News from Mark - Finally

Actually, it's news from Luisa rather than Mark. It appears that they have to work on their communication. Luisa thought Mark was sending us updates, and Mark thought Luisa was doing that. Hmmm. Here is a snip from an email from Luisa:

I must apologize--I thought Mark was forwarding to you our updates from over here, and he thought you were on my master list...sorry! As a result i am going to send many forwards your way with brief summaries of our adventures and of course some pictures.

...and here is the email that she forwarded:
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 02:37:08 -0800 (PST)
Subject: CARNAVAL in Breda!

Hallo!

Well, this past weekend was a blast here in Breda. In most of Europe they celebrate Carnaval--a once Catholic celebration (I believe) before entering the somber time of Lent. In this area Monday and Tuesday were holidays--schools were closed and very few stores/services were available. So pretty much, 4 days of parades, all day drinking, costumes and lots of music! Even during the day the dance bars are open, blaring folky music...kids dancing and parents drinking...It definitely puts our Halloween to shame!


I just can't stress enough that EVERYONE was dressed up in random, colorful outfits, complete with make-up at all times of the day! Mark and I partook on the parades, and headed out in the evenings too. We hadnt really planned for costumes...we went out the first night and were the ONLY ones not in costume! so we quickly remedied that with odds and ends we brought with us. Mark used his very colorful guatemala pants (some of you have had the pleasure), and i went as gypsy like as i could. ha ha, makeup does wonders! When i headed out yesterday i thought surely the debotchery was over, but no, at 12 noon, the bars were full of people in costume, dancing away...

Its very much an event for people of all ages. parents and kids, teenagers, young adults, and even older adults (our grandparents ages!) without kids--they participate for the love of it!

Last night we attended a very unusual service...the mascot of the carnaval is the Baron. He dies after all the festivities. so they hold a "funeral" procession for him. There were probably about 100 people involved in the actual ceremony...people dressed as mourners, nuns, priests, court jesters, angels, the grimm reaper, 2 bands, high society, beggers...all us onlookers were given candles too to make it vigil like. everyone was silent...finally, the dead baron is paraded into the square (a grown man, who i faintly recognized from the restaurant we went to for dinner...) complete with flies on his nose....RANDOM!

I head to Portugal on Friday--can't wait! Mark will stay behind and work...but might head to England for a few days.

I'm attaching some pictures, hope i've minimized them enough! Hope all is well on that end--keep us in the loop! We still havent met many locals yet, but Mark is going to a co-workers party this weekend and his job is to make us friends. we'll see how he does

Dag!

Luisa

Spring Thaw or Winter's Demise?

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.

Eyes etc.

I had my 2nd eye surgery on Wednesday Feb. 14 and it is wonderful to be able to see without glasses. I have discovered that my right eye has sharper vision than my left but that can be as a result of a huge floater in my left eye which I have had for 14 years. The surgeon said that it may be more pronounced for a while because my vision is now much clearer. After a while I will forget about it again. I have been so aware of everything around me that I have been cleaning the house all weekend having become aware of dust ect. that I just didn't see before.....

Anyway, back to work tomorrow. We are starting to build our new shelter for families very soon and I am involved in the preparation and decision making process - this is exciting and daunting at the same time and months of hard work lie ahead.

The weather here is hovering around -8/-10 but the wind chill has made more like -20......very cold indeed. We have had a fair amount of snow but not as much as some other parts of the country where people have been snowed in for days. However to Judith's delight we did have a snow day on Wednesday so she got to sleep in. That was the day of my surgery too and we had to be at the hospital at 6 am - got there a little late at around 6.20 but so was everybody else including the surgeon.

We briefly spoke to Stephen on Saturday. He was on his way to BC/ Whistler for a week of snowboarding with his friends from university. One of them has a friend or family where they can stay - the friend or family probably does not know what they let themselves in for.! He'll be back next weekend and we'll celebrate his birthday.
Miriam and a group of her friends have also gone skiing/snowboarding this weekend at Blue Mountain - a resort about two hours from here.

Also spoke to Mark this morning via Skype - the reception was not very good and he'll try again tomorrow. I know he has been to see his Opa and I am keen to know how that went.
The rest of us are doing well here at home.. though life here may seem a bit dull compared to that of the travellers in this family!

Much love from us all.
Ingrid.

The Wednesday we could have done without

Wednesday, 7 February, actually.

Strike One.

I left work in the middle of the afternoon to be home in time to take some calls because I wanted to go out that evening and did not want to be stuck in the snow-bound traffic in rush hour. Quite a bit of snow had fallen and the roads were not at their best. It was also very cold, around -10 deg C, with a bitter wind blowing. I was driving along the stretch of road you see in this picture on the right. At that time both shoulders of the road were completely covered with snow which was encroaching on to the tarmac, and there was a metre wide strip of slushy snow down the centre of the road. There was also blowing snow that had drifted on to the road in places. I suppose I was in a bit of a dwaal and my right side wheels got into the snow on that side.


I won't bore you with the details of how I slipped and slid all over the icy road but I ended up staring close-up at the bush in the photo on the left. (If you click on the bush you will get the idea.) The tyre tracks show you precisely where my car came to a rest. Fortunately I had my recently-acquired-for-my-birthday used Blackberry with me and phoned the Canadian AA to come haul me out.

While I was sitting there staring back at the road, pondering my fate and feeling suitably sorry for myself, another north-bound car started to do the identical waltz all over the road, in front of my eyes, but this time there was a family in an SUV coming the other way. There was no way either car could avoid a collision. I got out to check and, miraculously, there were no serious injuries although the mother and teenage daughter were in shock. I called 911 and went back to my car to wait for the CAA. Forty minutes, 3 police cars, a fire-engine, 2 ambulances and 3 emergency tow trucks later (no lies,) not to mention traffic backed up out of sight in both directions, my own little ol' CAA emergency tow arrived and the kindly young operator pulled me back on to the road only to put a dagger through my heart. I had blissfully presumed that the only damage was to my front bumper - the stop against the bushes had been oh so gentle. The tree had thrust a spear-like branch through my front grill and right through my radiator where it had broken off and lodged like a poisonous dart. Aaargh!


Strike Two.

When I was finally brought home by the courtesy driver of Newmarket Toyota where my car had been towed to, Ingrid was talking on the phone to Stephen (doing engineering at Queen's University in Kingston, ON.) After giving him a couple of warnings and being repaired once or twice, his computer had finally and completely given up the ghost on that day.


Strike Three...

Judith went ice-skating that evening at an out-door rink in the nearby town of Aurora. When I arrived back from the meeting I had gone to, Ingrid had just come off the phone with her. While she had been skating with her boyfriend someone had stolen her bag with her nice new boots which were fitted with her orthotic inner soles. Altogether these cost a lot of money. But the worst of all was that the bag, in itself of very little value, was the one she had brought from Houghton Primary School when she came to Canada at the age of 10 years. This makes it pricelessly irreplaceable for Judith who was very distraught at the time.


...and Out

Today (Sunday) I went and took some photos of the area where I went off the road. I noticed two things: 1) The entire east-side shoulder of 2nd Concession had been very well snow-ploughed; 2) There were other tyre marks than mine indicating that others had also gone off the road close to where I had. I have put all the photos together in an album which you can get to from Site of Accident 7 Feb under Links.

Google have changed a few things with their blogging and brought a Beta version into production. In spite of saying that nothing would change on my blog, my new pictures are no longer enlarging in 2 stages and I have lost my list of (family) members. It may take us a little while to get that sorted out. Have a good week!


The following explanation of dwaal is offered by the official Johannesburg web site:

Dwaal (pronounced dwarl) - Used to indicate a lack of concentration or focus. Say a friend is talking to you but your mind is elsewhere. When the friend finishes speaking and looks at you as if expecting an answer, your response would be: "Sorry, I was in a bit of a dwaal. Could you repeat that?" Alternatively a dwaal could mean you are lost and wandering around aimlessly. An example: "I couldn't remember how to get there, so I drove around in a dwaal for a while before I found the right turning." From Joburg.

Another One To Tick Off

Well we did it. Ingrid and I have been to a Super Bowl Party! Actually it was a lovely evening and a lot of fun with a lot of banter. Some friends of ours, Greg, Margy and their sons, hosted us and about 20 others on Sunday night to join 93 million-plus viewers in watching this American sports spectacular - The Super Bowl: the National Football League Championship; American football, not to be confused with European football aka. soccer. True to McCann form, both Ingrid and I managed to be involved in wine-spills. Fortunately there were no carpets involved, though, I am embarrassed to say, I have now left my mark on Margy's brand, spanking new guest book.




Some friends have been asking about Judith's hair, is it growing back, what colour is it, etc? Well, as you can see, her eyebrows have completely regrown - they have looked better than mine for quite a while but I gess that doesn't take much, and her hair is coming on really nicely.




I thought I would show you these shots Judith took of a grey squirrel stealing birdseed from the window box outside our kitchen window. It's quite an athletic leap of nearly 2 metres that he has to make to get there - only to be chased off when we see him!

Of interest to family... I have created an album with pictures of Opa that we took while in Holland. The link is on the left.