Calgary October 2016……

Hi

Another amazing thing we did here in Calgary was to go and see a native Indian place called head smashed in buffalo jump. Hope I got the name right….anyway it’s a place or rather a high cliff where the natives used to heard the buffalo and then scare them into a mad run and then the buffalo ran off the cliff….neat way of hunting. Usually a lot safer way of hunting although it was still extremely dangerous. There is also a museum on the site sort of built into the cliff and so interesting. It was a beautiful day, warm breeze on the prarie and the stillness with the total quietness was so relaxing and touching. I could imagine what they life was like, in tune with the nature and the complete darkness at night to see the amazing starry skies that most people miss out on…we have been lucky to see that night sky in all it’s glory when we did the Atlantic crossings….

Then the time came for mum to go back to Finland….and I made a promise to myself that we never again leave it so long between visits.

On Alice’s ballet class I met this couple from Colombia, funny. Just down the road from Santa Marta, a place called Barranquilla. Wow. And she did Spanish lessons from home. Even better, and to James’s big horror we enrolled him to do 2 hours once a week. Sitting there listening to it all and made to do homework I can finally say that it is starting to make sense, something has finally clicked and now we got to keep it going…

THEN……one Friday to my absolute horror I woke up to……guess…..SNOW! Oh yak! The kids went mad and no school got done…needless to say….it lasted for 3 days and we didn’t see them for hours. I went nowhere! Sat in and mumbled some kind of prayers to get the snow to disappear…..IT WORKED!

We also got invited for thanksgiving dinner across the road. We all brought something and of course we did proper roast potatoes. The evening was great, shared many laughs, met more people and the kids just had plain good fun.

So in all our time here Chris turned 50, went to Radium for couple of days, up in the mountains with our friend and her son Julian who became the fourth child in our family, James’s birthday when we went to a archery club and Halloween, never seen anything so mad and the amount of sweets is just insane….
Chris left for Panama a week earlier then us, get the boat sorted out and We have plodded on with school, the last sleep overs and packing our bags…..

This goodbye will be hard, we have had so much fun, met some truly amazing people and seen some incredible places. Canada has been good to us but yet again it is time to go….never gets any easier but at least we had a chance to meet these people and do all these things…

And what is the plan? We haven’t got a clue…..San Blas, San Andre, Bocas, Corn Islands….who knows….

xxx