» photo albums 2007/CANADA

Well, Nico’s exam is over and it’s out of his hands now! It was a long day and he said it was very difficult. Now he has to wait until the third week of August to get the results… yep that long! 🙁 And what if he doesn’t pass? The next exam is in October, but by the time you get the results of this test, the deadline to apply for the new one has long passed. I would think they will make an exception for people that need to re-take a test, but in another blog we read you’d have to apply for the one after that in February. I don’t know… Nico will have to ask about that!

Tuesday, June 5th (part 2)

After dinner Nico went to study some more and I went with Cortney and Geneva to visit her grandma and go to a kid’s playground nearby. At her grandma’s we also saw Cortney’s aunt Charlotte again, who we had met the last time we were in town. She also came with us for a bit to that playground. It’s called “It’s A Blast”, you had to take off your shoes and walk around on socks. The biggest thing in there is a big structure you can climb into, with tubes, slides and much more. We played in there until it closed at 8.

Wednesday, June 6th

First of all.. happy birthday to my nephew Sander!! I meant to call, but when I thought of it, it was already so late in Holland… 🙁

On to our Canadian endeavors.. this is Nico’s big day! Tim dropped him off around 7.30 and because he wasn’t allowed to bring a cellphone, we didn’t hear from him during the day, we just had to wait until after 5.30pm when he’d be done.

In the meantime I thought I’d go shopping 😉 Jack gave us his bikes to use (thank you!) and I went to Walmart by bicycle! Quite an adventure… streets are not made for bicyclists here, so in the small ones it’s ok, but on the big ones you want to stay on the sidewalks! And Victoria Avenue doesn’t have sidewalks all the way, so I had to figure out an alternative route, esp. because I had to cross the busy ring road (highway 1) and there are not a lot of options for that. I went to Victoria (crossing the main streets just by walking), then biked on the sidewalk until the north service road started (a smaller road alongside the main one) with an underpass at the ring road, then crossed Victoria to get on the parking lot of the first shopping area, then continued on the parking lot and another street to finally find the Walmart 🙂 I spent some hours there and somehow made my way back with all my purchases (stopping at Tim Horton’s for a donut and yummy English Toffee cappuccino 🙂 ).

At 6pm Nico got back ‘home’ and Tim ordered in: a combo of pizza, lasagne, dry ribs, Caesar salad and garlic toast. Pig out time!

And at 9pm we went to the Distrikt for the new ‘metal Wednesday’ thing, to see some of the friends! It was great to see a lot of friends and other familiar faces again, like Sandra, Jaimie, Lisa, Jim, Justin, Tyler, Naiomi, Kristie, Heather, Ryan, Nathan, Krista, Ted (am I forgetting anyone??) and last but not least Dana who I used to occasionally chat with, but hadn’t seen online anymore in years.

Thursday, June 7th

This afternoon Tim showed us a few upper class neighbourhoods in this southeastern part of town. Esp. Wascana View was crazy.. huge houses, but to be honest no warm atmosphere at all, it all looked so clean and empty, as if people don’t really live there. It was fun to see though and we must’ve been lucky we didn’t get pulled over by the police, driving around slowly in an old and shady white van, taking pictures of rich houses 😉 We also saw some parts that were actually really nice.

The plan for tonight is to see Marlo and Stace, tomorrow Stu’s girlfriend Christina plays at the Drink with her cover band Sonic Orchid, on Saturday we’re invited to the Stephensons for a BBQ and Sunday to Christina.. our schedule is filling up haha (next Monday maybe to Saskatoon for a day, haven’t made definite plans yet).