Into the (almost) wild!

So as soon as a lot of people start writing to me: Hey, how are you? How's Canada? I know that I urgently need to write a new blog entry. So here it is. Of course, I had planned to write every week, but that won't happen anyway and I'm glad that I at least make notes from time to time so that I don't forget half of it right away.

After a week that I have already spent in Toronto and of course did everything except a city tour of Toronto, I thought in the second week, oh well. So I took one of the Free-tours, which was called: Death, Disease and Destruction. It was really great and our guide had a lot of fun telling us about all the diseases, wars and fires in Toronto. Martha, the new couchsurfer from Poland, was also on the tour, and as a senior couchsurfer, I had to explain Joey's apartment to her again. As usual: the cat is under the couch, both of you at the refrigerator, but be careful, the faucet doesn't work, the best place to wash your hands is in the shower. Yeah.

Terry took time off for the 'hotdocs Canadian International Documentary Festival'. So we ran from one cinema to the next like crazy people all week and watched all kinds of documentaries. I highly recommend 'The Mountain life'. The main story is about a mother (60) and her daughter (late 20s) who plan to 'walk' from Vancouver to Alaska in 6 months in the winter. They walk in quotation marks because they do the tour in winter! so that they can cover most of the distance on skis. The documentary of their tour is super exciting, and it's amazing when you see them suddenly stop and the daughter says, 'Hmm, there should be a glacier here', and then there's already the ocean, and they have to completely change the route. The other documentary I watched was more unintentionally, Terry had an extra ticket and then I watched 'behind the curve'. The documentary is about the founders of the 'Flat-Earth Movement', who come from Canada. It's super exhausting to watch how convinced the people behind it are and then do 'experiments' to prove that the earth is flat, and they buy expensive devices for $20,000. I almost felt a little sorry when the expensive equipment showed the 15% curvature and the Flat-Earthers said that this would be bad for their theory and then said they had to measure again -_- In between, physicists and psychologists shake their heads.

Emily and Cameron are an old couple. I can say older because they really are old. She is 73 and he is 84, and they live on the farm with 2 horses, a dog, a cat, 8 chickens, and 1 rooster. There is a small garden, a stable, and a main house. Both are retired, and she is a teacher and he is a journalist. While Cameron is trying to write a book, Emily is trying to protect her garden from butterflies and bugs on cabbage and all other types of vegetables with all her might and without chemicals.

The last 3 days, I was alone on the farm because Emily and Cameron went to Ottawa, as it was Emily's sister's birthday. Somehow it didn't help that the day before they left, they told me that they had already had the odd bear with them. One was also in the vegetable garden and tested every cabbage once, but didn't eat any of them :D. Oh, and there are also coyotes... I mainly made sure that no one died and no one had to go to the vet, and I talked to the dog because it was a little lonely. And I finished reading 'Lullaby for little Criminals' by Heather O'Neil. The author is from Montreal, and I can highly recommend the book. My personal highlights here in the middle of nowhere include the 3 hummingbirds that flew past me in the garden, the bald eagle I saw on the boat tour, and that I was allowed to sing with the Brockville Community Choir because Emily sings there. There's also a concert next week that I already have a ticket for, and I'm also allowed to go to Emily's book club, for which I have already read the book. Otherwise, I hope that other woofers will come soon, so I stop talking to the dog and that I can go canoeing on the lake on the weekend :)

See you soon

Lea :)

And here's some bonus material: