SNOW

YAY... I woke up this morning to a blanket of white over London. It was very lovely!!! That was until I made it to the tube station and there were "severe delays"... but I still loved waking up to snow! I took some photos so will put them up later.

Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est la neige!

Quebec

Quand je suis arrive a Montreal, la premiere chose qu'on a fait.... on a mange LA POUTINE, bien sur! J'ai dit qu'il fait 5 ans depuis j'ai mange la poutine. Mes Julie, Chantal et Katie m'ont corrigee... juste un an a passe parce les filles nous ont fait la poutine a Boston l'annee passee.

OK I do believe that will be enough French for the moment. Yep... the first thing I did once I arrived in Montreal after my 10 hour train journey from NY was to eat LA POUTINE at St Hubert. Just a heads up, when you say LA POUTINE, you say it in a sing-song voice.

True to form, I was met by a gang in Montreal which was great! Katie, Julie and Chantal. Merci beaucoup encore pour fait le conduire! Je vous remercie!!!!

BTW if you ever have the choice of the train from NY to Montreal compared to the Greyhound bus... go for the train everytime, it may take a couple more hours, but it so much more pleasant. The train goes along the river and it is stunning. Hoping to go back in Autumn this year to check it out again.

Julie and me with our POUTINE

Chantal and Katie with POUTINE... OK Katie has a salade... but she could have POUTINE when ever she wantsJudith, Katie's daughter , me and Harrods, the bear I gave to Judith. Judith is doing painting by numbers, just in case you can't tell Me, Judith and Katie
Chantal, Katie, Judith, me and Julie chez Katie
Judith et son lapin

Julie is in the unusual situation of having 3 homes! Her boyfriend, Stephan, and her live in Sherbrooke, really close to the university where Stephan is doing his Phd. Julie though works in Victoriaville at a primary school teaching year 3 which is about 1 hour and a bit from Sherbrooke. So she has managed to score a room effectively next door to the school. The other home at her parents.

At her home in Victo, I tried to take a shower, which is generally considered not too difficult. However I couldn't seem to get any hot water.

The problem then was I couldn't actually turn off the tap. So after a some what long interval, Julie came back and was immediately able to turn it off (turns out I was trying to turn off the wrong tap, which was loose, which is why i couldn't get any hot water)

So, Stephan is doing a Phd in something to do with lasers going through different materials and the by products of doing that, at least that's what i have remembered.

This is Julie and me with the "laser" at the university

Stephan and Julie

Julie and Stephan at Sherbrooke with la coupe Stanley, OK it is a model. The last time montreal won was around 1992 I think... early 90s anywayLa neige
I spent one day with Julie in her third grade class which was really fun!!! She is a great teacher too. We did some grammer which meant I got to write sentences on the board which the kids had to correct, then we identified the nouns and verbs.

Maths was next.... this was all about measuring. So I got to help out a bit and explain to some of the kids how to draw lines greater than or less than or in between certain lengths! Tout en francais.

At the end of the day we had our Party de l'Australie. So we played Australian animal hang man. I also got lots of questions about Australia and in particular kangaroos. Julie had to explain to the class that I wasn't a vet, so I couldn't answer all their questions.

I also taught her class to sing "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree". I have a video of it, but I don't think I can load it onto my blog... it is great though!

I was able to have dinner at Julie's third place, being her parents place one night too. Plus even her brothers came to dinner, and Karine! Karine is a friend from school and also happens to be Julie's cousin.

Julie's parents gave me the required can of maple syrup, we checked to find one with the best recipe on the top. You'd be amazed at what you can do with maple syrup.

I spent alot of time at Julie's parents' place when I was on exchange, so it was absolutely fantastic to be able to see them, and have dinner with them which involves me hearing about 5 conversations in French at once.

Since I was last there in 2002, they have one more horse, and a lovely stable to keep the three or four (can't remember) horses.

Odette, me, Julie, Karine, Gaston, Michael and Jimmy

Can you see the glass doors? When I looked out them in the morning all you can see is snow and a few horses and a stable.

A big highlight for my Quebec visit was going to the Centre Molson (which is now called Le Centre Bell, and hasn't been the Molson Centre for years) to see Les Canadiens de Montreal play agains Boston Bruins. One of the rookies from 1996-1997 season, Saku Koivu, is now the captain.... how times change.

Interestingly, hockey is so huge in Canada that we had to pay almost double the face price for our tickets, as they are just so not available. But it was totally worth it!!!! Plus we won! The atmosphere at the Bell Centre was so much better than Madison Square Garden and the Rangers!

Plus they even had this thing at the begining which was a take off of 24. That is 24 hours in the life of the Montreal Canadians. They even had Kieffer Sutherland speaking French at the end talking about how they are going to win their 24 Stanley Cup this year which was quite cool.

My last day was spent in Montreal with Julie and Katie, doing some shopping at Roots and ice skating

Luxembourg

OK... so this will be a short one. I had my first trip for work to Luxembourg.

Obviously, won't go into details of the actual time in Luxembourg which was spent in a taxi from the airport, to the office, out for lunch (big fan of that!) back to the office, then back in the taxi to the airport.

You take a prop plane there, so you felt all the turbulance. BUT on the way over, as we walked to the departure gate, we noticed a handcuffed guy which was a bit strange. I thought it must have been some guy going for a run through the security or something.

However, once everyone was on the plane, we were then joined by Mr handcuff man and his minders. Slightly stressful, especially when his requests to have the handcuffs off were justified by him with the assurance "I'm not going to kill anyone".

Unsurprisingly, the handcuffs stayed on and we made it there safely and home safely.

NOW, I have the full set of the 5 London airports.... Heathrow, Luton, Gatwick, Stansted and London City!

New years!

The last weekend in 2006! Christmas and new years fell on very convenient days this year!

Schelle and I spent Saturday at my gym in Canary Wharf... got to do a class together which was fun, with a very enthusistic instructor... and then it was off to Borough markets for one last 2006 visit to buy some earl grey tea. But the tea people weren't there.

So we bought coffee from the only place in London that I am happy to buy coffee from and a chocolate brownie (well we had just been to the gym!)

Schelle and I with our coffees standing near the leaky cauldron from Harry Potter

I spent new years in London with Pippa and Matt from church and a friend of theirs, Abbey, from Hull (which is in the north of England). It was inevitably packed. Alot of the roads were closed, so we made the most of walking on the roads. There were waves of people heading down the Strand, and we always seemed to be trying to go against the tide.

Abbey, Pippa and me in Piccadilly Circus on new years eve

Pippa and Matt at the restuarant

We managed to see part of the top of the London eye where the fireworks were, between some buildings from the Strand. There were sooooo many people, so many more than in Sydney. But I think Sydney has a lot more places on to watch the fire works from. The space in London is rather limited unsurprisingly.

Matt, me and Pippa from our vantage point!

We didn't have too many problems going home. We just walked to Bond Street station, along Oxford Street. Although when we got to Swiss Cottage station, the train jerked to a stop and the doors weren't opening. We were in the front carriage, and the carriage behind us was shaking (or as Matt put it "looked as though people were fidgeting"). Finally they make an announcement that the emergency break has been pulled in one of the carriages... so the tube workers were strolling up and down the platform trying to find the carriage.

Then people from the fidgiting carriage started banging on the door to get into our carriage, so the door was opened and all these hysterical women (about 10) ran into our carriage and started banging on the door to the train drivers compartment. Ofcourse we started to get rather worried and we had eached come up with a detailed scenario of what had happened and how we were going to perish on the tube.

It turned out it was a couple of drunk guys who were fighting on their carriage, and some of the women got really upset with their kids so started to panic and were desparate to get off the tube.

The most uncomforting part of the whole thing was that even though we were only a metre short of being in the station completely, they could not open the doors of the train. It had to be done manually!

Happy 2007 everyone!!!!