Vera's First Post ...

Hello everyone in Blog land ... well here we are day 5 of our stay in Rimouski, I did try to get Baz to stay in Quebec (omg what a gorgeous city and we only really saw it at midnight by night light and briefly in the am looking for breakfast before our bus journey southeast) but he was hell bent on taking me down to the back whops of Rimouski where the shopping is non existent (there was method in his bringing me here) and we are on a rural back block so to get anywhere I have to drive on the wrong side of the road which is freaking me out, even freaks me out when he does it (drive I mean) as I swear he is going to collect cars on my side of the car and just about have a heart attack yelling at him to get over to the right!

We celebrated Bryns birthday on Sunday 2 May and went to the Canyon to the Gates of Hell if you make the second picture bigger that Bryn put up of the waterfall, you can see the steps going up the side of the waterfall, its huge!!  It was a stunning weekend here weatherwise which we weren't really expecting ... our host family cooked a lovely dinner for Bryn's birthday and Bryn and I baked a cake to celebrate her turning 14, luckily they have two children that our two get on with like a house on fire a boy Jonas 12 and a girl Charlotte 10 who loves everthing to do with Twilight - snap just like Bryn.  We saw 3 bears which Baz attacked with bare hands hahahaha - that's actually not true.  But we did a see a lovely little deer on the side of the road. 

This place has quite a small township but is quite pretty Baz was telling me that the whole town burnt down in the 1950s and the whole place was rebuilt so you don't see many old buildings here. 

We had a fabulous time in San Fran and am planning to go back there sometime ... highlights for me were the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the gay area (Caestro), op shopping and the kids and I saw our first ever humming bird at a park not far from where we were staying, they are really cute, looked like a giant bug of some sort because you can't really see there wings flapping they flap so fast, it took me a we while to work out what it was!  We were really well looked after in San Fran by Gabi and Cole, so it was a cushioned introduction to our first week away.  Yum the crabs ... hmmm Baz missed out because he was in Boston at a Conference!

The house we are staying in here is like a wooden log cabin but is very homely and warm and has been done up so very comfortable.  They have pretty French lace curtains and little English type windows so 6 panes of glass to each window.  And double doors to each entry I guess for when it snows here.

This is day two for the kids and me with Baz at work so we have been trying to learn French as the majority of people here are French speaking it is there first language ... there are hardly any books in this house that are in English.  Luckily our host family prefer to read in English so we have borrowed books and mags from them, although they have been here ten years they said they find it difficult to read French books.

Drew escapes into his books, I had the kids doing bootcamp this morning ... Gaye may have some competition when I get back and we are probably going to venture into town shortly to look for some local info and get Bryn a birthday present.  Ciao for now ... that wasn't very French was it ; - ))