Catching Up

Since we've been back in Canada we seem to be "catching up" with our friends all over the place! The last few weeks have been a diary full of dinners, visits and "popping up to college".

We enjoyed a beautiful meal at Soohwan's during our first week, before she flew back to Japan and South Korea to visit family and friends. Soohwan made yummy bread and raspberry bars for dessert. All of us (McLellans, Claire, April, and Holly) had a great time.

Later that week, our friend Jodie had her first baby. She was in labour for FOUR days and had to have an emergency C-section in the end. Wes, her husband, says she was really worried later that she had been rude to the anaesthatist - even though she had spoken politely and thanked him as he'd left! Another example of Canadians being thoroughly nice! Here is the beautiful Smith family (Wes, Jodie, and 2-day-old Synova Josephine) when Bronwyn and some others visited them in the hospital.

Last weekend we went to a birthday party for Cora, daughter of our friends David & Megan. Cora was turning one so she had fun eating cake, tasting her first hotdog, discovering presents, and generally being the centre of attention. We are told Cora also took her first steps after the guests had left!

On Tuesday we had dinner at Claire's, along with April and Sheila (Claire's house-mate), where we planned our upcoming trip to Vancouver Island. You'll be sure to see more about this in a later post!

We also have had time to catch up with Esther, Ben & Jen, Leonard, Susannah (thanks for the dahlias), the Yeohs, and the Lims at various times. We'll be seeing plenty of others soon too.

Our most recent visitor has the honour of being our first non-Vancouverite visitor. Nathan's second cousin, Rebekah(Bex) Murch, was staying with a friend in the city and came out to spend yesterday with us. She has been nannying in south London in the past year, and spent her summer as a camp counsellor in a christian camp near Chicago. We took her out to visit Jericho and Locarno Beaches for an iceblock/ice lolly/ice stick, and had long chats about family and the joys of being New Zealanders in other cultures (e.g. the difference between UK and NZ marmites).