Fare Well On Your Way

More farewells. Last weekend, I met Manny and Genny for sushi at Gloucester (pity we were there only in the evening - I could have gone outlet shopping! But we did step into Loblaw's - it's the size of Carrefour back home x 5. I almost went ballistic buying fruits...). After dinner, we went to their place, and they were Skypeing their daughter Gemma (she's teaching English in Japan) for a while. I got to say hi to Gemma too :-) The Villanuevas are very musical - they play all kinds of instruments - so we ended our Saturday evening around the piano, singing a couple of favourites.

Then on Monday, I went back to Esplanade Laurier to meet with the Best Practices gang one more time. Hopped off to lunch with Peter, who'd just returned from his Berlin conference meeting games experts. The afternoon went by so quickly, I hardly had time to prepare the gifts and cards properly before I headed off to Donna's place for dinner. That was really fun - I got to cook with her! She had a couple of recipes and we worked on them for about an hour to get everything out. Some of the dishes were really simple, yet looked so classy!

The next day, I lunched with some folks from Evaluation - over Canadian pub grub which they said I simply had to try... And now, I've just finished writing up thank you cards and preparing gifts for the rest of the people I'll be meeting over the next 5-6 days.

It's funny that while I was preparing to come here, I'd thought that these last 2 weeks would be a gradual wind down as formal attachment activities draw to a close. On the contrary, these final 2 weeks are turning out to be pretty frenetic! I didn't anticipate the farewells here, or that I would be preparing this number of thank you cards and gifts (and receiving many gifts too). And, erm, I didn't anticipate that I would have so much to pack back... whoever said the winter chill would be a disincentive for shopping is so wrong!

[One of the gifts I received: Canadian Inushuk. The Inushuk is said to help guide a person to find his/her way. It is said that long ago, travellers would build an Inushuk with arms pointing east-west, so as to provide direction for future travellers.]