Last weekend we hosted a young woman from China (Wuha) who, unfortunately, we didn't get to spend nearly enough time with. She was in Ottawa as part of the International Volunteer Exchange Programme run by MCC, and we put her up in our spare bedroom. Her sessions each day went from 8:30 a.m. until 9:00 p.m., and by the time we picked her up and got her back to our house she was tired and so were we. (The kids don't seem to understand that you should sleep in on the weekends.) So, we didn't really get to talk too much in the evenings. But then, last Sunday, she and another woman from her hometown in China spent a couple of hours in my kitchen cooking. There was a potluck meal last Sunday night for all the (59) volunteers and their host families and so they made a couple of traditional Chinese dishes. And I paid close attention and tried to take notes as they went along. Of course, they had brought with them a couple of the more difficult to find ingredients, but they were kind enough to leave them with me when they left, and the one who is currently doing a placement in Calgary has assured me that you can get these things in T&T (which we now have in Ottawa!) Of course, they told me that it wasn't actually traditional Chinese food, because they couldn't get the spices they needed for that, but they recreated it using what they could find here. Tasted amazing, though, anyhow.
They were very kind and at the same time as they made their dishes for the potluck, they made an extra dish (Twice-cooked pork) which they left in the fridge for us to eat Monday night. It was fabulous. The potluck and programme last Sunday night were really great too, but unfortunately A came down with something and started with a fever. It was a flu or something, and thankfully didn't last long. She missed school on Monday but then was pretty much over it by Tuesday.
We've exchanged email addresses with Wuha, and hopefully we can keep in touch with her wherever she ends up going (she's in Washington state for her placement right now). And when we go to China for a visit with the kids, I'd love to see her there.
Last weekend was also busy because the kids started swimming lessons on Saturday morning and the girls were invited to a birthday party (their first) on Saturday afternoon. I was laying 50/50 odds that the girls would actually go into the pool, but they surprised me and both went in and said they had fun. Not as much fun as B though, as evidenced by the fact that he screamed for about 30 minutes straight after DoT hauled him out of the pool at the end of the lesson. It was awful. I wonder how many people wondered if we were crazy white people abducting a little Chinese boy. :-) Anyhow, yesterday at their second lesson they all still loved it and we were able to bribe B out of the pool and out of the complex without a major meltdown.
The birthday party last Saturday afternoon was crazy. I think Shauna (the birthday girl) had invited her whole class, and most of them showed up. I'm a firm believer of limiting the number of kids to the child's age.... i.e., if you're turning five, you get to invite five kids (of course I'm still hoping to avoid hosting birthday parties for a couple more years). It was pretty chaotic in the house and it was the longest two hours I've lived in a long time. So then the igrls went to school on Monday morning and came home with an invite to another kids birthday party which happened yesterday. I was still recovering from the first one, so I made DoT take them. :-)
The weather in Ottawa is very mild these days. Which makes it perfect weather to make a snowman. A few years ago a friend of mine gave us a snowman kit, which we finally were able to use today. Poor B napped during the whole event, but E and A had a great time creating our snowman. Here he is...
Of course, then they declared that was 'daddy' and proceeded to make a snowman to represent all of us. I'll let you decide who's who (hint, the little one in the middle is B) ...
I'll have to end here if there is any hope in getting this post published this weekend (believe it or not I actually wrote most of this a week ago). I'll leave you with some random pictures taken this week. The first one is from Friday following classroom Olympics at the girls' school. As you can see we have a couple of athletes in the family... one silver and one gold medal (don't ask me why the colours are as they are). Not bad. :-)
