Our mid term break had arrived. Em picked us up on Thursday to drive us to her home to meet the family. I was really excited to meet Em’s parents; they’d already made so many plans for us, baked muffins for us and somehow managed to be so hospitable without even being around in person.
We arrived in the evening to a meal in the oven, a table set for three and a note saying welcome home and telling us how to finish off dinner. The Lib and Aubrey- Em’s parents, were out for the evening at curling (a bizarre Canadian past time, almost like lawn bowls on ice), so we sat down to one of the most enjoyable home cooked meals I’ve had. Lib and Aubrey’s house is on a farm just outside of a town called Orillia (which is about the size of Hamilton). Tall trees, the smell of hay, Spitzy the dog, wooden fences dividing the snow covered paddocks and a barn all give the house a really rustic and homely feel that I didn’t realize I’d missed so much while living in the currently snow engulfed basement at Laurier.
I managed to stay awake to say hello to Lib and Aubrey before hitting the hay and having one of the best nights sleep I’d had in a long time.
Friday Em like an excited little kid at Christmas got the house up and running early for a day of skiing. We borrowed goggles and ski pants, drove 15 minutes and arrived at St Louis, a local ski hill about half the size of Mt Buller with perfectly groomed, powder covered runs-ahhhhhh!
A 70% chance of rain predicted by the radio was non existent as we were blessed with blue skies and sunshine! Lib and Aubrey spoilt us and bought our lift tickets. Em, Lib, Aubrey, Em’s uncle, Em’s friend Courtney and family friend Anne all came to St Louis for a ski and to meet “The Aussies” that Em had frequently mentioned. It was amazing how everyone down-talked the powder and conditions of the runs; their idea of average/bad skiing conditions would be equal to Australia’s once in a blue moon best possible conditions.
After skiing for 5 hours we went home for a shower before we jumped into the car for a visit to the local curling rink for a lesson in curling from coaching extraordinaire-Lib! Basically, curling involves, standing on ice, with a 20kg piece of granite with handle attached to it called a “rock”. You hold the handle of the rock, put one foot on a wood block, and using your leg, you push off the block and extend your arm and let go of the rock pushing it to the other end of the rink; all whilst gliding on the ice in a lunged position. Easy right?! HA! Lib tried her best to help me reach my full potential in half an hour, I’m definitely going to make the Olympics soon. Aubrey’s pork tenderloin dinner was certainly polished off after a day one of the Ford boot camp.
We woke to a very cold morning, the power had gone off over night and consequently, so had the heating. It was -13C outside (-25C with wind chill), power lines were down and cars had been blown off the road earlier that morning. We couldn’t go snow shoeing to the Ford’s cottage because walking across a lake in a snow storm isn’t the smartest thing to do. Instead Em and Lib took us to the local farmers market, to a local bakery for coffee and cake, and to check out town. We then went for a walk on the lake. Drawing pictures in the snow and mucking around on the lake was really strange, the whole town was deserted because of the weather, so it was really eerie… you could see shadows of people in the distance and islands further out on the lake. In the afternoon we went to Em’s friend Jess’ place for drinks and nibbles before heading home for some dinner and getting ready for a night out at the local bar- “The Tucks” a.k.a. “sucks”. I had a great night with the girls, I got to meet all of Em’s primary school friends (known collectively as the rat pack) and also realize how standing in the cold waiting in line to get in at a bar in Melbourne is NOTHING. Mum often worries about me going out without a coat in Melbourne weather; you should see some of the (non existent) skirts and dresses a lot of the girls where out here. I cannot believe they don’t die of frostbite while waiting to get into the bars here.
The next morning, Aubury cooked up a big pancake breakfast complete with Canadian maple syrup. Yum!! After which Em, Lib and I jumped into the car so we could go dog sledding. Problem was, the dogs didn’t turn up. Half an hour after they were supposed to arrive the people who were supposed to bring the dogs called and said that they weren’t coming-bummer. Oh well, off we went to a rat pack baby shower. Em’s friend recently had a baby girl and it was time for the gang to meet her, so “the aussie” came along too.
It was pretty funny by the end of the shower how many times I had been introduced as “Kat…she’s from Australia” or “this is Kat, she’s Australian”; I started joking that it was beginning to sound like I had a disability or something when it was mentioned I was Australian. As soon as those words were mentioned everyone’s faces lit up with a smile followed by an “oHhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ok!”. Apart from making baby Amelia-mae cry, the baby shower was pretty fun; it was good to meet all the girls Em had been talking about and put faces to names.
A visit to the neighboring horse stable finished off the afternoon. Lib took me to see this multimillion-dollar facility that houses 25+ horses in winter, complete with indoor dressage arena. Our last night was spent doing washing and packing before our early morning departure for Montreal via Toronto and Ottowa.
Aubrey and Lib have invited us back for Easter; which I’m REALLY dreading. I mean they’ll probably force feed us the smallest amounts of really bad food and just leave us alone the whole time. Kidding! I’m really excited to head back to the Ford’s and hang out with my adopted Canadian family. After 14 hours of travel, we finally got to Montreal. Everyone suddenly spoke French. People for some reason automatically spoke to me in French and in English to Pat. Peter our fellow exchange student (and token crazy Dutchman) met us at the bus station with two other exchange students Manon and Sam; both from France. Manon and Sam were our translators for the rest of the week, they definitely came in handy once we got to town we were staying just outside of (St Gabriel de Branden) where most people spoke French and little to no English.
The cottage was about 1.5 hrs North of Montreal and sits on the edge of a frozen lake. Tobogganing down the hill to the lake was really fun; you could build up quite a bit of speed, then as you hit the lake, the snow at the bottom stops you as you sink into it.
Our first day in Quebec was spent at a snow tubing park. Who knew a full park existed solely for tubing; there were over 40 different runs you could go on and lifts line with tubes that you sat in to get up the hill. Unfortunately the place was filled with young high school students, who acted annoyingly and accordingly. Then again… I don’t think 5 exchange students were that much better…constantly pelting each other with snowballs.
The next day was dog sledding! The brochure said we would be quite involved with the dogs, and that was no exaggeration. We harnessed them up, helped pull the sleds out, lined them up, sat in and drove the sleds!
The dogs went crazy! If you’ve ever picked up a pet from a kennel after a holiday and you hear all the dogs howling and barking at once, multiply that by about 10 and that was what 180 dogs going crazy all at once sound like. The French girls and I fell in love with one white husky who apparently is a smoothie with every girl that comes sledding, appropriately his name translated from French means “hug”.
It was really nerve racking standing there at the front of the sled trying to hold down the two lead dogs trying to jump up and lick my face, keep 10 dogs in line and wait for the sled master to give me the signal to run and jump in the sled.
It’s really hard trying to control a dog sled…You can put as much weight on the brake at the back of the sled as you want to, these dogs will still fly and generally average 25km/hr! We drove a fair distance to get to the sledding place and it was worth it; we travelled about 20kms in a bit over an hour, and saw areas that no cars or people can get to, just the dogs and whoever is in the sled. We went past a beaver dam, sledded over a lake, ducked and dived in between trees, up hills, down hills. I was actually pretty nervous most of the time, paddy was driving and isn’t one to enjoy using the break. We fell off three times and absolutely nailed a tree another time. My back took a fair bashing as a result. But it was definitely worth it!
I woke up with a bruised, scratched and swollen back (swollen, I know, who gets a swollen back?! Apparently you can); you couldn’t really see my spine for about four vertebrae, but I guess that can happen after 10 dogs drag a sled over your back as you lie face first down in the snow…Insert visual here…
Voltaren was my savior and got me through the next day of skiing at Mt Tremblant. Also worth the pain. Mt Tremblant has 95 runs, has been named Northeast America’s best ski resort 13 years in a row and second best after Whistler. The ski station at the bottom is really pretty, but almost too perfect. Manon and I both said it reminded us of Disneyland. I started off by taking Peter up and down the run next to the magic carpet and teaching him how to turn, along with the difference between a pizza and French fry! Which worked surprisingly well until Peter was too cool to follow me and decided to build up some speed before skiing straight into the fence at the bottom of the magic carpet-much to the amusement of the lifty at the bottom. We were a bit worried that Peter would be hurt or turned off skiing for the rest of the afternoon, but luckily he stood up straight away and yelled “That was awesome!” before heading off too his lesson.
Pat, Manon and I spent the rest of the day exploring the mountain. A lot of encouragement and careful choice of runs was used to help Manon; she bravely chose to come skiing with us after her last experience 3 years ago when she broke her leg. We even managed to get Manon to come down a black run by the end of the day with us, pretty impressive effort. As you would expect, we all collapsed in a heap that night after yet another tough day exploring more of Canada.
My last day at the cottage was spent studying. The realities of only having 5 weeks left in the semester started to hit after 4+ hours of studying and attempting to understand the notes the physiology professor has given us on protein biosynthesis-yay!
The day was finished with a walk across the lake to watch Paddy hurtle down a hill between/into trees on a toboggan.
The next morning the alarm went off at 4am for our trip back to university.
