On Thursday morning I went for a walk along the Grey Canal with Marie and Osito. It was a fine fall day, but I was stopped in my tracks when the former mentioned that she and George were going to go cross-country skiing in the afternoon. I was prepared for winter to come but not for it to be here. But it is. Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre opened on Thursday. I still am not ready to actually drive up into the snow and start the season. I’ve never before lived in a place where you can drive 20 min. from fall to winter. I need to be in the white stuff before I get the urge to play in it. So I have spent the rest of the week in fall mode, picking up my newly edged and waxed downhill skis, raking and bagging leaves, going to a fall fair, getting my hair cut and finally in a last desperate effort to postpone the inevitable, cleaning and weatherproofing every piece of winter footwear I own. I’m running out of stalls, but there are still a few leaves on the maple and of course I have to use my cheap pass to the rec. centre, which is only good for the month of November, and I’m going to help Bert gather the last of the walnuts from his tree on Tuesday and then I’ll have to crack and bag my share. Realistically, I don’t think I’ll be able to get on the snow until next Thursday.
I swam 3 times last week, but I can’t get past 30 laps; my friend Mo and her husband do 80. They’ve been swimming a lot for about 5 years, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get to that. I’m too keen on the sauna. The one in the rec. centre is very good, but as they say about the only down side of Paris being that it’s full of Parisians, so with the Vernon sauna; it’s full of Vernonites. They’re fine people, but the gang in there around 12:30 is full of truisms which they give voice to at high volume. Fortunately they can’t take the heat for as long as I can, and when they leave, I stretch out, assume some yoga positions, and approach meditation as nearly as I ever do.
We finished our last training session at Immigrant Services this Thursday night, and I should get my student in a week or so. I discovered when a video section of the class revealed a technical problem that a young man in the class knows a lot about such things. He fixed the situation, and I asked him as we were leaving if he could come to my place and hook up the Bose sound system, which Jim and I bought with the big t.v. but I had not been able to use. He dropped by a few days later and connected it in about 20 min. He didn’t want any money, but I insisted he take at least $20.00. He’s just out of college and hoping to get some kind of work and volunteer teaching ESL this winter so he can travel and teach English next year.
Last night I went to my first dinner at a friend’s house since I’ve been in Vernon. Mo and John had 6 people over including a Korean friend of theirs who was visiting them from Edmonton. I practiced my feeble Korean with her, and she said that she might be able to put me in touch with a Korean woman who lives in Vernon and could be interested in a Korean/English lesson exchange.
Tonight I’m going to hear Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ at the Vernon Performing Art’s Centre. No snow there.
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