Paul the 'hero' and alligator pie - it was a fairly regular week!

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HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY!!!

I never thought the Australia Day celebrations would be bigger in Canada than Australia, but they are. Amazing. The Hottest 100 was playing all day, and they shipped in Australian beer for us. Given 80% of the staff are Australian, I guess it makes sense. There was a DJ in the common area of Chucktown (I think the music was mainly Australian, but he seemed to focus on volume rather than sound quality), and everyone was having BBQs (once they melted all the snow off).

This is probably a blog entry that will appeal to the girls - we’ve spent the last three-ish days shopping, and it was amazing. And, Paul was remarkably well behaved and even carried all the bags! In fact, he probably spent more money than I did. Both Paul and I bought extraordinary amounts of stuff, but everything was on sale - I bought three pairs of jeans for a total of $18.50. At prices like that it would have been a crime not to buy them ?. Well, that’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it! The best purchase we made is the one assisting with this blog entry - a new laptop! YAY! Now we never have to wait to use one of the four computers which are shared by 230 people. So far I love the computer, although I’m still struggling with the layout of the keyboard. I’ll get there.

Our trip to Edmonton was amazing. We shopped in the biggest mall I ever imagined, went to the movies, went to the indoor theme park (complete with 3 roller coasters), went to the indoor water park (complete with wave pool and 30 metre bungee jump), saw ice hockey and figure skating at the indoor ice rick, saw sea lions and flamingos, a pirate ship and a submarine, all without walking outside. It took us two full days just to walk around the place.

The West Edmonton Mall (WEM) is actually far bigger and OTT than I ever imagined. There are about 800 shops (including 30 shoe stores), and all the shops seem to have embraced the concept of the after Christmas sales. Everything seemed to be 50% off, and then 50% off sale prices. We went with one pretty empty backpack, and came back with 3 oversized and overstuffed ones. We even succumbed to staying at a motel just across the street, and we both slept better the two nights we were there than the whole time we’ve been in Canada. I got over the stomach bug I’d had for about a week almost instantly, and woke up each morning feeling refreshed - was it the bed, was it the return to civilisation, or was it the excitement of shopping? For the record, I did not, repeat did not, purchase any shoes. Hard to believe I realise, but the clothes were great, and the shoes weren’t. There were loads of stores I either hadn’t seen in Australia (or were really expensive at home) which are just like chain stores here. Best example is Abercrombie & Fitch, where I got a beautiful top made partially of rabbit fur for $15, reduced from $100!

Part of getting over the stomach bug involved the return of my appetite, which meant that Paul needed to get me food. Being the wonderful man he is (who do you think is editing this part of the entry?), he offered to go out in the cold at about 10pm to get me dinner. When he got back about 20 minutes later, he seemed a little out of sorts - some guys (7 apparently, but I figure if there were that many they must have been midgets) tried to mug him. The story.... he’d got some takeaway dinner (I highly recommend Boston Pizza) and was walking back to the hotel when some guys walking behind him asked him for the food. Obviously he refused, and then they started walking faster behind him and also asked for money. He refused and also started walking faster. As they then increased speed again Paul started to run, and got away from them. He said that as a result of the altitude training he’s been doing since we’ve been here he managed to put heaps of distance between himself and them in a very short space of time (he put about 40m distance between himself and them in about 1km - it doesn’t sound like much to me, but when you consider he was carrying a bag of food which didn’t spill, was running on snow and ice and had to jump a fence I guess it’s pretty impressive... he’s my hero anyway). The whole thing sounds terrifying to me, but there is a happy ending - I got my dinner!!! I asked Paul whether he wanted to call the police, but he said there was no point, and I’m sure he’s right. That’s our first, and hopefully our last near-crime experience while travelling. That seems dramatic enough. (Comment: Paul has just ranted about the first way I wrote this paragraph as it didn’t accurately reflect the trauma and severity of the situation - I think the whole situation was actually quite a big deal, and he’s only now telling me what really happened).

Anyway, enough about the shopping - of course there’s more to Edmonton than the shops. We just didn’t see it ? Kidding. In reality, Edmonton is an exceptionally dull city. All the buildings look the same (beige and square) and there’s snow on the ground. The city doesn’t get that much snow though, so all the snow had turned to ice, and was brown. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot going on, but we did get a great lunch, and Paul and I both noticed how much we’ve slowed down... we were walking through the centre of town at lunch time, and all these commuters came striding past us - we thought we’d been walking quickly, how wrong we were! Oh well, it’s probably good for us. It was amazing how little character the city seemed to have, particularly as it’s one of the oldest cities in Canada. I think they must have demolished all the old buildings to build the newer beige square boxes - the most interesting building we saw was the al Ghadir mosque, the oldest mosque in Canada. Other than that, nothing, just nothing. Word on the street is that Canadian cities are much better in summer and really come alive... will keep you posted.

I have two days off again (yes, I just had three off, then worked one, and now have another two off - there are some advantages to giving up life as you know it and travelling the world!) and this morning I went to the Chateau to see the ice carving contest. For the next week or so there’s an international ice carving competition on the lake and they build castles, sculptures, etc. The shapes they built were amazing, and the level of detail was unbelievable. I tried to take some good photos, but I'm not sure the pictures can really do it justice. Not sure what the theme of the competition is (other than the winner gets to do the sculpting for the winter olympics), but many of them seemed to be either quite dark or satanic. My favourite was the alligator bakery, and there were some great carvings of alligators coming out of pies, and also trying to eat the baker! It was amazing.

It's been snowing here all day, and it looks like it's not going to stop for a while - the last forecast I saw was for snow for the next 5 days, which is great, because it's been too cold here recently for snow, and when we're out riding, it's like being on ice. Not great for us beginners, particularly when we fall! Tomorrow is my first day our there for a week, so hopefully I won't have forgotten everything I've learned...

Not sure where our next adventure will be, but it will probably be somewhere in the vicinity of the Jackson Canyon. From what we've heard, it's a great place to go ice hiking, and also to hike on the glacier. This weekend I believe we're going to Calgary to see a Flames game (for all of you who have no idea about ice hockey - such as myself - the Flames are the local team which we are all supposed to support). Paul's somehow organised some free tickets, so it sounds like we're off for an evening of sport and violence!

Take care of yourselves, and I look forward to hearing from you all soon. Thanks for all your emails and messages.

Miss you all, and hurry up and come and visit - it’s balmy at the moment, -25!

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Photos

Paul's anticipation of Australia Day
Such patriotism...

Edmonton city
The most exciting building we saw was this mosque (sorry about the shoddy photo!)

Galaxy Water World
WEM wave pool - waves were about 1m

The Corkscrew
The best slide...

The 'Wedgie'
Not sure whether this was the actual name of the slide :)

Paul & Lizzy
If we were swimming, it must have been warm, right?

Ice carving at the Chateau
I think this was supposed to be a Satanic Tinkerbell?

My favourite carving - alligator bakery
Not sure whether this is a pie I would like to try...

Before he was turned into alligator pie
Ice or not, I wouldn't ever like to have to face one of these