Wednesday 20th April Easter Greetings!

Hello everyone. We wish you all a very happy Easter, with all your sunshine, blossom and Bank Holidays. Hrrumph. Still can't say we've got Spring. There are buds and some grass but we had snow last Sunday and a fair bit of rain since which should at least warm the soil. Daily temperatures are still in single figures so no sightings of blossom here. Also, Monday won't be a Bank Holiday here, although schools are closed for the day, those jammy teachers again. There is nothing like the quantity of Easter eggs on sale here that we have at home. They go in more for small eggs to hide for the children and chocolate rabbits and sweets, no serried ranks of Smarties/Mars/Crunchie type eggs that we have a la Tesco etc. So today I bought a little Lindt bunny for us each and a selection box of small Lindt eggs for us to share - aah. Also they don't do hot cross buns here which seems surprising but only because we've probably been selling them since Boxing Day! I will miss them on Good Friday. We went to mass on Palm Sunday and I made these little crosses with our palms so this is my Easter card to you all. Something else you don't see here is wine at mass and there's no hand shaking, just eye contact, nodding and smiles which I find more stressful. I think they're afraid of germs here. I remember seeing a film about how Toronto was the centre of the SARS outbreak in 2002 so it may be a remnant of that time.

Reflection on Yonge St

The big news is that we now have an apartment. We get the keys on May 1st (have had to learn to write the date that way - not 1st May!) so we have a good overlap before we leave this one on May 7th so we can get furniture delivered etc. It's an 8th floor condo: 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a corner suite with windows facing south and west, a balcony and it's fully carpeted in pale grey. There's a pool and exercise room downstairs and it's a very good building in the road behind us so it's still really close to the subway and mall etc. It was a very strange process though. We made our offer on Saturday 9th as soon as we saw it. Yes it seems odd making an offer on a rental but there you are and we also had to provide our own credit report to show we were good for the rent. We had to wait until 5pm on Sunday to hear that our offer had been accepted so then the paperwork had to be emailed to us for signing. That arrived at 9pm. Having signed several bits of paper we then had to scan and return them so that took another while. It seems so bizarre to be doing such transactions late on a Sunday night; it was just as well we'd bought our own printer/scanner otherwise we'd have been stuck. We collected the car too on Thurs 14th so we're making progress. Last weekend we went looking at furniture in IKEA (yes) and The Brick. This is an amazing store which sells everything for furnishing and appliances. We're going to get our beds and sofas from IKEA and tv etc from The Brick. However, these stores won't give any of us credit, even though as I've said we can prove our credit worthiness but it means nothing here. This means having to transfer more money from the UK to pay for this stuff while we wait for the Company to give us our relocation costs. There is no such thing as international finance apparently. At least we haven't had much sent from home. One man, still working for Carillion at 78(!), who came here 40 years ago from UK told Eamonn there's no point bringing furniture because the wood in it would shrink due to the dryness of the air in winter! 

We registered at St. Gabriel's church as new parishioners so we'll be looking out for ways to get involved. I told you about the televised mission and it was broadcast here this week. There are 2 programmes, both available on YouTube to watch in half hour chunks. We were at the first one and if you're quick you might spot Eamonn a few rows back in a blue jumper, quite near the beginning. I was hiding in the dark of course.

Program 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgUGKghxtg8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewg9LJTPIZQ

Program 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8JANatuo-M&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOpjh-zLEYA&feature=related

My main recommendation though for watching it is to listen to Sr. Melannie in both programmes and I love the song at the beginning of Part 1, Follow Me.

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The election moves nearer. It's an indication of how important ice hockey is here when I tell you that the televised Leaders' Debate (French speaking version - yes they do it twice) had to be moved because it clashed with a high profile match between Montreal and Boston.  

Today's Canadianism:

When it snows while the sun's shining: The devil's wife is fluffing her pillows.

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More good news, Gemma and Andy are coming over in May!

I have a lot more to tell you so I'll save it and do another blog over the weekend. I have great photos from a quilting exhibition, including a cheeky one! 

Bye for now,

Happy Easter again,

with love,

Mary and Eamonn