Winterlude....

Guess what happened last night.....it snowed again. Yesterday in blizzard like conditions we had our first snow day at school. Most classes had 5 or 6 students turn up and you guessed it, i had 18 turn up (lucky me!!!) We merged two classes together and had a "fun filled day" with gym, comics and watching a film in class (a relevant one of course!!!)

We had around 10-15cm of snow during the school day -which made it interesting to drive in - then we had another 10-15cm over night, which made it quite eventful trying to "dig" our way out of the driveway this morning.....we owe a HUGE THANKS TO ED - our wonderful neighbour -who used his wonderful snow blower to clear the last part of our drive, that was waist high - due to the lovely snow plough that plows our street!!! ;) Now onto the real stuff....winterlude!!!

Today was the day....the beginning of Winterlude. The Winter festival that brings Canadians, Americans and International visitors to Ottawa to celebrate one of Canada's finest events. Held over 3 weekends (this is the 1st obviously), the event is home to ice sculpting, concerts, aboriginal performances and stories, ice skating on the longest ice-skating rink in the world (8km on the canal), eating the wonderful Beaver Tails....so delicious, fireworks to celebrate Quebec's 400th year. We saw some wonderful ice sculptures today - from scorpions to horses to well you'll see in the pics...

After a wonderful and eventful day, we headed out to the CLEE dinner (ITF function) where we would meet all the other exchangees in Ottawa. Most of them were a tad older than us (similar to our parents ages), but good for a laugh and to listen to how their experiences went. After a catch up and meet and greet - we ventured home - ready for a beer, or two, a bit of tucker and a good old fashioned snooze....we'll need the rest for the next few weeks....going to be fun!!!