A few days before snow

As the title of this blog suggest I am pretty convinced that snowwy days are upon us! On the way back from Yellowknife yesterday I saw some snow falling but it was plus one so it did not stay. So next blog will mostly be about: OH MY GOD IT HAS SNOWED but since it has not really so far this blog will be about hockey, thanksgiving, and my cool family in Yellowknife.


One of the teachers has been so kind to lend me all of her daughters ex hockey gear and so I went to my first hockey practise fully equipped. I do have to sharpen my skates at one point and tighten the helmet (I currently skate with a toque underneat it so that it does not slide off LOL) but other than that I went fully equipped/armed onto the ice. The first time putting on all of the clothes and shin pads and elbow pads and knee pads padspads and padding felt like putting of armour for sure. And then that helmet haha well I felt like I could not move at all, but the trick is to ignore that you are wearing a whole shop full of clothes and just GO. And you tighten your skates until they are tight. The good thing about wearing pads and padding with padding is that when you fall, you feel nothing. You are basically a cushion on skates. The first practise they made us fall on purpose a couple of times and skate backwards. I am not good at skating backwards (or braking) but I inted to practise lots so that I can help my team not lose from tiny kids. Apparently my team lost their first match this weekend against a bunch of kids while I wasn’t there. I hope I can make a difference I will practise hard and I hope to learn to spin and go backwards fast later today (my practise days: Tuesday night 9.30 and Saturday night 8.30). The other hockey players are really quite good though, the best girl being in the high school in grade 9. It is a bit of an intimidating sport but I have hope that soon I will be one of the intimidating bunch MUAHUAHUAHUA *maniacal laughter*

So it was thanksgiving this weekend in Canada, which is way earlier than in the US but for logical reasons (namely fall was over in about two weeks so to celebrate the end of harvest season in the middle of winter would not make sense up here) (and here a Turkey is not associated with the natives giving a turkey to some colonist at least I think slash hope not). Everybody had the Monday off work (except people who work at Wall Mart and Tim Hortons). And because it was a long weekend and the vice principal was going up to Yellowknife to see his daughter I could tag along and meet my family in Yellowknife!! The drive was long but not bad because I have learned to crochet so I was sat in the back fumbling with yarn whilst looking out the window at the scorched trees (the forest fires of last summer really left their mark – some trees were still smouldering!). I also saw some buffalo (pictures will follow on facebook soon). And then met my family at the pool because it was sweet cousin Ava’s 7th birthday. And after that when we came home I was welcomed by a cool sign that said “Welcome to Yellowknife Mathilde”, made by Abby, and I got an amazing Canada toque that I will never take off. They were so welcoming and I was so surprised and a bit overwhelmed with how nice they were or in little Journey’s case how cute..!! Anyway in short I stayed with Dot, Kim, and Journey for two nights. We partied on Saturday visiting the irish pub and more (…) and then on Sunday (after my first Tim Hortons double double) it was time for a BIG turkey dinner with the family (Dot's children and their children all came!) which was all very super tasty and turkey and I hope, dear friends and fam back home, that you are all very jealous. LOL. I also really hope to be back in Yellowknife on Christmas <3 and to have finished crocheting (or however it is spelled) a couple of scarves by then...

PS coming home from YK last night I enter my apartment and the other volunteers were in the middle of their thanksgiving dinner so I had another thanksgiving dinner :O :O spoilt brat

In other news, my apartment building might be shut down soon (article: “high rise crumbling” http://www.hayriverhub.com/). I met the ‘firewatch’ guy yesterday (we have him instead of working fire alarms) but he is just an old Irish man sleeping on a couch on the first floor hoping to wake up when a fire occurs or something. And he gets paid to do that. Also a random guy walked into our house the other day who was totally on something and about to pass out. (FYI my house smells more of weed than all of Amsterdam I kid you not) (although this weekend it also smelled of Turkey and burnt buns) (speaking of which turkey is amazing and so is stuffing and gravy and in summary thanksgiving dinner mMmMm) Halloween is around the corner and I will dye my hair blue with Kool-Aid. I am so excited for Halloween in Canada I can’t wait to see what kids come up with to wear over their snow suits. On the bright side kids won’t wear skimpy outfits? Also next weekend I will go to Fort Smith to be with the volleyball tournament and make sure the kids go to bed and behave on the bus. Some kids are really great at sports and join all of the sports, others seems to sign up just because then they can get to go to other towns and go to their KFC. Anyway that will be very interesting to see although I might get very little sleep…!! You’ll hear about it soon enough.
Adios, ciao, doei!

Mathilde