Edmonton report +

Before I report on our trip to Edmonton, may I recommend to anyone interested that my sister, Heather's, blog which I have just begun to read because the whole notion of a blog is so new to me, though she informed us of its start a long time ago, is thought-provoking. I have just finished reading her thoughts and the thoughts of someone she quoted on forgiveness, and it is all worth a considered read. Probably far more worth reading than anything I'm likely to share today.

Jovani and the girls and I made a trip to Edmonton so that I could see a doctor referred by my GP. While I'm not interested in reporting the nature of the problem that led to the referral on this medium, let me just report that I am fine, there IS no problem. I didn't think there would be, neither my GP nor I was worried, but we agreed better safe than sorry. I am safe, for the time being, and now I know that I am too.

The weekend was made into a family trip. My daughter, Aislinn's, best Baha'i buddy lives in St. Albert, so I made reservations for our second night, Sunday, at the Ramada Inn and Waterpark, and invited Taea's family to join us for a swim in the hotel's pool. They took us out for a lovely all-you-can-eat-buffet brunch at the Greenwood Inn. Fabulous food and fabulous new friends. Jovani and I delight in these new friends, whom we met at Baha'i summer school, in part because Jovani and Mladen share the same sense of humour in many things, many interests, and Mladen is Croatian. He's the only Croatian we know, and we LOVE diversity - if we wanted all our friends to be white Canadian women born in Quebec and raised in Belize, married to well-traveled brown Honduran men, with children born and raised in Belize and Canada, we'd be pretty limited, wouldn't we? The Croat in Mladen comes out in intriguing moments.

I'm a bit ahead of myself, however. The first night we stayed in Leduc, at the home of Karin and Ian Ferguson. Karin and I go back to when we met on Baha'i Women Converse when I was still in Belize, needing contact through the internet outside of Belize. Aislinn was a baby at the time. Then Karin and Ian pioneered to Belize, and we left while they were still there. We did a lot of commiserating over our experiences. Karin made a lovely dinner for us. We had stopped at an IGA on the way there and bought dessert and some non-alcoholic wine. The wine was interesting to me. I've never had the real stuff so didn't know what to compare it to, but, when I was in my early teens, a girlfriend of mine, who also did not drink, and I had enough curiosity to know what it all tasted like that we decided to smell every bottle in her dad's liquor cabinet. The taste of this non-alcoholic wine was so very similar to that smell, and the lingering smell of just about every bar I've ever walked into, that I kept checking the label to make sure I hadn't misread it. After I had finished off two glasses of my own and a couple of the girls', because it wasn't what they expected (they like the sparkling grape juices), I decided it couldn't be alcoholic because, with never having had any but an accidental mouthful in my life, three glasses would have made me decidedly tipsy had I misread the label. Not to mention that my husband, during his drinking days, got violently ill after one beer, so he would be unlikely to be able to keep it down if I had misread the label.

Karin and Ian are moving to another apartment, and Karin felt disinclined to pack a lot of stuff to take with them, I guess, and it isn't exactly garage sale season, so we left with the trunk of the car considerably fuller than when we arrived. Of particular note is the coffee maker they gave us - one that can be programmed and has a thermos rather than an element to keep the coffee warm. THAT I was most delighted to accept. Didn't even have to press a button when I got up this morning.

So, we arrived at the Greenwood Inn to meet Mladen and Lorine and family shortly before 11 a.m. The Ryhards were a little late, so Meadow, one HAPPY camper, had her fill of strawberries while Jovani and I had our coffee. We ate when the Ryhards arrived, a most excellent, multi-national buffet, too much to possibly even try one of everything, and then we motored down to the Ramada, where Jovani and the children swam and Lorine and Mladen and I chatted. I had a touch of a cold and little desire to swim feeling that way. Before the swimming, I made a quick phone call to our friends Nooshin and Darius Naqvi, to let them know where we were if they were able to join us.

This next part requires a bit of explanation. Remember we live in WHITESVILLE, Northern Alberta. Save for the recent influx of Filipinos, there are all of about ten non-white people in our area, including Jovani and our children, and our children only look non-white compared to all the blondes in the area. The visible minorities are very visible, and we only know them professionally. None are people who would be calling either of us on the phone.

Roughly over a month ago I was IM'd by a delightful East Indian friend I had met in Swift Current the first year we were in Canada. I had not heard from him in the three years since then, but we had several conversations over the internet more recently. He knew nothing (that I could remember having told him) about our bakery in Belize or what we made there. He also did not, to my knowledge, have our phone number here. That sort of thing is easy enough to look up on the internet, I suppose. In any case, a few days before we left for Edmonton, the phone rang. I answered, and it was a very deep, masculine East Indian voice saying, "Do you have any Nablo's Bakery whole wheat bread?"

Blink.

My first thought was, "This is Robin (my brother) playing a joke on me. Nah, he just called earlier today and he's in Honduras, so I don't think so." Robin is good at all accents, so it was a reasonable first thought. My second thought was that it was the above-mentioned friend, but I discarded that thought just as quickly - if he remembered we ran a bakery in Belize, he wouldn't know the name of it or what we sold. I also dismissed the possibility because he is WAY too busy to be playing jokes like that.

The voice was still talking and asking for bread, and FINALLY introduced itself. "This is Ram from Belize, remember me?"

As a matter of fact, I did, instantly. Ram and his wife had a restaurant in Belize, briefly, and I had one of the best meals I've ever had there. Entirely vegan too. Ram was standing in Nooshin's store, where they had been chatting when he mentioned Belize, she mentioned us, he asked for the phone number and .... So, after the swim, Jovani called Ram to let him know where we were if he wanted to come see us. He and his wife (whose name I forget, again) and their lovely daughter, Suni, came and sat in Smitty's with us, and Nooshin and Darius, for a little while after the Ryhards left (and Aislinn and Taea had a very reluctant good-bye). I had considered not calling Ram, despite his encouragement to do so, because our time in Edmonton was already so full, but I'm so glad we did. I think it was something both families needed, in some way or other.

That day was Jovani's birthday, and interestingly enough, the day before had been Nooshin's. Nooshin brought the remainder of her birthday ice cream cake for everyone. We all sang happy birthday to them. After all the lovely guests left, the Vasquez family dragged ourselves up to the hotel room, where my computer-whiz daughter, Aislinn, got me connected to the internet on my laptop so we could all check our mail, I ordered delivery Swiss Chalet for Jovani for his birthday dinner and pizza and chicken wings for the girls and I, and they watched movies and I read until it was time to sleep. I will share an amusing thing about this - my family was not familiar with either food delivery or wake-up calls. When I called the front desk to ask for a 6 a.m. wake-up call, Jovani looked at me wide-eyed and said, "You can do that?" It has been almost five years, and he still is learning both big and little differences between North America and Central America. Actually, any major hotel in Central America would provide a wake-up call, but he's not accustomed to staying in hotels. My family is still at the stage of enjoying a stay in a hotel room as a grand adventure. May they continue to be delighted by such simple things.

My doctor's appointment on Monday morning took a full three hours, but it was three hours well worth it. When we got in to the clinic in the morning, and I checked in, I told the receptionist, "My family is with me, can you tell me how long I can tell them they will have to wait?" She responded, "Two and a half hours."

I turned around to inform Jovani of this, suggesting that he take them somewhere else for that time. He refused - I had been directing him while he drove, and he didn't want to get lost. The girls all complained that they wanted to go somewhere else, and I said, (in front of a gentleman sitting in the waiting room), "Sorry, girls, Daddy isn't taking you anywhere else because Mommy's the navigator and Daddy doesn't want to get lost." The grin on the other gentleman's face grew so big I thought his face was going to split.

So, the girls sat down to play a quiet game, and invited Jovani to join, which he did, quite happily, while the already huge grin on the other gentleman's face got even bigger, if that's possible. It is a game requiring coordination and Jovani didn't have any! Apparently after I was called in and the receptionist had a free half hour, she joined them and taught them a game too. Jovani really appreciated her help.

After the appt, we drove over to the West Edmonton Mall so that Jessa could see the fire-breathing dragon in the cinema. Unfortunately, Jessa just wanted to go home by the time we left the dr, AND, it was the one day there was no fire-breathing dragon, due to maintenance. There was a dragon, but no fire, and Jessa didn't care by that time. We still managed to stop at two other little places in the mall to get a few Intercalary Day gifts, and actually, where we entered the mall was a Chinese store that had live seafood in tanks. I knew it would delight Jovani, and Aislinn, the other person familiar with the store from her grade six trip, helped me to make Jovani cover his eyes and then lead him to the seafood section. He's just so fun to share new experiences with, his childlike delight in everything is contagious.

The girls each touched a live crab, and we bought a few small exotic juices and things. Jovani laughed and ooh-ed and aah-ed at every new thing. The live seafood. The fountain with live carp. The large, long, scaly silver tail that led up to the dragon that didn't breathe fire that day. He wasn't too impressed, (and neither were the girls) to see the men kissing. This is not homophobia on his part - a beloved cousin of his was gay, and died of AIDS in Honduras. I didn't see the PDA in the mall, and didn't turn to see it when Jovani mentioned it. I don't particularly enjoy watching PDA's, either hetero or homo. However, then Jovani described it, a little stunned that it had happened (we really are country hicks) and it sounded cultural rather than sexual and I said so. He acknowledged it could have been so. It did bother Jessa and Aislinn though, and all I could say is that most people don't care what strangers think of them.

So, we left the mall, tired and mostly happy (Jessa was WAY past wanting to go home), and, because I had forgotten to get directions from the internet on how to get out of Edmonton from the West Ed on to the right highway, we wound up taking the scenic route through St. Albert and Morinville, and eventually getting on the highway that took us through Slave Lake rather than the other route through Whitecourt. It may have been a bit longer, but Jovani has long wanted to know where Morinville is and we had never been through St. Albert, so it was worth relying on my intuition and vague memories of which highway we were supposed to be on to see something new, tired and grumpy though we were.

We arrived home shortly after 10 p.m. on Monday night. Sushi just about went nuts when I walked in the door, not knowing whether she wanted to wag her tail or try to climb up my leg. I picked her up and she licked my face while her whole body went crazy in an ecstatic wag. We went to bed very quickly, and I let the girls sleep in before getting them up to go to school. Grandpa drove Aislinn into town a couple of hours late.

And now I have cupcakes to make for the annual Intercalary lunch that I make for Whitelaw school. Happy Ayyam-i-Ha, everyone.