Zidane Headbutt Game

Mid-summer update

"Mah spoon is too big!"

ahem.

Trip to Ottawa/Montreal/Quebec City was cool, parents and their choir were really good actually (less screamers, more singing). Album is here
, go check it out! Montreal was my favorite, lots of culture and stuff to do (Jazz Fest was on), and walking around Old Montreal during the day and night feels like being back in the 1800s. Ottawa and Quebec City are pretty as well, but Ottawa is pretty much a government town (everything is something federal this, national that), and Quebec City is a bit more laid-back than Montreal. We visited this island in the St. Lawrence River just northeast of QC, basically covered in local farms and vinyards and stuff. Drive/eat/repeat. The people didn't speak very much English, so at one point a woman buying strawberries translated for us.

Haha Dad was trying to speak French, so I taught him "de rien" (you're welcome equivalent). When he passed napkins to some guy in a Tim Horton's, he said "derriere". :P Generally people in the tourism/hospitality industry know English (restaurants, hotels, etc), but all the signs are mainly in French (not too hard to figure out "no parking"). Another oddity in QC was that in the older part of the city, the 4-way lights were either all red at the same time or green, and the walk sign only turned on with the reds. My brother got caught in the middle of the intersection once because he went with the greens :P.

It's interesting too, once you hit Quebec the Tim Horton's (that's our traditional food source when we're driving) switch from having chili to baked beans. Go figure.

Finally figured out a rough schedule for the next few months, if I can stick to it I should be done my data collection and analysis by the end of the month, my thesis by the end of August, and done defending and revisions by the end of September, just in time for the Oct 3 deadline. Then I'll probably stay in Edmonton to work for a couple months before heading off to China in December, and travelling for about a month or two. Yi is thinking of going with me, since he'll probably just go from China to Australia for med school directly. I'll probably start off in Hong Kong, then head by train to the interior and do some mountain climbing, try to find some temples etc. From Chengdu I can catch a train to Tibet, then to Golmud, courtesy of the new railroad that just opened. There are various disagreeing opinions on the effects of increasing access, and now might be the only time to see the original culture before it is diluted by modernism. Afterwards, take the train to Xian-Beijing-Shanghai, and perhaps go visit Anhui province (Yellow Mountain). Depending on how much money I have, I may go back to HK before I fly back to Canada, or hit up Japan for a little while (mainly the rural areas like Hokkaido or Okinawa).

Bah, all this is moot if I don't finish my degree on time.

*mentally kick myself in the pants to stop blogging and start working*

cheers, Ange