Turkey Dinners

As announced earlier, I travelled to Cobourg (that's the way it is really spelled) on thursday night. It is a cute town with 18,000 inhabitants right on the shore of Lake Ontario between Toronto and Kingston and it is home to Rebecca, my Vice President of External Relations. She lives in a big house with a pool that looks just as the houses in the Northamerican countryside that I know from TV. I was very happy staying in a big, clean house and sleeping in a comfortable bed.

On friday Rebecca took me downtown, to the beach and to Walmart. Every stop on this journey was special. The Walmart because it was, like everything in Canada, sooooooo huge and had everything one could need. I think I could live in a Walmart store. The rest of the day we watched makeover TVshows and prepared the food for the night. Because Rebecca's dad is working on sunday they had their Thanksgiving Dinner on Friday. 32 relatives arrived in the late afternoon, bringing more food. I was introduced to everybody, but I wasn't the only international guest. Rebecca's uncle's family has an exchange student from Finland living with them. I exchanged some views over Canada with her and spent the rest of the evening talking to the aunts and uncles about their jobs. One uncle is a funeral director, the other one has an apple farm (which I consider very Canadian, so I was particularly interested) and the other one builds roads. After everyone was stuffed with turkey, mashed potatoes and pies the relatives left and Rebecca and I went to friends of her boyfriend's parents. They were having a dinner party and were quite drunk when we arrived, so we had fun times. One of the guests was originally from the Netherlands and opposite to most Canadians who claim they are Dutch he actually spoke Dutch. What a nice opportunity to speak Dutch, especially because his Dutch is as messed up as mine at the moment. On saturday morning I played Wii Fit with Rebecca and her Mum. That was really cool and made me miss my Wii. I'll get one if I ever spend more than half a year in one place. After lunch I took the train to travel to my second Thanksgiving destination. I enjoyed travelling by train very much. The rails first go right along Lake Ontario and the scenery is very very beautiful, with all those trees (very Canadian) which are changing colour at the moment. Unfortunately my camera's battery was empty all the time and I didn't bring my charger, so I couldn't take any pictures of anything. Whitney and Rebecca took some, maybe I can get them. Back to the trains...they also have power plugs for every seat (not as in Germany where you have to span the cord along other people if you dn't happen to sit at a table). The trains also have wireless internet and are quite comfortable, so I had a good time. The only not really ideal thing is that you are seated in a car according to the station you are leaving the train at. I understand that they need a way to organize their passengers, but it is not really convenient leaving a train when everybody else in your car does.

Arriving to London, Whitney, my Local Committee President picked me up and took me to her parent's house. Their house exactly looks like the ones we know from American series playing in the suburbs. Double garage, pool and a beautiful garden. We had dinner and then went out to a party at the Penthouse of Whitney's High School friends. Everybody was in town for Thanksgiving and excited to see each other again after a long time, so nobody really paid attention to me. Finding that weird at first, I was very happy after a while just relaxing in the massage chair. The party was over at 1.30 when everybody went to the bar, but since bars close at 2 am, we just decided to go home. On sunday we took a walk in a forest close to Whitney's house. It was very nice, again I was amazed by all the beautiful colours of the trees. After a little nap some of the relatives arrived (we were only 11 people this time) and had a nice dinner. Whitney's sister announced that she had bought a house and was pregnant, so everybody was very excited about that. I had more turkey and other nice things and I learned a new Canadian dish: Apple Crisp. Apples with crispy things on top, very very yummy. After all the relatives left we just sat down doing AIESEC work for five hours, being very surprised when we found out it was already 2 am. Today Whitney took me for a ride downtown. We walked through a nice park and had a coffee and went to a very nice store called skirt. I found a really cute cardigan and after we decided that we could cut my hair ourselves and I can save the money for the hairdresser I bought the jacket. So no freezing in Canadian winters for me. Then we went to a "Hot Yoga" class. The room temperature is...I don't know how high but very hot and everybody is just dripping sweat. But because of the heat I was much more flexible and I enjoyed it a lot. I was surprised how the room didn't smell. Later Whitney cut my bangs and it looks really good. I am happy. After another nice dinner, a shower in a clean bathroom and some more AIESEC work I am now going to sleep the last night in my comfortable bed. Tomorrow at 6.15 (bah bah) we go back to Guelph. I want to stay here!!!