Jeantine, 2 januari 2008
Canada , Edmonton

Christmas and new year!

To start this story I want to wish everyone all the best for 2008, that all your wishes may come true!!!

Okay, so the last period of my stay in Canada arrived. After staying at Barbara’s place for a couple of days it was time to move to Karine. Karine is the craziest person I’ve met and nothing is crazy enough for her. While I was there I felt as if were at home, I could do anything I wanted without any weird things. On Sunday I went to the water park with Pete. She had arranged free tickets and it was so much fun. The water park in West Ed is amazing. It is so much fun and has so many slides. We tried a lot of them and some were so scary and others were easy. It was a fun afternoon.

So we arrive at Christmas Eve. Christmas is as we all know a time that you have fun with your family and have a nice dinner, fun breakfast and so more.
Christmas in Canada is obviously totally different than Christmas in The Netherlands. Christmas Eve we went to friends of Karine’s parents. A bunch of friends always gather and everybody brings something to eat. It was great fun and we all had a big laugh. It wasn’t a real late evening but when we were back at home we had some work to do. We had to start with the Christmas presents because there were so many and Wayne (Karine’s father had to work the other day). I had the honour of being Santa. It meant that I had to give everybody a present every round. It was so much fun. We didn’t do all the presents but we made a start. It was hard to find presents for Wayne it seemed as if he wasn’t getting anything. There were even presents for me.
Eventually Karine and I went to bed at 2 am, and after a great 3 maybe 3.5 hours of sleep (after talking a bit) I woke up again at 6:00 am. Yes indeed I woke up at 6:00 am on Christmas Day. Nothing without a reason. What I have said before Wayne had to work, so that was a reason but there was another reason. I figured that it would be fun to be a Christmas present myself and surprise my parents and the rest of the family. So after our Christmas breakfast with real homemade Norwegian waffles I called my parents and told them that we were leaving to go and see friends. In fact we were going to start opening the rest of the presents (mostly my presents) and all of us were going to empty our stockings. Yep, even I got a stocking! And apparently I’ve been nice instead of naughty because there were more presents in my stockings. Mom and dad all believed it that we were going to friends, they know how it goes. So instead of going to friends, Martin and Karine drove me to the Hotel after I said goodbye to everyone. And at the hotel the Sky shuttle came. After a big long hug with Karine I really had to go. At the airport it was really quit so everything was done fast.

I left Edmonton at 12.50 pm, and still didn’t realize that this period was coming to an end. I flew over Toronto, a nice airport but nothing special. This was the moment that I did begin to realize that everything was over for now. I read my book in which everyone had written a story in and it was amazing what all my friends said.

My Christmas meal was amazing, real airplane food!! A nice half warm way to fast cooling piece of chicken with some rice. But we did get a Christmas cookie with it.

That was the long run, then the waiting at London began. It was only 6 hours so it wasn’t that bad. But I was glad when the plane left.
Finally we arrived at Brussels and Agnetha and Robbert were already waiting (thanks again for that).
After an hour drive we arrived at home, and I buzzed the door. My dad opened and he was stunned. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When I walked in to the living room my mom thought she was seeing burning water.

You could say that this was priceless. It was so much fun. We had a nice dinner on boxing day and after all I went to bed at 1.00 am. To wake up the next day at 12.30 pm.

There was no one else from the family who knew that I was coming back so I surprised the rest of my family on New year’s day!
Everyone asked my mom for my address to thank me for the Christmas card and suddenly the saw me standing there. It was priceless again.

The best present ever!!!

Conclusion of my stay in Canada: I loved it!! I didn’t want to leave and none of my friends wanted me to leave. The facial expressions from friends and family when the saw me walking and everything was priceless and so much fun.
And most of all, I’ve learned a lot of things and made a whole bunch of new friends.
Can’t wait to go back!!

Kiss marty!

Wil je Jeantine in Canada bellen? Bel dan goedkoop via HalloBuitenland.nl