Soirée Belge and official opening of Toronto's Holiday Season

Last Thursday, Bram and I joined our culinary skills and prepared a nice Belgian dish for the Algonquin group at the French girls' place. We prepared witloof met kaas en hesp with potatoes à l'ail, which admittedly was Lydie's idea. We had to peal potatoes for 12 people, which took us quite a while. Everything, even the cheese sauce, worked out really well and they all seemed to like it. By midnight, people started to help themselves to seconds (or thirds or forths!) and by the time we all went home we had finished everything, rather to the disappointment of Jessica and Lydie who had hoped to survive on leftovers the next day! It was a fun evening, because everyone was in a good mood, we had nice food and wine and all together a great and relaxing night.
We exchanged Algonquin pictures and films and amasingly enough, everyone paid me the extra part of the trip! I guess I am an intimidating person, when it comes to asking people to pay :)

This evening, Toronto officially opened the Holiday Season with a beautiful Light Cavalcade and fireworks. A concert to precede it and the lighting of the Christmas tree and the fireworks as highlight of the evening. This all took place next to the City Hall (the 'old' one) and in front of the Parliament building, probably one of Toronto's most famous sights. The fireworks really were one of a kind, as they were even set up on the rooftop of the Parliament! There was a skating rank and everyone just was in a holiday mood, Lydie taking pictures as if she were one of those obsessed Japanese people Toronto seems to be full of. I'll probably get her pictures tomorrow and I will put them on my photo-site for you to taste a bit of America's Christmas craziness! I find myself going happily along with the Holiday groove, I even put up the Christmas featured cup holders of Starbucks and the Second Cup on my noteboard by way of bringing the spirit into my small room! Christmas Carrols merrily play on my computer and I am so much looking forward to spending Christmas in a real Canadian family! Laura Grace, one of my friends, invited me to spend a week with her and her family in Ottawa, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which I am very grateful for! We will visit Ottawa and surroundings and wrap ourselves in the goodwill and peace that are typical of the end of December! When I get back, there's only a few days left to clean up here, say hi to everyone and leave for New York.

Lately, I have been writing on a Swift paper, which is actually very interesting and I even dare say that I am enjoying myself writing it. I'll have a presentation to do on it this Thursday. I have been spending a lot of time in Robarts' library, 4th floor ('la quatrième'!!!). There nearly always is someone of the gang performing his or her duties as a zealous student, and it's always nicer to study together than on you own. After this paper, I'll have about 5 days to get ready for my race of exams and then, on December 7th, it will be over! My term will be finished and there will be nothing to worry about anymore! (well, not exactly nothing, but far less anyway!) Quite a nice and calming thought to wrap up this post! Enjoy the Holiday Season everyone!

Algonquin Pictures

I made a new website for pictures: easier to watch, easier to upload!

http://picasaweb.google.com/anoukmorren

Go and admire the landscape!

Pas de 'moose', ni de 'caribou' mais weekend super dans le Parc Algonquin

A genuinely fun and full weekend in the Algonquin Park. There were small and slightly bigger adventures, car problems and unexpected circumstances, but this whole minitrip to Ontario's biggest Provincial Park turned out to be one of my better weekends on Canadian soil. But let's not rush and begin at the beginning.

SATURDAY
Saturday morning, 8.45am, all - or nearly all, because Lynette and Charlotte got a bit lost - were present in front of 'Rent-a-wreck' (what's in a name...), unfortunately we had to wait till 9.15 for Mr. Rent-a-wreck to arrive. After having arranged the paperwork, we took off in our 2 Ford Windstar minivans, Aurélie driving the first, Per driving the second. Our mapquest online directions quickly turned out to be not as accurate as I had hoped, which made us lose about 40 minutes. Around 11am we were well on our way north, towards Barry's Bay and the park. The landscape wasn't awsome, however, Aurélie did remark at some point: ça commence quand-même à faire des ondulations maintenant! Eh, je me demande, comment ça s'appelle, les petites collines? I didn't realise she was looking for the English word and I replied, obviously in one of my linguistic moods: Des 'collinettes' peut-être... First flaw of the trip... :)
Around 2.45 pm, we arrived in the park, and decided to do a small hiking track right away. We went up to Algonquin's visitors center, where the whole 'what's the difference between a moose and a caribou?' discussion was solved. Aurélie got confused with French translation of moose, which turned out to be élan, which however is not to be mistaken for a caribou, which is caribou in French. The visitors center had some good and interesting billboards and scenes about the animals we might encounter during our hiking trips: foxes, moose, beavers (and beaver dams), wolves, bears, ... Very confident to encounter at least one of those, we took off for the 1.5km Spruce Bog Boardwalk, which was a very nice walk of about half an hour on steady and firm paths. After that, we all felt up to another similar walk and headed toward the Beaver Pond trail. The park was absolutely beautiful, being covered in a thin layer of snow. We saw some quite impressing beaver dams and some amasing lakes. We didn't see, however, that its rating was 'moderate', while the first one was a trail open to the disabled. The Beaver Pond track turned out to be quite muddy and very rocky, and as it was nearly dusk, we realised halfway through that we might need some flash lights in order to find the way back. With Linas keeping everyone's spirits up by telling ghost stories in the dark forest, we hiked on. If it hadn't been for my flash light, we wouldn't have seen the arrow sign and we probably still would have been looking for the main road. We headed towards Barry's Bay, a very typical 'outback' village of 1 200 inhabitants; our little group of 13 constituted 1 percent of the population, just to give you an idea... :) We had a good meal in a nice place and arrived at 10ish at the Mountain View Motel, which appeared to be quite desolate. They had promised me to leave the keys in an envelope at the door, but no sign of the envelope nor keys at our arrival. Calling the owners wasn't really an option because no one had reach on their mobile phones, which made us realise just how much we were in Canada's outback. 20 minutes later, when we all started planning to spend the night in our cars, the owners arrived and gave us the keys to our cottage and room. We watched Harry Potter (and the goblet of fire) on television had crisps, biscuits and drinks and - most of us - went to bed at a reasonable hour.

SUNDAY
Despite the many night owls among us we managed to hit the road at around 9.45. We had a typical breakfast in one of those VERY American diners and arrived at the park around 12.30 We had decided earlier to do the 10 km Track & Tower Trail (moderate level) and set off, bien en forme. It was around 0°C, so mud and puddles were frozen, which made things a little less slippery than the evening before. It turned out to be a beautiful trail with parts of it along the lake. We all made it to the lookout point and had a breathtaking view of the Cache Lake. It took us the full 3 hours to get back to the cars. Luckily we took cookies and pretzels to prevent us from becoming hyper-faim ;). As we were all quite exhausted we were relieved to see the cars and get in to warm up a bit. But, as you might recall, our car rental firm was called 'rent-a-wreck' and of course, that name couldn't be taken as a joke. One of our minivans had, we thought, a flat battery. We sent the car that was still running to one of the visitor centers to get help. In the mean time, a very friendly Canadian hiker helped us out: we retried charging the battery and Linas discovered it was a security system problem and managed to start the car. The euphoria was great when we found ourselves back on the road. Our car did miss the encounter with two moose, but we were just happy to have our Windstar back in good shape! We headed for Toronto, but had dinner first in one of the less-than-2000-people towns along the road. The restaurant was all decorated for Christmas, very 'kitch' but extremely American (again). Just the way you see it in the films. We arrived back in Toronto safely at about 10pm, satisfied and slightly tired from a great trip up North!

It was the first time many of us really experienced Canada's country side (and cold!). The cars, the little towns, the motel, it all added up to a great weekend with a great group of people. We laughed a lot and just had a good time together. The dominating language was French, which didn't bother me at all. Les 3 Françaises are great girls and French just comes with their package :) I didn't mind at all and we were flexible anyway with language issues (Aurélie: c'est vachement 'cute' ça!)

Quote of the trip (this one had the whole car laughing). Aurélie was very impressed with the 5 speeds on the windscreen wipers and more or less screamed: 'Eh, les filles, il y a 5 speed pour les essuie-glaces! Essayons. Le premier.... (nothing much happend when putting them on speed 1) bon, c'est tous les quarts d'heure. Le deuxième... (not a lot of difference) allez, c'est tous les 10 minutes!
It's probably one of those things you had to be there to find it funny, but I luckily was there and thanks to our fine group we had an unforgettable weekend in Algonquin Provincial Park.

P.S.: as soon as people put their pictures online I will post some of them here. Check them out, the scenery is unrivalled!

Christmas Craziness

November in North-America probably inevitably comes with a more than healthy dose of christmas 'seasoning'. Over the last week, I have witnessed Toronto getting herself ready for another Christmas. Starbucks and The Second Cup changed the every-day colour of their paper cups to christmas green-and-red, which I realised, was the symbolic start of the holiday season. The rest of the city soon followed: they put up the Christmas lights over Yonge Street, Eaton center - the mall- now has reindeer dangling from the ceiling, display windows excessively use powdery snow that's supposed to remain there until January and jolly christmas trees are put up in the main shopping centers. Even the 'Hablamos Español' hotdog seller that I walk past every morning put a bit of christmas decorations up. Of course, this is only a start, there's undoubtedly more to follow! Unfortunately, the snow that would match this scene is absent, instead we just have real downpours and foggy and very humid weather. (Not good for the hairdo! My chain of bad hairdays hasn't been interrupted for weeks now.)
I don't know whether it's the weather or just the time of year, or maybe even the Christmas season arriving, but I have noticed some abnormal behaviour among the squirrel population. I don't know whether it's mating season for my little furry friends, but sexual activity, I have noticed, is more than healthy these last two weeks. They run around like crazy, chasing each other, they even abandon their nuts, which (believe me) is a big thing for a squirrel. They just don't mind where or at what time of day. On Monday, two of them were more or less blocking the passage to Emmanuel College, running around in circles for a minute or so, to end up doing what they were obviously there for. They had a whole audience too, but that was really the least thing Mr and Mrs Squirrel paid attention to.


On campus, things haven't really changed. My crazy paper rush is finally over. I managed to complete and hand in all my papers by their due dates, but feel completely exhausted now. I need a good night's rest today and a relaxing weekend. The last two weeks have just been a bit too busy. I found myself running from one class to another, using every free minute to read or even write on - yes of course - my papers. I hope I at least did reasonably ok. A couple of weeks of anxious waiting for the grades now, I guess. But today, at 4pm the hassle just ended and I felt so carefree when I walked home! I had a good day by the way. A very interesting Swift class, mainly because of the people I sat next to. To my left, a very jet-lagged Glenn, who spent the weekend in London for a photo shoot for his record label. To my right, Alexandra, always in the mood for some fun and folly. We heard some good presentations and I realised that Swift appeals to me more every week. I even like his poetry! A rare but perfect combination of formal mastery and diction and raving satire or hilarious parody. Unrivalled, without a doubt. Good and interesting, but quick lunch at Hart House at 1, followed by Francophone Literature at 2. I handed in my paper and just felt on top of the world for bringing this to a good end (so far!).

Tomorrow will be quite relaxing too: ISC pancake breakfast at 10am, some reading (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, by Mordecai Richeler for my Can. Lit class), women writing class at 3 and cooking dinner with a friend in the evening. On Saturday morning, we are leaving for the Algonquin park. I hope everything goes well, because I was the one who arranged the whole trip and if something goes wrong, I'm sure I will be the one everyone will come to...

I am going to turn in soon; for the first time this week, I am going to sleep for 8 hours on end, without obsessive dreams about deadlines coming a day sooner than I thought. Just some well deserved rest!

The way our memory works

Another Tuesday has passed, and should you not have noticed(and I am pointing it out right now) Tuesday evenings tend to be my inspirational writing days, especially because Prof. O' Connor's wise words are still fresh in my mind.

I have been thinking about the phenomenon of 'memory' quite a lot, lately. I blame it on the fact that it is actually dripping through that all that is left from an incredibly fun and interesting period or event of one's life is a good memory. That's it, nothing more, a memory you can reminisce about, a memory that has the ability to draw a smile and fill you with warmth and enthusiasm. But basically, that's it. I read the following line in Mavis Gallant's Linnet Muir stories, and although I didn't realise it at the time, I think that sentence was the catalyst of my pondering the whole memory-issue:

"I did not forget her, I forgot about her."

This is Linnet herself speaking, referring to her mother, whom she - quite obviously - has not a close relationship with. She left home at the age of 18 and fell out with her mother mainly because she rejected and neglected her. Read that sentence again. That, I realised, sums up how our memory works. You meet people who forget you, you forget people you meet, it is only very rarely that you meet those people you can't forget. Those people are your friends. We all, at least at one point in our lives, think about a specific person we haven't heard of or talked to in years; someone we haven't even missed. Our memory can be a cruel device; it can blattantly cast out people and welcome others, it can idealise certain events and minimise others, it has the power to make a choice of what to keep and what to get rid of. Much like what happens when you clean up your hard disk on your computer, when you come to think of it. However, I am quite convinced that we ourselves have control over the choices our memory makes. The more memories you - consciously - make with people, the harder it will be to forget them, because forgetting them would mean forgetting all the happy memories that include that specific person. Of course, memory-making requires time, dedication and persistence, as friendship is not built on shabby grounds or shallow interest. It is a constant investment, a constant 'making the memory' but if you manage to make that effort, the reward you get is even beyond the power of a memory. It is the today, filled with a shared past and a future stretching out before the two of you.

You cán get around the tricks your memory plays on you by actively investing in every day and by cherishing the good and full days you had so far. I am not promoting a completely hedonistic way of life, solely inspired by Carpe Diem (those of you who know me a little better, know that discipline and order are omnipresent in my life ;) !!) , but I would like to encourage you all to become aware that life doens't give you second chances, so don't waste the one you do get in unawareness and lack of interest. There is so much out there to discover, waiting to be discovered, waiting to become someone's memory...

First half of the Canadian Adventures...

I am precisely two months in Toronto, today. Two more to go... It is all going too fast, there is too much to do and too little hours in a day. I realised just now, how full my first two months have been. The hassle of paperwork and the getting-used-to-everything-new phase seem to be cast away to the far past. As hard as I tried to remember and absorb every single moment, you inevitably lose most of those precious memories, it is only the big and important things that stay with you. I have had some thoroughly good and fulfulling days and weeks in this amazing city, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss a single second of it all. Of course, there was a lot of work to go through, readings, literature, midterms and papers and essays of course, but then that is what I came for in the first place. And besides, I really musn't complain about my courses, they are all interesting (well, not all equally interesting, but that would just be an ideal world, wouldn't it) and I have the feeling that I have improved several skills in leaps and bounds. Moreover, in two months we managed to 'establish' a pretty close and amazing group of people from all over Europe. The Algonquin park trip in two weeks will probably be the reward for two and a half months of hard work. We all deserve that... :)

My days are incredibly full lately. Even 18 hours of active living seems to be not enough. I never go to bed because I am bored, I never have 5 minutes left, where I start wondering myself what I might do next. Obviously, that's all part of the fun, but there's hardly any time to do all the things I thought I would have time for. This website, for instance. My initial plan was to write here more often, about the small and slightly bigger things of life, but there is just too little time. My last paper is due on November 16th and I hope I will have some free time after that to start checking off my to do list!

This weekend's tone was mainly set by studying. Some of the highlights were Laurens calling me, completely out of the blue. I subconsciously enjoyed the craziness of his whim! Great, although slightly loony guy! First time my Wycik-phone actually did come in handy!
The A(lma)-team surprised me with a joint card today! Thanks girls, count me in from February onwards! I am absolutely picking up on that 'koninginnehapje met frieten aan €3.10' when I get back!

Apart from the above, no transatlantic news that's worth mentioning. We had a nice evening at Future's backery yesterday evening, after a completely and ridiculously stupid evening of allegedly funny sketches. Well, Future's chocolate explosion cake made up for it. Other than that, life just goes on, in it's own merry way, as I am sure it does in Belgium too!

Half through midterm/paper season

It has been a while since I have written here and I know I don't have to apologise for that, as I have never made any life-binding commitment to posting something every week, but I feel morally obliged to keep you guys informed of my current situation across the 'pond'. Needless to point out to you that papers and midterms, my two companions along the way, have kept me busy and even up at night. However, I just got back the grades for my Medieval French midterm and was quite shocked to see that I got an A+ (94%) for it. Thank you, mister Perceval!!

At the moment I am working on my Canadian Literature class paper, which is very demanding, but nonetheless interesting to attempt to handle. One of my 'new friends', Matt (American journalist who's now taking some science courses at U of T) is helping me to make my 'performance meet up with my potential' in the sense that he has been going through the parts I've written so far and gives suggestions and corrections. Very inspiring comments and ultimately useful advice for my possible future in journalism, so I feel I'm learning à cent à l'heure!

I also got splendid news from my 'relatives' in Canada (thrice removed at least!). The Satre-family is related to my grandfather; Martine (the lady-of-the-house) is my grandfather's (pa's) niece and they come to visit Belgium every year and usually drop by my grandparents' house as well. E-mail and websites made it easy for me to get in touch with them and they promptly invited me to spend a long weekend in Montreal and Danville with them. So, I will be going to visit Montreal and the surrounding country side from Dec. 8 till Dec. 12. I consider it to be a well-deserved treat after my exams, which end on the 7th. I spoke to Martine on the phone today and she seemed very happy to hear me and was looking forward to meet met in about a month. She also wanted to 'vérifier si je me rappelle encore un peu de patois de Saint-Trond de ma jeunesse' All very well, but I didn't realise we spoke 'un patois' in the vicinity of Sint-Truiden... :)

As much as I want to go on about my great life in Toronto and about the things I have been doing here (not much actually, as I come to think of it, apart from reading, writing and studying.), Les Damnés de la Terre is awaiting me. Prof. Tcheuyap likes to present us with texts and articles that mainly deal with violence in every possible form of appearance. Quite heavy bed time reading, I have to admit!