Dragon Boat Race

It’s 5.30pm and we haven’t even left the flat yet. It’s been one of those pants days where you try and sort things out and tidy up. I hate these days as my anal wife has a list of things that we have to get through. It’s like a race you can never win.

We did well yesterday. We got out of the house for a start. Although, it was an early start. We went up to see the Changing of the Guard outside Parliament. We got there just after 9.30am and there was already quite a crowd. We saw a few men all dressed up standing around having a chat and then the pomp and ceremony began. Sarah felt very sorry for them having to wear their heavy uniforms, boots and bearskin hats in the intense heat. She was moaning in her t-shirt and cotton trousers. They matched onto the grass area in front of Parliament, all varying heights, and then the Governor-General of Canada (Lizzie’s representative over here) went and inspected them. Then they marched off and we did too. We’re not in synch with our marching so we need to practice that.

We had a stop-off at Tim Horton’s and had a nice bagel and muffin and then got a free shuttle service to Mooney’s Bay to see the Ottawa Dragon Boat Race. All the way there Sarah was saying how these races are really good in Asia so we were quite excited. There were lots of people on the beach and in the water and playing volleyball so we felt very out of place as we weren’t doing anything sporty or active. There were lots of stalls around and we did see one race but were disappointed because the boats weren’t very decorative and the race wasn’t close to the shore to shout encouragement. Or abuse. On the way back Sarah then compared the race we had just seen to the ones she’d seen in Asia. I learnt a lot about Dragonboat racing on the bus yesterday. We had a minor problem on the way back into town as we were chucked off the bus. We weren’t being naughty but had managed to get on the wrong bus. We then had to wander through a field to get to civilisation (and another bus stop) but had a nice time admiring the pretty flowers and getting close to a groundhog.

Finally back in town we found our favourite coffee shop, Second Cup, and watched the storm from inside whilst enjoying our drinks, marshmallow square and the paper. We left after an hour or so and headed down to listen to some Jazz. This week in Ottawa there is a Jazz Festival so there are hundreds of concerts of varying price. We saw Ed Thigpen and his band. They were really cool cats. We headed home around 7ish and ordered Greek takeaway as we couldn’t be bothered to cook. We watched the Manchurian Candidate on DVD but wouldn’t recommend it.

Sarah has managed to get a job. At the moment it is only temporary as she needs to get her TEFL certificate recognised here in Canada before she can get permanent employment with any language school. She found it very difficult trying to find work in a secondary school so hopefully this will work out. We’ll keep you posted.