The Arrival

We arrived in Montreal in the late afternoon on Saturday, the day before Easter.

We hopped in a taxi and scooted over to Hotel Opus, our home for the week.  Hotel Opus was lovely, but if you called it anything other than Hotel Opus, no one knew where you meant.  We'd ask a mostly-french-speaking cab driver to take us to The Opus Hotel, and he'd slightly tilt his head and say I don't know where you mean...uh..uh..you know address?!  We'd say Sherbrooke, and then one of us would wise up and remember to say Hotel Opus, and the no-longer-confused cabbie would say Ooooooooh, Hotel Opus!  Yes, Yes; I know Hotel Opus!  It worked like magic every  time.

Hotel Opus

We settled in our rooms and milled around for a bit checking out the ultra modern, but mostly comfortable, space.  The taxi ride and the settling felt like limbo, a sort of floating between reality and somewhere else. I was unsure of what was to come, and I had good reason.

Mama and me at Koko

After much confusion and miscommunication (really only about ten minutes worth), we decided on dining at the hotel's restaurant, Koko.  Since Koko is really a night club and we were eating at a normal hour, okay maybe a little early for people under 90, we were the only patrons.  It was nice.  The food was delicious, especially the carrot soup with green apple slaw.  

Hub and Daddy at Koko

We laughed and had a good time; it was nice to relax after a day of traveling.  Mostly the wait staff laughed at us and our accents.  It was a good time.

My dinner at Koko.  (Mother made me take the picture of my food.  Embarrassing.)
It was delicious: short rib with mushrooms, spinach, and homemade gnocchi with mashed potatoes.  It didn't quite beat the carrot soup (no embarrassing picture of that), though.

After dinner we set off to the suburbs to see Sony...




Someone please make me homemade gnocchi.  Or carrot soup with green apple slaw.


Please,

P.S.  This is day five of my twenty-one day blogging adventure.  So far, so good.  Then again, it is only day five. . . .

Sunday Snippets

"I shall start at the beginning.  Though the beginning is never where you think it is.  Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth.  First there was nothing, then I was born. . . .Yet that is not so.  Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight.  Families are webs.  Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating.  Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole."
--The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

~~~~~

"So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous hand."
--Isaiah 41:10

~~~~~

"On my friend Jean's wedding day over thirty years ago, she asked her mother, 'Do all brides feel this terrified when they're about to get married?' and her mother replied, even as she calmly buttoned up her daughter's white dress, 'No, dear.  Only the ones who are actually thinking.'"
--Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, Elizabeth Gilbert


Happy Sunday!



P.S.  This is day four of my twenty-one day blogging adventure.  So far, so good.  Then again, it is only day four. . . .


Coming up Monday: Spring Break 2012--Our Trip to Montreal! See you there.

What I Just Finished....

A student recommended that I read The Thirteenth Tale.  I said I would when I had time, and she promised to bring it whenever I was ready.  As it turns out, I never really was ready.  The not being ready has to do with my own personality and the fact that I'm still an almost-drowning-gasping-for-air first year teacher.  So one day, the persistent tenth grader brought me the book.  No rush, she said.  I didn't rush.  I think it took me a month to actually start the book and quite a while after that to finish.

At first I found the novel to be wordy and a bit overly descriptive, as if Setterfield danced around what she trying to say by weaving such elaborate descriptions that once I'd finished the description it was hard to remember what was being described in the first place and whether or not it was important at all to the story.  Admittedly, some of this confusion comes from the fact that I was trying to read just before bed and would allow myself to doze off a bit, become confused, and have to reread.

I probably would've given up on the book if I didn't trust this student's literary recommendations so much.  Anyway, I soldiered on.  I reread what I'd forgotten.  And, finally, when I had committed to reading the book at an hour in which I was not likely to fall over from exhaustion, I discovered the glorious gift, that one so rarely finds, of a truly good story wrapped up the pages of this novel.

In her novel, Setterfield weaves vivid descriptions with such powerful emotion that captivates the reader wholly as she tells the story of two strange sisters.  The story is good; it is full of mystery and confusion and love and twists.  The protagonist is a lover of literature, so bits of the classics are thrown in here and there.

This novel is a prime example of why I love literature.  It is superbly written and reawakens a reader's thirst for words, that thirst most real readers have--to experience, to feel, and to understand.

P.S.  This is day three of my twenty-one day blogging adventure.  So far, so good.  Then again, it is only day three. . . .


Coming up Monday: Spring Break 2012--Our Trip to Montreal! See you there.

Spring Break 2012: Montreal!

For Spring Break this year, my family and I headed up north to Montreal to visit my cousin Sony (her real name is Sonya, but I called her Sony when I was little, so I'm calling her Sony now).


Coming up this week I'm going to tell you all about our trip.  We laughed a lot, had some interesting taxi experiences, ate good food, shopped, walked, went to museums, and I kind of fell in love with the city.  It had an Americanized Europey kind of feel, or maybe it just felt like Canada. 

Here's Melvin hanging out in Hub's suitcase while we packed.  What a cutie.

Stay tuned for more adventure!



P.S.  This is day two of my twenty-one day blogging adventure.  So far, so good.  Then again, it is only day two. . . .

Time Management and a Blogging Adventure

Lately I've been thinking a lot about time management.

As a first year teacher, I frequently feel like I can't breathe or as though I'm doggy paddling in a deep ocean as quickly as I can so that the next wave won't completely drown me.  It's not always that bad, but sometimes it is.  Okay, most of the time it is.  There's just tons to do and more to learn.  It's been a wonderful experience, but that doesn't make it any easier.

I've been thinking about all of the different things I need to make time for in my life:
reading, spending time with Hub, having friends, breathing, writing, working, church, etc.

All of these things are valuable, and I want to do all of them more.  I just always struggle to find the time, and believe me, I am a professional time waster as well as a time finder.  I sort of have a split personality that way.  I am procrastinator, too.  I work really well under pressure because there isn't any more time left to waste, but I don't want to live that way.  Not anymore.

I'm slowly starting to realize that I'll only have time for the things I make time for. So, I'm going to start by making time for writing.

I've heard that it takes 21 days to truly form a habit, so here's the adventure part of this post's title.  You know; the one you forgot about already because of my ramblings.

I'm challenging myself to 21 days of blogging...daily.  As in, one post per day for twenty-one days.  Yes, hold the phone; turn off the television.  I'm going to try for ONE POST PER DAY FOR TWENTY-ONE DAYS.  (oh, brother, why'd I say that...)

I don't know if it'll work, but if it doesn't, I'll try again.  I'll keep on trying until I've made time for the writing that I want to do, the writing that I need to do, because the truth is I don't want to wake up when I'm eighty and wish that I had written more or loved more or appreciated more.  I want to wake up when I'm eighty and feel happy that I took advantage of every opportunity and blessing that came my way and that I tried new things and discovered joy at every turn.

Here's to Day One,