an experience for us this year to be a part of the Halloween buildup. Halloween is not until the end of this month, but already we have been invited to a Halloween party, and started to think about our Halloween costumes. And on the weekend, Mark and Sharilou took us too a farm where we got to wander the fields picking our pumpkins to make Jack o'Lanterns.

Its worth noting that the pumpkins here in Canada are very different to the sorts of pumpkins we get back home in Australia. They are much more orange and much less solid, with much less usable eating stuff inside them. The centre of a pumpkin is all mushy and fibrous, and the solid bit that we would eat is relatively thin around the outside. In fact, about the only thing Pumpkins get used for here in Canada is to make Jack o'Lanterns at Halloween time - they are not something that generally get eaten. To us that seems quite odd. Pumpkin is something that we have grown up with as a staple part of our diets, either by baking it with a roast dinner or mashing it to have with peas and a pie. Our Canadian friends look at us blankly when we talk about eating pumpkin. It's just not done here, unless you include pumpkin pie which seems to be a bit of a Halloween favourite.

Anyway, picking them was fun, and we'll carve them into faces in the next few weeks. We'll post the photos when we get them.

Thanksgiving, Part 1

2006-10-10T13:37:00.000-04:00

Last weekend was Thanksgiving long weekend here in Canada. Although as Australians we are no strangers to the idea of a long weekend for any reason, the whole idea of Thanksgiving was a bit new to us. Fortunately we had plenty of local guidance from our Canadian friends who made sure we took part in this significant holiday and saw that the celebrations kept on coming.

Firstly, we drove up to Georgian Bay on Saturday morning to spend the day and night with Randy and Cathy at their cottage. On Randy's advice we took the scenic route up there via Airport Road rather than the 400, because we wanted to see the autumn colours of the trees as they turn from greens to yellows, oranges and reds. The colours of the fall are just gorgeous, and so intense! The trees along the back roads were well and truly turning to their full glory, although by the time we got up to the lake (where I took photos) the colours were still not fully turned. I'm told it has something to do with the temperature around the lake that delays the lakeside trees for a few weeks. Still, it was quite stunning.

We spent the afternoon at the cottage just lazing around, although we did a quick bit of work carrying some timber up the hill for the start of the new bunky. That didn't take long and pretty soon we were back on the deck, beer in hand just soaking up the atmosphere. The kids kept themselves amused and the boys and the girls took turns in taking the tinny back to town to pick up supplies - important stuff like pizza, ice cream and candy.

As dusk rolled in we found ourselves sitting around the campfire on the beach, joined by the neighbours, with plenty of guitars and singing. It's amazing how good you can sound after enough beers! We stayed up well into the night before finally retiring to the bunky.

After a delicious breakfast the next morning we had to say our goodbyes, pack our bags and go back to the mainland to pick up the car for the drive back home. It was hard to say goodbye to the cottage and it would have been nice to stay another night, but we had committed to being in Kitchener for Thanksgiving dinner so we bid farewell, drove back down the 400 to home before setting out on part 2 of our Thanksgiving weekend.

Next post...

How do you like them Apples?

2006-10-06T21:15:00.000-04:00

Today was a PA day (pupil free day) for students in the Halton Catholic School District, so the kids and I had an opportunity to spend some time together. It was such a lovely day, with a cloudless blue sky and the trees changing before our eyes to the colours of red and orange, not even a top temperature of 13 degrees could chill our spirits.

After a spot of shopping this morning, we headed off to an apple orchard to do some apple picking. Our neighbours Dave and Claudia did this last weekend and really enjoyed it. They had so many apples they just had to invite us in that evening to help them eat an apple pie which Claudia whipped up when they got home.

You don’t need to drive for long in Oakville before you leave the built up areas and arrive in farmland. Rae’s Apple Farm which is located on the corner of Britannia and Eighth Line is only a 10 minute drive from home and gave us an experience to remember. The trees were grouped in sections according to the type of apple and armed with our plastic bags, off we went. The cost is $9/bag of apples, which is not really all that cheap, but I suppose it covers the wastage incurred by people like ourselves who are not professional fruit pickers and tend to drop or knock fruit off the trees accidentally.

With Halloween only a couple of weeks away, pumpkins were on display ready to be gutted and made into Jack O’Lanterns and the orange colours were again spectacular against the backdrop of the blue sky.

Well, I best finish off here so as to hurry back into the kitchen to see how those apple pies and crumbles are coming along.

Just Kidding!!

Life rolls on...

2006-10-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

I think the last week or so has been the longest I've gone without blogging. Well, actually I've been blogging quite a lot, but not on this particular blog. I surprised myself the other day when I mentioned to someone that I was writing in multiple blogs, and they asked how many. The answer, after I stopped to think about it, was six. So, while I've actually been blogging quite a lot lately, this is the longest that I've gone without writing on this one.

Anyway, things have been pretty busy this last week here in Oakville. Alex went off to a camp last weekend with a local scout group he's joined up with. He's been in scouts since he was old enough to join as a Joey, then went through Cubs, then Scouts, and is now in Venturers. As one of the older kids, he helped run the activities for the younger ones at the camp, which was in fact much bigger than he anticipated. It was like a Region Camp, and there were about 800 other kids there. I've asked him to write a blog post about it, but don't hold your breath.

Speaking of Alex, he started high school last month at Trinity, where I'm working. I try to stay out of his way because, you know when you're 14, hanging with your dad is not too cool. Still, from the few things I hear from some of the other kids, Alex is fitting in and doing quite well at school. I had one of the school guidance councellors come see me yesterday to say they want to test him for giftedness, so it seems he just can't hide his brains.

Donna is enjoying her new job at the Niblick, and is starting to get the hang of how the system works. She has been having a few issues with her old "war injury", the weak ankle that had plagued her since she was a teenager. It's strange that if she just walks a lot it's fine, and in fact she's been training to do a half-marathon walk with Kim and some of the other girls. But if she walks around a lot, stopping, starting, twisting, turning - just like one would do if dashing around a busy restaurant - then she can barely walk on it the next morning. She's finally, after all these years, getting some physio work done on it and it's showing rapid improvement.

We are into week 4 of the school semester now, and my three classes are well underway. As usual, I'm trying some new things in the classroom and I'm pretty happy with the way some of it is going, and less happy with some of the other stuff. It seems that whenever I try to teach in a traditional, conservative way it all just falls apart. I think there is a lesson in that somewhere.

We managed to catch a Skype call from our friends Kevin and Gail back in Australia. Kevin and Gail were touring through parts of Canada and the US recently and we had hoped to be able to meet up and see each other, but the timing wasn't quite right. We had just begun our travels out East, and because we had some of the hotels booked in advance we couldn't rearrange our schedule to catch up with them. Still they had a great time, and even took a drive up to Oakville just to see the area in which we are living. We even got a mention in their blog.

Anyway, that'll do for now. There's more to say, but it'll have to wait till next time.

Opening Mass

2006-09-29T07:32:00.000-04:00

This morning Kate’s school, Holy Family held its opening Mass at Our Mother Of God Church in Oakville. Although the plan was for the students to walk to the church, overnight rain and early morning drizzle resulted in the students being bussed there on one of those cute yellow school buses but they still had the pleasure of walking back to school at the end of Mass.

Grade 6 was the class preparing the Mass and so all students had a role in the liturgy. Kate was thrilled to be able to be an altar server, something she hasn’t done since we have been here in Canada. The school community of Holy Family is so small we barely half filled the church, yet there was a wonderful sense of spirit amongst the children as well as the mums and dads who were able to attend.

Art for Art's Sake

2006-09-24T00:06:00.000-04:00

If you're observant you might have noticed that the banner artwork at the top of this blog page changes every so often - usually when I remember to change it, and I've come up with something worthwhile to change it to.

Over the past few months I've actually created quite a few different banner graphics, all with the same text overlay but with a different background image. Because it's a wide format graphic, I usually take a series of overlapping shots and stitch them together with the appropriate stitching software ( for the nerds amongst you, I was originally using Autostitch on Windows but I'm now using Calico on the Mac - they both do the same thing, and I believe they use the same underlying technology)

Anyway, I was thinking about developing some way to randomize the images so that every time you load the page a different image appears. I hunted down a nice little piece of javascript to do the job, but it was going to be a lot of work to make it fit into the rather complex template code that Blogger uses, so I didn't pursue it. I also thought about converting it to an automatically rotating Flash banner, and even built a little working prototype to test the idea but in the end decided it was just more work than it was worth. I'm basically quite lazy.

So, I might just change it manually every so often when I think of it. In the meantime, if you feel like a quick stroll down memory lane, all the old banners are here. Enjoy.

Take me out to the Ballgame

2006-09-21T00:16:00.000-04:00

I had a nice surprise this afternoon. Don, our principal at school, offered the staff a couple of free tickets to see the Toronto Bluejays play the New York Yankees at the Rogers Centre. There was only one set of tickets up for grabs, so I tried to grab fast, and Don was nice enough to let me have them.

There were two tickets so I was able to offer the other one to Darrell, who has been kind enough to drive me to work each morning. He was really keen to go see the game too, so I'm glad that I was able to take him with me.

It was an interesting game and having Darrell there to explain the finer points to me really helped. I sort of understand baseball but it's been a while since I've actually seen a game, so I'd forgotten most of the rules. The Bluejays are the local Toronto team so they had a lot of home ground support, but there seemed to be plenty of Yankees supporters in the crowd too. We had great seats, right behind the home plate and next to the Yankees dugout. The view of the field was excellent and there was plenty of heckling going on from the crowd so it was pretty funny to be right there in the middle of it and soak up the atmosphere. I even got to have me one of them famous ball game hot dogs. :-)

In the end the Yankees lost the game by one run, and the Jays emerged victorious - a little late in the season to really make any difference to the overall results for the year, but it was nice that they won anyway.

Thanks to Darrell for coming with me, and also to Don for being so generous with the tickets.

Overachievers Anonymous

2006-09-19T23:41:00.000-04:00

Seems there's never a dull moment in the Betcher family.

Back in Australia we always seemed to be rushing about getting involved in anything and everything. Meetings, sports, committees, music, work, etc... One of the nice things that we experienced during the first half of our exchange was that we were freed up from all these (over)committments. But it's now the second half of the year, and it seems that we really are all just compulsive "doers"...

Just thought I would share what we're all up to at the moment...

Since Donna is leading the pack in terms of conscientiousness, I'll start with her... She has officially taken another year off from her teaching job back in Australia, and is looking to try her hand at a career in real estate. To assist with that goal, she's just enrolled in a real estate certificate course at TAFE and is doing it by correspondence... She's halfway through her first assignment already. In addition to that, she has been picking up some part-time work, first at the local chicken emporium, Swiss Chalet, and then she moved to the local pub across the road, the Niblick, where she's waitressing three nights a week until quite late. Of course, to continue with that job she is also has to complete a five hour online SafeServe course in responsible service of alcohol. On the days where she's not working at the Niblick she still does the occasional bit of casual teaching at Kings School, just in case she's not busy enough. Throw in a couple of days a month doing her volunteer work, which I can't publicly tell you about because of a non-disclosure arrangement to protect the privacy of the place she's working for. And that's just the work stuff. She's also in training for a half marathon to raise funds for charity, and in her spare time she manages to run the household. Bet you never knew I was married to Superwoman. Measured against the Dons, the rest of us pale into insignificance a bit.

I'm back at school now and teaching three different classes, which means three lots of preparation. Not really a big deal I guess, but more work than I needed to do last semester. I've also enrolled in a novel writing course every Wednesday night for 3 hours, and there's actually a lot of reading and writing I need to do for that. I've also joined a gym and I try to get there at least every second day. I've also started a couple of other blogs to try and expand my writing a bit, and I've also just started planning a major ongoing podcast project with a group of Australian and Canadian teachers. So, not as busy as the Dons, and perhaps a more self-indulgent kind of busy, but still busy enough.

Kate and Alex are also back at school now too. Kate is all excited because she got accepted into the extension program at school, and she also starts back at Girl Guides this week. Alex just started high school and is also getting involved in local Venturers group (the teenage version of the Scouts) and spent tonight at a planning meeting for a camp in a few weekends time.

It seems we just can't help ourselves.

Housesitting at Chez Smith

2006-09-17T15:16:00.000-04:00

With the Smiths and Kate away for the weekend, we took up Kim and Sean's invitation to housesit their place on Saturday night. The house didn't really need sitting but with the impending replacement of their ageing waterbed next week, we invited ourselves to stay over to farewell the old bag of water.

Donna had never slept in a waterbed before and was interested to try one before it gets replaced with their fancy new kingsize bed. She quite liked the waterbed on the whole, but I shan't go into the lurid details. ;-)

Mind you, she didn't get home until nearly 3:00am, so I think she would have slept well on a park bench.

Feed the Man Meat

2006-09-17T15:03:00.000-04:00

With Kate being such a social butterfly and going away for the weekend with her friend Laura, and Donna now becoming firmly entrenched in the 3:00am waitressing highlife, there have been a few occasions of late where Alex and I have had to catch dinner for ourselves. With my limited culinary skills and Alex's disinclination to eat anything that wasn't recently roaming around a paddock, we have been dining on take-out a little more than usual.

So last night, on Alex's urging, we went to Burger King to sample their much-advertised new Quad Stacker range of burgers... Hmmm, would you like heart disease with that?

While the food was average at best, the sign over the entrance door made us both laugh... it gives a whole new meaning to "fast food".

Crikey!!

2006-09-17T12:05:00.000-04:00

Marcus, one of my mates back in Australia, wrote to me to ask what the reaction to Steve Irwin's death has been like here in Canada. To be honest, it's been quite remarkable. I'm amazed that Steve's death back home has been felt so strongly here in North America.

When you consider that we hear very little news from Australia in the daily media here, I'm stunned at just how strong the response has been. Australia rarely gets mentioned in news reports... Even during the Commonwealth Games, of which Canada is a member, there was comparatively little mention of it in the local news. Thank goodness for the Internet news services like Aunty ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald or we wouldn't have a clue what was going on back there.

But in answer to Marcus's question, yes mate, the response here was huge. Steve Irwin's popularity - or at least his recognition factor as an Australian - is enormous. I don't think back in Australia we had any idea of just how well known and instantly recognisable he was overseas. News of his death made all the major news services here and consumed an surprising amount of news airtime. I was at the gym the other day with all the televisions showing different channels and there was a Steve story running on every one of them. The nightly chat shows also gave the story plenty of airtime, and it was constantly on the radio (strange considering the lack of news on radio generally). It was also front page news on several local papers.

The other thing that really drove home his level of recognition was the number of Canadians that offered their condolences to me as an Australian. "Sorry to hear about your mate" or "You've lost one of your own" or "I'll bet you're sad about Steve Irwin"... nearly everyone I know has mentioned it at some point. In contrast, nobody here has even heard of Peter Brock... I can't believe we lost two great Aussies like that in the same week.

The news that really stuns me is that some idiots back in Australia are taking out their grief by killing stingrays and amputating their tails. I never knew Stevo personally but I'm pretty sure that would not be what he wanted.

Yorkie Anyone?

2006-09-14T16:19:00.000-04:00

Following on from my recent career change into waitressing, I have just completed the last of my training shifts at The Niblick Pub and am now just about ready to have a go at the real thing. With 17 beers on tap, along with a dozen more bottles, endless wines, spirits, coffees … the pub also has over 72 food choices available from the menu and a fairly sophisticated computer system known as The Squirrel to keep track of it all.

My training shifts allowed me to spend time in different areas, but the shift spent in the kitchen learning to expedite the food was very informative, albeit out of my comfort zone. Anybody who has been to my house for meal, EVER, will know that preparing and collating meals are not my strengths, but the Niblick is quite fussy about how food is served and so this is just all part of the learning process for me. I got to see dishes with unusual names like Boxties and Yorkies and Quesadillas being made while learning that blue cheese dressing goes with chicken wings while relish goes with burgers. I can now prepare any number of different salads and am learning to find my way around the very large freezer located in the rear of the kitchen.

Whilst the ‘the squirrel’ sends orders to the bar and the kitchen, it is not a till or cash register and so each server carries with them their own float, settling bills with the customers directly and keeping all monies and credit card slips tucked away in a cute little black apron. At the end of the shift, the squirrel prints out each persons' total sales, which are then given to the pub. Servers keep the excess, or tips, after first paying out 1% to both the bar and the kitchen staff. It seems like a good system and the other staff tell me that it’s the tips they work for, which on a busy night can be pretty good.

Whilst the training at the pub is now finished, it is mandatory in Ontario that anyone working in a position which involves the serving of alcohol must complete the 3 hour “Smart Serve” course within 90 days of being employed. This course deals with the responsible serving of alcohol and I’m wondering if I will inadvertently start transferring this new found knowledge to home as well; despite not being great in the food department, serving drinks is definitely my speciality when we have company.

Perhaps I will become a ‘responsible server of alcohol’ or perhaps people might just stop coming to our house.

Radio Ga-ga

2006-09-14T14:47:00.000-04:00

You often hear about the importance of "ratings" for TV and radio, and how critical they are in allowing broadcasters to sell advertising space. Typically, there's only really somthing to watch on TV when you're in a ratings period, and outside of that you just get reruns of reruns. It's more or less the same for radio, only without so many reruns...

But I'd always wondered who actually gets to decide on these all-important ratings. I know that people supposedly get selected to be involved in the ratings process but it had never happened to me. Until a few weeks ago.

Funnily enough, I had just been lamenting to Donna about how crappy commercial radio is here in Canada. (Don't feel offended Canadians, I think commercial radio in Australia is generally crap as well) I think that one of the most annoying media genres I've ever come across is "morning radio"... it's always the usual inane banter back and forth between a male host and a female host, lame jokes, forced laughter, and an unhealthy obsession with celebrity gossip, all interspersed with "easy rock", or a "classic mix of the 70s, 80s, 90s and now." Blahh! It absolutely drives me mad. And as bad as it is in Australia, the quality of breakfast radio here in Toronto lowers the bar to a new standard.

The other option is to listen to AM news and talkback - normally a good way to stay informed on local issues - but the alleged "news" station around here has turned superficiality of daily events into an art form. Honestly, the news reports are so brief you just wonder "Is that all there is??" Of course if you want traffic, or weather, or more to the point "traffic and weather together", then you'll overdose on that stuff. Seriously, the traffic reports are probably 3 or 4 times longer than the actual news reports, and you seem to get them every few minutes. Real content or analysis of world news is nearly non-existent.

So when the local radio ratings mob rang me recently and asked me to participate in a ratings survey I was actually quite keen to have my say. As you might guess from the rant above, I was a bit blunt in the survey booklet, but hey...

Still, it was interesting to take part in a ratings survey and to see the process take place. Of course, these days I've decided that podcasts are a much better way to listen to radio that actually interests me. I just subscribe to a bunch of feeds in iTunes, sync it to my iPod and listen whenever it suits me. Other than that I just stream Triple J over the web. Radio on my own terms.

We are all Connected

2006-09-14T00:09:00.000-04:00

Wow, I can't believe I have left it for a few days without writing anything on this blog. Well, I'm not surprised that I haven't done it - we've been busy with all the mundane stuff like school and work, which, to be brutally honest, I wouldn't have thought was all that interesting to write about.

What did surprise me though is that I actually got a few emails from people saying "Hey it's been a few days and no updates... what's going on?" So here I am trying to think of something to write. ;-)

Speaking of connections with other people, I got a few other emails in the last few days, from some surprising places. One from Jenni, another Australian exchange teacher whom I met in Quebec and who happened to stumble across this blog. Another from Erin in Sydney, a teacher who is looking at doing an exchange to Toronto next year, and who also just found the site. And finally I got one from Melissa, and old friend I haven't seen in quite a few years, now living in London with her new hubby Neil, and who also stumbled across this blog. I'm endlessly amazed at the connections this medium can make.

But how's this for a coincidence...

When I was back in Australia researching for this exchange I sent an email to a real estate agent that I randomly picked from the Internet yellow pages. Prior to arriving in Oakville, I had no idea about the locality of the area, where it was in relation to other things, whether it was a good area, and so on. So I sent this random email to this random real estate agent who very nicely replied and gave me the information I was after. To be perfectly honest, this recommendation from a perfect stranger actually played a key role in us biting the bullet and ending up here in Oakville, despite the fact that she wasn't actually from Oakville, but a city about 30 minutes away.

So anyway, I started a night class tonight at Sheridan College. I figured I would like to do some study while I'm here so I enrolled in a 14 week course in - don't laugh - writing a novel. The course was great and I'm looking forward to the next few weeks. But here's the kicker... as I was walking out of the college tonight I was chatting with another lady doing the class, and mentioned that I was an exchange teacher, from Australia, yaddah, yaddah. When I asked her what she did for a living, she said she was a real estate agent. Can you guess the rest?

That's right. It was the same lady. In an urban area of over 4 million people, the person I randomly send an email to one year ago turns out to be in the same night class as me.

The odds against this sort of thing must be staggering. But it still happens.

Back to School

2006-09-07T19:48:00.000-04:00

School started up again this week. It seems ages ago that we finished the Canadian school year and drove away from Oakville for a weekend at the Grace's cottage. We seem to have been pretty busy since then, having done a lot of travel and living fancy free. But this week it was back to reality.

Kate moves into Grade 6 at Holy Family, and Alex started at Trinity in Grade 9. It's all a bit mixed up for the kids... they finished a school year last December in Australia, then arrived in Canada to begin the second semester of their next school year in late January here in Canada, effectively skipping the first half of that year. Now they move up a grade, and will be here until mid December when they return to Australia. When school goes back in Australia in February they will restart the current grade they just started here. Confused? They'll be fine.

I also returned to school at Trinity this week. I've been given some different courses to teach too. I had a phone call from the principal in the last week of the holidays asking if I would like to teach a subject called Communications Technology - it comprises graphic design, audio and video production, photography and design. Obviously I thought about it for about 2 milliseconds before saying yes! I'm looking forward to this course, and am planning to try out a whole lot of new ideas with this group of kids. I keep hearing about how much potential there is for blogging, podcasting and other Web2.0 technologies in the classroom so I plan to explore some of that. I've already hooked all the kids up with a blog so we'll see what we end up with.

I'm also teaching two business computing classes, BTT and BTA, both basically aimed at the more conservative, business-like use of computers such as Microsoft Office. It's a lot like the old Computing Studies courses that used to run in Australia before the new IST courses came in a couple of years ago. Still, I'm enjoying these classes and I'm sure we'll find opportunities to explore the digital world and have a bit of fun.

It's actually quite nice to be back and to see all the friendly faces around the school again. Trinity is a good school to work in, and everybody I've met there have been really nice to me. Like every school, there will always be a few things that can be frustrating, but the whole working and living overseas thing is a great experience.

I'll say it again... if you ever get a chance to go on a teaching exchange, take it.

Camp Wyoka

2006-09-06T21:19:00.000-04:00

A few weeks before the summer holidays finished, I did a very Canadian thing and went to summer camp for a whole week. It was actually a camp run by the Canadian Girl Guides, so we had lots of great guiding activities, game and songs.

The first thing we did on Sunday when we arrived was to determine which swimming group we would be in. Red being shallow, green being intermediate and blue was for the advanced swimmers. I got put into the blue group. One of the first activities we did was rock climbing, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We had to climb a tall cement silo covered in coloured handholds and try to touch the bell at the top. The tower was about 2 stories tall and I managed to touch the bell twice!

My favourite part of the campsite was along the lakefront where we spent most of our days. We swam, played on the water trampoline, built things in the sand and went canoeing. One day we went on a canoe lunch where we canoed to the other side of the lake and had a picnic. The water was very clear, and even though the lake was mostly quite shallow, you could see the bottom even in the very deepest sections.

The tents we stayed in had a raised wooden platform for a floor. It was designed to keep the bugs out, but the bugs still got in! The mornings and night got very cold – down to 0 degrees – but the days were quite warm, around 25C.

On the final night we had a beach sleep, where we slept on the beach by the lake. It was surprisingly warm that night, with some people sleeping only in a T-shirt. The next day we packed our bags and caught the bus home to Mississauga where mum and dad picked me up.

There are a few more photos here.

You want fries with that?

2006-09-04T22:49:00.000-04:00

I’ve always enjoyed – rather, loved - the 21 years I have spent in the classroom, and can honestly say I have, for the most part, felt I have made a difference in the lives of the kids that I have taught. Recently though, I have been getting itching feet, curious to try something outside of education. Having now decided on a path to take upon my return to Australia, I have been busy making inquiries and enrolling in courses which might lead me towards that goal.

But in the here and now of Canada I feel an almost flippant approach to just have a go at completely different things, which is in many ways so out of character for me. Being partially driven by reality though, I was looking for something that will pay reasonably well and waitressing came to mind as a possibility… although the hourly rate is very low, tips here in Canada are around 15% of the sale, so it’s possible to make reasonable money doing it.

After dropping off a couple of resumes, I was offered a position with a restaurant chain called Swiss Chalet. Selling mainly chicken and rib dinners, the Swiss Chalet offers the complete dining experience for those who want to eat in or a very busy ‘take-out’ service for those who don’t. Unfortunately, there are no tips to be made in take-out, and as I worked there each shift alongside the 16 year old students who would help pack and hand out the orders, I soon realised maybe this wasn’t quite what I was after.

I completed my last shift with the Swiss Chalet tonight after only 2 weeks, but feel all the better for it. Any opportunity which allows me an insight into Canadian life is what I believe this exchange program is all about. I start a new position in an English style pub on Thursday, and am very excited and grateful to have a newly found (although temporary) sense of freedom to try new stuff.

Fun and Games

2006-09-03T12:31:00.000-04:00

We were excited to be invited to a street party last night to help our nearby neighbours, Dave and Linda, celebrate their significant birthdays. The plan was to have a big street party, complete with an official street closure, live band, and plenty of dancing and partying. However, thanks to Hurricane Ernesto and its influence on the weather patterns around Toronto this week, the party had to be scaled back to be an indoor gig. Bummer for Dave and Linda!

It was still a great party though! We arrived a little late as Donna didn't get off work till 9:00pm (which reminds me, she ought to blog about her new career path). The party was in full swing by the time we arrived with lots of food and drink, plenty of laughter and lots of fun. It was great to catch up with everyone, especially ones that we hadn't seen much over the last few months, since so many people go away for the summer break. It was also great that Heidi could be there too, as she just happened to be in town this week.

There's really no need to go into further detail here - mainly to protect the innocent - but it was a pretty wild night. ;-) I particularly like the party games that Dave dreamed up... One involved an ever diminishing paper bag - I've played Pass the Parcel before, but never Eat the Parcel. And as for the variation of the game which involved a carrot, a very flexible body and large amounts of alcohol... don't even go there.

Thanks Dave and Linda for a fun night, we had a ball. And happy birthday!

The Importance of being Ernesto

2006-09-02T17:44:00.000-04:00

It was kind of strange watching the weather report on TV last night. They showed Hurricane Ernesto as it moved up the US east coast, showed it centered just off the coast of New York and then explained the areas which would be affected by the rain and wind conditions. The weather guy waved his hand up into southern Ontario and told how the effects of Ernesto would be felt there... and suddenly I thought, "Hey, that's where we are!"

Even after being here for 6 months, I still seem surprised sometimes when I see a map of the US and Canada and realise that's where we are. Weird huh?

Anyway, sure enough, the bad weather has rolled in and we are experiencing lots of rain and gusty conditions right now. It's the labour day weekend here in Canada (It marks the end of the summer break. Yep, back to school next week!) and it's amazing how predictably the weather changes back to the cooler conditions. It was like that back at the end of last winter too... Spring started on a certain date and it was like someone had just flipped a switch to start warming up. Now we get to the end of the summer break and it's like the switch has been flipped again and the cooler weather returns. It all seems very predictable.

But then, I come from Australia, where the term "weather pattern" is somewhat of an oxymoron. Weather down there changes when and if it feels like it... there's often not that much of a pattern to it, so the predictability of the Canadian weather is really quite a novelty.

Mind you, ask me again in mid-January how novel the weather is. I may have a diferent answer for you when it's -30C.

Go Fly a Kite

2006-08-31T20:30:00.000-04:00

It was windy today, and Kate discovered a kite stashed up high in the roof of the garage. After much cajoling, she dragged us all down the local park and we spent a half hour or so watching the kite flutter around on the breezy air. It actually was a bit of fun for the afternoon, and it's been years since I've flown a kite!

A Family Affair

2006-08-30T13:03:00.000-04:00

We've spoken about the whole "cottaging" concept before in this blog. I'm so impressed with the way so many Canadians have a cottage outside the GTA and how they use it to escape the city into peace and tranquility by a lake somewhere. And in the warmth of summer, these cottages become more than just weekend escapes, and instead become a temporary home away from home as many people spend their entire summers at "the cottage".

As our 2 month summer break draws to a close, last weekend we were invited by Sharilou and Mark to join them at their family cottage in Orillia on the shores of beautiful Lake Couchiching. We drove up on Sunday and arrived around lunchtime. The cottage is a family cottage, making it a great gathering place for the whole family. As well as Sharilou and Mark and their kids Rebecca and Trevor, we also met Sharilou's parents, Sharon and Lou, (now I get it!), her sister Shannon and husband Adam, other sister Shelly and her kids Taylor, Brett and Caitlyn, as well as grandparents Jack and Kay. It was really nice to be invited into someone else's family for the weekend and to be treated so warmly.

We spent the afternoon relaxing, swimming and waterskiing, as well as being given a wakeboarding demo by Trevor. It had been years since I'd waterskied, and even longer since Donna had done it. In fact, the last time Donna had waterskied she was on the Greek island of Korfu with a young lady she'd just met on a Kontiki Tour called Sharilou. That was 20 years ago, and here they were again waterskiing together... quite a coincidence, no?

We enjoyed our time at the Couchiching cottage. It was nice to sit around, having a few beers and chatting. Most of the family had either been to, or lived in, Australia at some point so we had plenty to talk about. Adam and Shannon are very well travelled and have lived in both Australia and Singapore. They have also travelled extensively and have just returned from a trip through Mongolia and Russia so they had lots of interesting stories to tell. We boated across the lake to watch a sunset waterskiing show put on by the local resort, before coming back home to a DVD movie.

On Monday we went for a walk down to Jack and Kay's place, more people dropped in, and more chatting, drinking and swimming was done. Hard to take. A family friend and horse breeder, Sharon, dropped in with a tiny little miniature horse for the kids to play with. The weather was perfect the whole time we were there, and I think everyone had a lovely time.

We finally said our farewells late on Monday night before heading back down the 400 to Oakville. Thanks again to Sharilou and Mark for allowing us to be part of their family for the weekend. We had a great time.

There are more photos from the weekend here.

Beginner's Luck

2006-08-25T12:43:00.000-04:00

I had a phone call the other night from Clark, one of my teaching buddies at Trinity, inviting me to a poker night at his place with the boys. Although I've never played poker before, you may recall that one of our guiding principles during this year away from home is "say no to nothing." When you do an exchange, you should take every opportunity offered to you; a night playing poker with the boys sounded like an opportunity, so I took it.

I'm not normally much of a one for card games (or gambling generally) and the last time I played poker was in high school so I really had no idea what I was doing. Besides, this was 5 card Texas Hold'em poker, which I'd never even seen before. After meeting everyone and settling down at the Giant Tiger $49.99 poker table, another teacher from HT, Jeff, helped me out by explaining the rules of the game. It took a few rounds of the table, but eventually it started to make sense. Kind of.

Playing poker successfully seems to rely a lot of good luck and on your ability to bullshit people well. I watched Mike P play for a while and figured out the bullshitting part. After that it was just a matter of holding out for a bit of luck. As the evening wore on, people around the table gradually started to run out of both luck and bullshit and ended up out of the game, but through a series of complete flukes I was somehow still in it.

It only takes a couple of really good hands to turn things around in poker, and we ended up in a three-way battle between members of the HT Business Department - Ange, Mike and myself. Lord only knows how, but I somehow ended up with a big pile of chips in front of me, and after an epic battle and great comeback from Mike it ended in an all-in bet that didn't pay off for him. To my enormous surprise, I walked away from the game as the winner, and $100 richer. Talk about beginner's luck!

I just want to say thanks to Clark and the rest of the boys for a really fun night. See you at the next one, which apparently is hosted by the winner. ;-)

Happy Snappy

2006-08-22T15:02:00.000-04:00

I've just discovered a wonderful new online web photo album from Google, called Picasa Web Albums. It's easy to use, free, stores 250Mb of images and best of all it integrates directly with iPhoto on the Mac. I've just been uploading a few albums to try it out and I'll add some more later. It's a good way to add some of the many photos that don't make it to the blog. (I've taken nearly 5000 photos so far, and obviously only a small number of those get uploaded with each blog post)

You can view photos individually or as a slideshow, you can download them, etc; it's a very cool service. Thanks Google!

I've added our album to the Other Stuff links on the right, or just check it out by going to http://picasaweb.google.com/betchaboy

Little Miss Independence

2006-08-21T15:07:00.000-04:00

You may recall that Kate has been continuing with her beloved Girl Guides while here in Canada. And so for her recent birthday she was very keen to attend a week-long Girl Guides of Canada summer camp at Camp Wyoka. She's a gutsy kid, and despite that fact that no one else from her Oakville guide unit was attending, she had no problem packing herself up for a week and heading off to the site in northwestern Ontario, about 2 hours from home. Oh, and she insisted on sleeping in a tent, not a dorm. Dorms are for wussy girls!

So we drove her there yesterday, and if she was at all nervous she certainly didn't show it. In fact, once the rest of the campers arrived by bus she enthusiastically entered into the whole campsite spirit and Donna and I were politely (and insistently) excused. "Bye mum and dad! Now go!" :-)

We won't be picking her up because naturally she wants to come home on the bus with the other girls. I'll try to get her to blog a little about it when she returns next week.

Logical, but not Intuitive

2006-08-21T01:31:00.000-04:00

Here’s a question for non-Ontarians… Imagine you are driving along the QEW (a major freeway that goes between Toronto and Buffalo) and you see the road sign in the photo above. Based on your immediate impression, tell me what you think it’s trying to tell you.

If you’re anything like me, you may have thought it was saying, “Trafalgar Road continues straight ahead and the QEW curves to the right". After all, the QEW is a major six-lane freeway, so intuitively you would think the larger bold arrows curving to the right must represent the QEW. Trafalgar is a much more minor road, represented intuitively by the smaller non-bold arrow continuing straight ahead. To reinforce this line of reasoning, the name of the street, Trafalgar Road, is on the left hand side next to the non-bold arrow. That would seem to be the intuitive interpretation based on the common conventions that most people understand… a word written on the left ought to be associated with the arrow on the left, and the more important or dominant feature should be represented in bold. And if you’re anything like me, you’d be wrong in almost every respect.

The sign is in fact saying that the street name, in this case Trafalgar Road, is represented by the bold arrows. This is despite the fact that the bold arrows curve to the right and the name of the road is located on the left. The QEW, which is the far more major road of the two, is represented by the single non-bold arrow and continues straight ahead. Now I suppose there must be some logic in that, but to my mind it is certainly not intuitive.

When we arrived in Ontario I noticed these signs and thought it must just be me, but after having driven all over eastern Canada and the United States, I have not seen the same “logic” applied anywhere else.

The Barber from Brooklyn

2006-08-20T18:17:00.000-04:00

A funny thing happened as we were leaving New York City. We had a bit of time to kill before we were due to arrive at Wendy's place so we decided to go for a drive, and as Manhattan is not a very conducive place to just "go for a drive" we headed across the Brooklyn Bridge and into Brooklyn. We had no particular place we were going, we were basically just following our nose and seeing where we ended up.

Well, we ended up in a place called Flatbush, a suburban area of Brooklyn. There appeared to be a few interesting looking clothes shops along the main street so I suggested to Donna that we stop and have a look around. After parking the car, we went for a saunter down the main street where we began to realise that we were pretty much the only white folk around. Everyone else - all the people on the streets, the shopkeepers, everyone - were all African American. Now, I pretty much take people as I find them, so being in a "black" part of town didn't strike me a particularly big deal. The people we spoke with were certainly friendly enough, we had lunch in a local store and we generally enjoyed our time there.

But here's the funny part... Donna had been at Alex for a while to get a haircut, so when we returned to the car and noticed there was a barber shop across the road, she started coaxing Alex again to go get a haircut. Al eventually gave in to the pressure and off we all went to the barber shop.

Well, I suppose we should probably have expected that if you are in a black part of Brooklyn then you ought to expect the black barber's clientele would be pretty much all black guys. We all sat there in the shop - four skinny white dudes - waiting for Alex to get his turn. As we waited, a steady stream of young black guys wandered in and out of the shop, highfiving the barbers, saying stuff like "yo, wassup ma man!" and checking out the glass cabinet of Nike Air shoes on display at the back of the shop. It felt a bit like being in an episode of Good Times. As well as checking out all the people coming and going, we also watched those in front of us get their haircuts, and it struck me that a lot of African American men get their hair cut in a fairly similar way - very, very short with the clippers, trimmed right up close to the hairline, and often with very funky little sideburns or beards. Not only that, but it occurred to me that because the Barber - a nice enough fella by the name of Louie - cut his clients hair in pretty much the same way all the time that this was pretty much the only style he really knew how to cut. Fair enough I guess.

So when our shaggy-headed Alex finally got his turn, and Donna bounded up to Louie to say, "if you could just thin it out a little, don't lose too much off the length", he just kind of looked at her blankly. You could tell he was trying to figure out just how he was going to do this, what tools he'd need to do it, and why the hell these white honkies were in his shop anyway.

Louie left the shop for a couple of minutes and came back with a couple of extra combs and cutters - I think he must have run over to the women's hairdressing shop across the street and asked them what he needed. :-) Anyway, he did a mighty fine job on Alex's head, including the same trimmed hairline and funky sideburns that the rest of his customers got (take a close look at the photo above and check out the wannabe sideburns made out of adolescent bumfluff). I guess when you do something the same way over and over it's pretty hard to break the paradigm. We refer to it as Alex's "black dude" haircut. Yo, Alex, wassup ma man?

Louie handed us a couple of business cards as we left and said he'd see us next time. And you know, maybe if Brooklyn wasn't so far away he just might.

Television and the Ugly American

2006-08-18T15:38:00.000-04:00

American television has a lot to answer for. Being so close to the US border, we get a clear reception of the northwestern New York state TV signals as they drift across lake Ontario.

So here's the disconnect... While we were travelling through the United States, we met a bunch of wonderful, friendly, helpful people. Even in New York City, supposedly reknown for being full of folk who only look out for themselves, I have to say that it was not our experience at all. I'm sure there are plenty of good and bad people in the world, but I was impressed with just how friendly, helpful and cheerful the people we met during our travels were. Even standing in the NYC subway, trying to make sense of a map, we had complete strangers come up and say "Are you ok, can I help you?". And things like that happened on more than one occasion. Despite the stories one reads about how uncaring and impersonal and rude and ignorant "people" are, the world really is full of nice folks.

So where does the bad rap come from? Why is there such a perception out there that there are so many people - especially, I hate to say it, American people - who only care about themselves, are ignorant of what goes on in the rest of the world, and generally act like redneck hillbillies? I'm sure the answer, at least partly, is television.

As I write this, I have the TV on. For the last couple of hours I've been seeing the worst of humanity parading across the screen on Jerry Springer, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Mathis, Judge Judy, Divorce Court, (hmm, seeing a pattern here?) and several others, all of which feature incredibly stupid, ignorant, pathetic people who are totally out of touch with the real world. Punctuating these low points of human achievement are a steady stream of advertisements that really drag the bottom of the barrel of humanity... legal firms encouraging you to sue your doctor, firms that will help you sue anyone who you feel has wronged you, firms who will help you screw your ex-husband for everything you can get, companies that help people "looking for more" to arrange extramarital affairs, and so on... it's pathetic.

If you believed that people really were the way they appeared on TV, you'd just pull the plug on humanity right now. If that's a real indication of what people are like, then the human race has no future. Just give up right now. Trouble is, for so many people what they see on TV is reality. The people they see on TV are a true representation of who they think the world is filled with.

Television, you have a lot to answer for.

Birthday Girl

2006-08-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

Our Katey turned 11 today. To celebrate we took her and her friend Courtney to the movies to see Talladega Nights, and then to dinner at Boston Pizza. Later, we came home to an triple chocolate icecream cake. ;-)

Kate received lots of well wishes from family and friends, tons of cards and plenty of phone calls. Oh to be young and popular!

Happy Birthday KateyBel.

Lakeside Livin'

2006-08-17T16:17:00.000-04:00

Thanks to an impromptu invitation from Sean and Kim, we flitted off to Muskoka again for a few days. It's very pretty up there, and we spent a day cruising to all three of the big lakes of the Muskoka region - Muskoka, Joseph and Rosseau. It was interesting because the lakes are at different heights, and have to be negotiated via locks. We'd seen the lock concept in action before, but on a much larger scale. The small locks that connect Muskoka to Rosseau were a much simpler proposition, but based on the same idea as the big ones.

After that we packed up and went back to the other lakeside property at Loon Lake, owned by Sean's family. We had a nice barbie and a few drinks around the fire before turning in for the night. Unfortunately Sean had to get up and go back to work the next day - honestly, work just gets in the way! We had a few very relaxing lazy days doing not much more than swimming, boating, sleeping, watching a few DVDs, a bit of waterskiing, then more swimming. Hard to take, eh?

These freshwater lakes that are dotted across the Ontario landscape really are a good thing. I love swimming in the ocean, but I must admit to having developed quite an affinity for these freshwater Canadian lakes.

15 Seconds of Fame

2006-08-17T15:53:00.000-04:00

I think it was Andy Warhol who remarked that everyone would eventually be famous at some point in their life, even if it was only for 15 seconds. I'm still holding out for hitting the bigtime, but in the meantime you may be interested in this article that appeared in the NSW Independent Education journal, Newsmonth, about the exchange that Dave and I are doing.

The article focuses on the use of technology to help smooth the way for teachers on an overseas exchange program. I guess I've been hanging around the Web for so long now that I take most of this stuff for granted, but apparently the use of other web technology (beyond just email, which is over 30 years old) is a big thing. :-)

Anyway, enjoy the article.

Returning to Normal

2006-08-16T11:59:00.000-04:00

I've been a bit slack updating the blog over the last week, but we are now back in Oakville after a wonderful five or so weeks away from home. We actually arrived back home late last Thursday, had a couple of days to catch out breath and then got invited back to Muskoka for a few days... how can you say no to that? So we threw a few bags in the car and scooted up the 400 for a couple of days of fun and sun on Muskoka and Loon Lake. Very relaxing (but no Internet access, hence a few quiet days on the blog.)

I'll gather a few photos tomorrow and write a quick update. I have been thinking about a few subjects that I'd like to write about, so perhaps the next few posts might be a bit random, but hey, it's my blog so I guess I can muse on whatever I like, eh?

Time for sleep now.

The Buffalo Redemption

2006-08-12T01:40:00.000-04:00

If you've been reading this blog at all you may recall we drove across the bridge at Niagara Falls a while back to visit Buffalo, USA, and came away decidedly underwhelmed by it. The day we were there, a Sunday, it was almost as if the place was closed... there was little to do and we drove around in circles for a while before declaring it a waste of time and heading back into Canada.

Well, as it turns out, one of our Oakville friends, Beth, was originally from Buffalo (actually just south of Buffalo) and was a little perturbed by our poor experience. "Let me take you to Buffalo and show you around", said Beth. Fair enough. So when we received an invitation by Beth and her husband Grant to drop in for a couple of days to their cottage by Lake Erie on our way back to Oakville, we were keen to give Buffalo a shot at redemption.

And what a redemption it was! What a top spot! These guys have an amazing cottage (well, I'd call it a house myself!) right by the lake, and I mean right by the lake. You walk out their front door, cross the street and you're on the beach. It really is a great spot. We arrived there late afternoon after traversing New York state, and got to witness the most stunning sunset over the water. We got to meet Grant's sister Katrina, her husband Todd, his other sister-in-law Joanne, and more kids than we could poke a stick at. It was great to kick back a bit, sit by the water, catch a few rays, muck about on the jetski, and enjoy each other's company. We spent two wonderful days there, and would have liked to spend more.

We also got to explore the local area a bit too, went to dinner at Surfers, a cute little beachside restaurant by the lake, and followed it up with some go-karting at a nearby track. On our way back home, Grant and Beth took us into beautiful downtown Lackawanna for a look at Beth's home town... we got to visit an amazing bascilica, an amazing italian restaurant and an amazing frozen yogurt shop for desert. Yum!

Ok Buffalo, you win, I apologise. We had a ball.

The Great Escape

2006-08-12T01:07:00.000-04:00

We'd been promising the kids that we'd do a theme park at some stage of our travels. I know a lot of parents would probably take their kids to Disneyland when they come to North America, but frankly, Disneyland is a long way from Toronto, it's way to expensive to get down to either LA or Florida, and at the end of the day, even though it's a good theme park it's still just a theme park. Canada also has a world class theme park called Canada's Wonderland just north of Toronto on the 400 but we'd heard some real horror stories about crowds and waiting times during the summer months. We told the kids that if we didn't find another theme park somewhere along the way we'd try to fit a visit to Canada's Wonderland in.

Kate's teacher back in Australia, Mr Hidson, had told her about the Six Flags theme park and highly recommended it, and while we staying with Wendy and Willy we happened to see a brochure for Six Flags... as it turns out, Six Flags is not a single theme park, but a whole chain of theme parks. Since we were travelling through New York state, we decided to drop in to visit the one located at Lake George, NY, aptly called the Great Escape.

We left Wendy's and headed north into the beautiful Adirondack Mountains - stunning scenery. Lake George took us about an hour or so north of Albany, the capital of New York state, and is a lovely little village on a beautiful lake. It's pretty touristy of course, but still a nice place. After checking into a hotel, we walked around the town and the lake, had some dinner and did some shopping before heading back to our room.

Next day was perfect theme park weather - not too hot, not too humid, a little cloudy, but still patches of sun. The park was very affordable, had tons of great rides and the crowds were nearly non-existant! Apart from one ride that had a queue of about 20 minutes, the longest we waited for anything else was about 2 minutes, and mostly we just walked right on to the ride. It makes for such a more enjoyable day when you aren't fighting crowds and pushing and shoving in queues all day!

There was some amazing rides - the Boomerang, the Steamin' Demon, the Comet, as well a a full blown waterpark with water slides, wave pools, etc, etc... there was lots to do and we spent the whole day going from ride to ride to ride.

I think the kids would agree that it was one of the best theme park experiences we've had.

Relatively Speaking

2006-08-06T22:57:00.000-04:00

Despite growing up with an extraordinarily large number of relatives on my father's side, it has been many, many years since I have seen most of them. I knew that one of my cousins was living near New York City and despite not having seen her for quite a few years, thought it would be nice to catch up with her if we could arrange it. Soon after our arrival in Oakville, I set about trying to contact cousin Wendy. When we finally made contact, Wendy was quite pleased to hear from me and offered that we all come to visit after we left our accommodation in the Big Apple.

Wendy, her husband Willy and children Tania and Erik live in Katonah in Westchester county, about 40 minutes north of New York City. This part of the world could almost be considered rural, with beautiful timber homes, many set on acreage's, its hard to believe we were so close to one of the busiest cities on earth.

From the moment we arrived, we were greeted with warmth and hospitality and many stories were shared about where our lives have taken us over the past 25 or so years. The weather was still quite warm, so a good deal of our time was spent in or around the pool or sitting overlooking the pool drinking wine and enjoying meals together.

There is something special about being related to somebody... Something which perhaps connects you in a subtle yet tangible way. Meeting Wendy and her family after so many years was indeed a wonderful serendipity of this exchange to Canada and definitely a highlight of our trip to New York City.

The City that Never Sleeps

2006-08-04T00:02:00.000-04:00

Tonight we ventured up the Rockefeller Tower, a beautiful art deco skyscraper built by J D Rockefeller in the 1930s. The more well-known observation point for looking out on NYC is the Empire State Building... but if you observe the skyline from that vantage point then the one building that is missing from view is, of course, the Empire State Building because you're standing on it. So we decided instead to view the city from the Rockefeller, or the Top of the Rock, as it's known.

As you can see from the pictures, it's a great view, especially at night. Unfortunately, with the heatwave conditions that have gripped New York City for the past three days, some of the major buildings, including the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings, were not fully illuminated in an attempt to ease the strain on the NYC power grid.

It's still an amazing sight.

A little more NYC

2006-08-03T19:18:00.000-04:00

Another day spent wandering the big city. We took another tour bus downtown since we bought a 48 hour pass and it seemed the obvious way to travel, so we heard yet another tourguide explain everything to us as we went to Lower Manhattan... they all have their own spin on the city, and this morning's guide was really good.

After getting off the bus we cought the ferry across the harbour to Staten Island, mainly just to see the Statue of Liberty and the city from the water. After arriving in Staten Island we came back to Manhattan to explore some more. We checked out Wall Street and the NY Stock Exchange, then caught the subway to Chinatown were we had lunch. It was authentic chinese food, complete with cat's eyeballs on the menu. Blech! After that we walked over to Soho to do a little shopping, but the heat was getting quite unbearable... around 110 degrees Farenheit today, (or 43 Celsius for the rest of the world).

We also caught another subway train up to 42nd Street and across to Grand Central Station for a look at that, before walking a few blocks back to the hotel. Donna and Kate went shopping for a while, and Donna almost had her bag snatched but luckily she was awake to it as soon as she felt something, so fortunately nothing was taken although the zippers on her bag were all undone. "You really gotta watch it here in New York City" was the advice given to her by the woman in the shop who coincidentally was probably the very one trying to do the snatching. I wish I'd been there...

We are off to the Rockafeller Centre shortly to see NYC from above. We'll watch our wallets.

Start Spreading the News

2006-08-03T00:23:00.000-04:00

If you really want to overload yourself and all your senses, go to New York City. Everything you've ever heard about NYC is probably true, and yes, it really is a city that never sleeps. I wasn't really looking forward to driving in NYC but thanks to Google Maps' excellent instructions we managed to find our way into the city fairly painlessly, over the Triborough Bridge, down FDR drive and straight onto 35th Street and our hotel. The room was already available by the time we arrived so we dumped our gear, stowed the car in the nearby parking garage, and hit the big city.

And a big city it is! Our hotel was in Midtown, about halfway up Manhattan Island and about a block from the Empire State Building. We wasted no time in getting on the famous double-decker sightseeing bus and started seeing everything we could.

There was and is way too much going on in Manhattan to describe everything in detail, so here's a short stream-of-consciousness ramble of the places we went and things we've seen in the last couple of days...

The huge Empire State Building and Rockafeller Centre, checking for cheap theatre tickets on 42nd Street, the amazing flashing neon lights of Times Square, lots and lots of yellow taxis, the shiny Chrysler building, the powerful impact of the Ground Zero and 9/11 memorials, police cars everywhere you look, more neon - SO much neon flashing at you constantly, seeing the Brooklyn Bridge from the Manhattan Bridge, with the city and Lady Liberty behind, Battery Park, Wall Street and the waterfront, walking through Central Park, seeing Jackson Pollock's work at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, walking along Fifth Avenue, Tiffanys, Saks and the Apple Store, visiting the Hard Rock Cafe and the Disney Store, taking the kids to a Comedy Club on 43rd Street then having to debrief the kids afterwards, feeding squirrels in Central Park, listening to rap music with a black brother who was trying to sell me his rap CD, catching a yellow cab with a driver who spoke little english, finding 7 "I love NY" Tshirts for $10, the girls shopping for clothes while the boys were waiting, waiting, waiting for the girls shopping for clothes, security checks at The Met, the constant wail of police sirens, seeing the spot where John Lennon was shot, going through Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Soho, Harlem, and Brooklyn, finding that the service and food at MacDonalds is just as bad wherever you go in the world. Oh, and the heat! The stifling heat in NYC for the last two days... over 100 degrees in the old numbers!

That's what New York City feels like... It comes at you, so fast and constant and relentlessly, it's hard to form complete mental sentences. It just pours itself over you, overloading you with to much stuff until it all becomes a blur of experiences. It's a great city.

More to come...

The Big Apple

2006-08-02T15:03:00.000-04:00

We were browsing our way around New York City today and happened upon the recently openend, brand new Apple Store... what an amazing building! Just a big glass cube, with the store underground below it, right on exclusive Fifth Avenue. Just thought we'd post a quick in-store blog update.

So G'day from the Big Apple store in the Big Apple city.

In Transit

2006-07-30T23:49:00.000-04:00

The drive between Boston and New York City was basically, as we say in the sport of rallying, a transport section. We really just wanted to get from point A (being Boston) to point B (being NYC), although we stopped to see a few things along the way. We were looking for a place to overnight for a day or two as our NYC accommodation was booked for August 1 and we had a few days up our sleeve. Kate in particular was very keen to go somewhere she could swim, so we headed for the beachside area of Hyannis on Cape Cod, made famous as the holiday playground of JFK and the Kennedy family. Our track to there took us via Plymouth Rock, the site where the Pilgrims first landed on American soil (well, stone) The stone itself was remarkably unremarkable, with the inscription "1620" engraved into it, oddly and apparently placed there sometime during the 1800s.

Pushing on to Cape Cod, the traffic was unbelievably bad! It was like everyone in the greater Boston area had decided to spend the weekend on the cape. After battling our way onto the island, we took a back highway and finally found our way into Hyannis where we booked into a very nice resort-style place for a couple of nights. We swum, played tennis, went to nearby Mayflower Beach, and generally had a great time. I must send a special G'day to Steve, a nice fella from Boston I met by the outdoor pool who was so impressed at meeting an Aussie in Hyannis that he insisted I take his Tshirt and cap as a souvenir gift!

From there we drove south, via Newport, Rhode Island. Man! There is some serious, serious money in this place! We took a drive down Bellevue Avenue past all the mansions, then out on Marine Drive and back into the town, where we parked and went for a walk. A quick visit to the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the yacht marina, where I got the chance to remind a few locals that Switzerland, not the USA, is the current holder of the Auld Mug... :-)

From Rhode Island, we pushed on further to Connecticut and stopped for the evening in a very nondescript litttle city called Stamford, only about 45 minutes away from NYC itself. Our plan was to leave after rush hour and try to get an early start into the big city.

New York City, here we come.

Claim to Fame

2006-07-29T13:34:00.000-04:00

Boston is another city full of history, really being the birthplace of the United States. This is where the War of Independence took place, where Paul Revere did his famous midnight ride to warn that the British were coming, the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, and so on.

We arrived into Boston quite late in the day, and found it very confusing. We took a chance on getting some inner city accommodation, but after getting quite frustrated at the options we headed back out of town. Strangely, I thought I was heading west but by the time we managed to find a Holiday Inn Express we were somehow in Cambridge, which is not west but north of the city. No idea how I managed that! After negotiating a room, we headed down to the nearby Galeria Mall, for dinner and a visit to the Apple Store. How convenient is that? The hotel was also nearby to two other local icons of higher education, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, both of which we got a chance to have a look at.

With such a convenient location, the next day we decided to walk down to Lechmere station and catch the transit train into the city where we picked up a Boston trolley bus tour. This tour took us on a 1.5 hour loop around the city although we got off at the Boston Harbour to do a harbour cruise. Perhaps it's an unfair comparison, but when you live in Sydney other harbours of the world have a lot to live up to... and although Boston has lots of interesting history, visually it seemed to lack real character. I didn't find it had a particularly distinguishing skyline, and really, to look at, it was just another big city. We cruised out to the docks, past the US Coast Guard ships and the USS Constitution. Nicknamed Old Ironsides for the way the cannonballs apparently bounced off her sides, the Constitution is an old rigged tallship that is still commissioned as an official member of the US naval fleet, although I can't see here going to war anytime soon.

Back in the city, we spent more time looking around, and caught to trolley for the rest of the city loop. To finish off the day, Alex and I went out to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for a look around... I was particularly interested in visiting the world famous Media Lab. We found the Media Lab and, being late in the day on a Friday, we just walked in and had a look around, no questions asked. We didn't see a lot, and when I did eventually ask someone for some help, they told me the lab was not open to visitors and we had to leave. Just goes to show that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission... we should have continued to poke around on our own. Oh well, at least I can say I have been to the MIT Media Lab, even if I never got to meet Nicholas Negroponte or Seymour Papert!

The next day we took a drive through Harvard Universtity then went up to Salem, site of the infamous Witchcraft Trials of 1692. The whole witch thing in Salem is played up in a very cheesy way, and really is Salem's only claim to any sort of tourist interest at all. The Salem Witch Museum was reasonably interesting, although way overpriced I thought. What happened in Salem all those years ago was a disgraceful display of fear and mistrust against a handful of people, although I can't help thinking there are a lot of parallels with the way the current US government is creating fear and mistrust with Iraq and the "War on Terror", but that's another story altogether...

Back in Business

2006-07-28T23:12:00.000-04:00

I finally picked up a new power adapter for my laptop, so we're back in the blogosphere again. I rang the hotel in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and the nice lady there found my other adapter and is going to send it to me back in Oakville. I got the new charger at the Apple Store in Boston, but that's a whole other funny story. Oh well, I wanted a spare power adapter anyway and this just forced me to get one. I reckon laptop computers should always come with two power adapters anyway... one for home and one for work, so you don't have to climb around under your desk at work every morning trying to plug it in and then do the same every afternoon trying to unplug it. No extra charge for that tip.

Anyway, back to the blog!

PS, the guy in the Apple Store laughed when he saw my "I'm blogging this" T-shirt, and asked me to mention him in my blog... so, hi there Apple Store guy!

Maine Course

2006-07-27T22:46:00.000-04:00

So here we are in the United States of America again, this time at Bar Harbor, Maine. Bar Harbor is a cute little village on Mount Desert Island - an odd name for an island that looks remarkably unlike a desert. Mount Desert Island is mostly taken up with the Acadia National Park and a large mountain called Mount Cadillac. As the CAT ferry approached the shore it was quite impressive to see Mount Cadillac rising sharply out of the misty shoreline.

Once in the village we did the usual ritual of checking out a few hotels to find somewhere reasonable to stay the night. I cringe every time I convert the prices back to Australian dollars, but I guess that’s just the price of travelling in another country. Accommodation costs are not cheap, especially when you really only want a place to lay your head for the night, and will not be in the room much anyway, but there’s little that can be done about it so we just accept it and will worry about it later. Ce la rue.

Bar Harbor was nice, but almost seemed a little pretentious. There are only so many souvenir shops, T-shirt shops and outdoor bar and grill places needed in a small village, so perhaps after seeing an endless stream of such places over the last couple of weeks it all started to look just a little overdone. Or maybe it really was overdone, in ways that only Americans seem to be able to overdo. Either way, it was a nice place but there was not a lot there to convince us to stay beyond the next morning. We took a drove up to the National Park gates, but decided not to pay the entry fee to go in so we hit the road for the drive south.

Steve from PEI had suggested a few places to see as we traveled south through Maine, and we tried to stop in to look at a few of them as we moved down the Maine coastline. It was a pretty drive but traffic along the coast road was ridiculous, crawling along through the towns and villages, so eventually we got back onto the main highway and just wanted to get through to Boston for the night. We did take a small detour through to Old Orchard Beach, a small beachside town that reminded me of what Surfers Paradise looked like 40 years ago. Kate was really keen to go for a swim at the beach, but we decided to press on. Parking was difficult and expensive, and although we parked illegally in a hotel carpark for a quick walk down to the water, we didn’t want to come back to find our car had been towed away. We really don’t realise how lucky we are in Australia to have our beautiful beaches and the freedom to enjoy them... The beach at Old Orchard Beach was ok I guess, but made us realise just how spoilt for beaches we are back home.

The other exception to our run to Boston was to visit Kittery, a town known for virtually nothing except the fact that it has dozens and dozens of outlet stores. Lots of big name clothing and footwear stores have outlets here, selling their wares at “discounted” prices. There was probably a few bargains to be had, but mostly I didn’t think things were particularly cheap, although the girls enjoyed the thrill of the chase and spent a good couple of hours on the hunt for a bargain.

We eventually kicked on, travelling though New Hampshire briefly before entering Massachusetts and aiming for the heart of Boston.

See you later, Canada!

2006-07-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

We thought we'd try to save some time and money so we caught the high speed CAT Ferry service from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada to Bar Harbor, Maine, USA. Although it wasn't exactly cheap, this high speed catamaran ferry service gets across the Gulf of Maine in less than 3 hours, saving around 600 miles on the road. If we had driven, the extra costs in fuel, an extra night's accomodation, plus and extra day's meals, etc, would have probably cost more, so in the long run it was a good idea.

Besides, the trip is a very cool one to do. The CAT is a large boat, carrying up to 250 cars, busses and motor homes. The inside of the craft is very luxurious, with 4 onboard movie mini-cinemas, restaurants, bar areas, mini-casino, giftshop, yadda yadda... It cruises along at around 90km/h, throwing two huge rooster tail sprays behind as it travels. It was a good experience. And we were very pleased to find that the CAT is built in Australia! And the prerecorded safety message explaining lifejackets, etc, was done with an Aussie accent!

We waved farewell to Canada for a little while, and before we knew it we arrived in Bar Harbor, Maine. Welcome to America!

I'm pleased to say the US Customs officials were almost pleasant. Almost.

Foggy Peggy

2006-07-26T00:57:00.000-04:00

We stopped at Peggy's Cove on our way out of Halifax to Yarmouth. Peggy's Cove is a picturesque little fishing village by the sea, with a permanent population of only 40 people. The area is very rugged and rocky and has a lighthouse built on the headland. When we were there, the fog was quite thick and soupy, which was bad for visibility, but wonderful for atmosphere. I'm sure the place would look very different without the fog.

We only stayed for a quick visit, but I thought the photos were worth it.