What a difference between the previous two weeks and this last week. The previous weeks we had white-outs and icy winter conditions taking the temperature to -23 degrees C, one 50-car and another 72-car pile-up on the same 400 highway in the same afternoon, and then this week we saw the temperature rise to a balmy +4 today. However, spring comes at a price as these photos illustrate.
We can now look forward to at least a month of dirty grey-brown heaps of ice as the lovely, white, melting snow exposes all the debris and muck and dirt that was shovelled up at the beginning of winter and then covered over with fresh falls of snow as the winter progressed.
It left me wondering if the melting of the polar icecaps due to global warming is going to provide a new paradise for palaeontologists, enabling them to sift through the fossil accumulations of millenia becoming exposed in a matter of a generation or two. How exciting !:-(In the middle of February the universities had reading week so that students could prepare for their examinations. Stephen and some of his friends felt that the best way to prepare would be to take a snowboarding trip to Whistler Mountain in British Columbia. After that he came home for the weekend so that he could celebrate his birthday with Mom's Home Cooking and a family get-together. Even Mark, who is in Holland, got in on the act with a phone call courtesy of Skype which meant we could see him on the home computer.
Left, Stephen talking to Mark in Holland. Judith and her boyfriend in background.
Right, Mark talking to the family.
Mark has just come back to Breda, Holland, where is new home is for the year, after a week of snowboarding in the French Alps. He must be exhausted. Please pause for a moment to feel sorry for him.
Luisa's (Mark's girlfriend) good news is that she has been accepted to do her Master's at the University of Toronto, to start in September. Congratulations, Luisa.
Judith and her boyfriend are off to Kingston and Ottawa for four days this coming week. During the school March break most of the universities have Open Days for interested high school students to come and see and ask their questions. Judith is planning on studying kinesiology, Mark to do engineering.
Judith had her ears pierced last week. Click on the image to enlarge and see the earing.
Ingrid went along and had one ear peirced that had closed up.
