HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY

We celebrated Australia Day by heading to Toronto for a CLEE (Canadian League for Educational Exchange) conference over the weekend.
The hard work began Friday night with a social gathering of many of the Aussie and New Zealand exchange teachers who are spending 2008 in Ontario. IT was fun to catch up with some we had met at functions last year and to meet some recently returned Canadians who were in Australia last year.
CLEE has planned a series of "professional development activities" for us including a cross country skiing , dog sleeding/skating weekend, Winter Carnivale in Quebec, a cruise on the St Lawrence River, a weekend in Ottawa and quite a few others. They are really looking after us well.
Day 2 of our conference consisted of an orientation session in the morning, a long lunch and night skiing at Lakeridge Resort, near Toronto. It was terribly taxing!
Tracy continued to carve the slopes skiing while I chose to give snowboarding a try.
As you can see I'm quite a natural after only 1 lesson (NOT!) Because the batteries in our camera failed due to the extreme cold, there are no photos of me on my butt, which was my usual position throughout the lesson so I had to use a photo of what I should have been doing. Suffice it to say I'll be sticking to skis from now on where at least I can stay reasonably upright.
Sunday consisted of a sleep in and shopping expedition to Eaton Square shopping centre - supposedly the biggest mall in Canada. Unfortunately, due to a mix up with meeting places, Tracy ended up back at our hotel while I was giving the mall security staff her description before they started a search. We were both quite stressed which only got worse as we tried to negotiate the freeways out of the city and back to Owen Sound.