A Weekend to Remember

'Twas a lovely weekend. My friend Reuble (who is from India) had expressed a wish to see polar bears, and learn a bit more about the country he's now been living in for four years. So I convinced him to come stay at my house for the weekend, where I would give him some good Canadian experiences: going to the zoo to see polar bears, going to the art gallery to see the Group of Seven, and eating good stodgy food like stew and shepard's pie.

All in all, the weekend was a complete success. The highlight for Reuble was definately the polar bears (they were the reason he wanted to go to the zoo, and we saw them getting fed) but there were lots of other animals active in the nice fall sunshine when we went to the zoo Saturday. We saw jaguars having a tug of war over a tire, a vibrant green and yellow snake curving around branches, observed in detail octopus suckers as he travelled along the glass. There was also a red panda trotting up and down trees with the greatest of ease, elephants playing with tires and balls, and a camel who spat and displayed his lip to us in a very unflattering manner.

On Sunday Dad dragooned us into raking up leaves in the morning, but we didn't mind too much. then we drove to the McMichael and saw the art gallery a couple of other friends We all muchly enjoyed the Group of Seven, and I especially liked Lawren Harris.

Our trip back last night was pretty eventful -- we missed the normal transit bus to get to where we'd pick up our bus, and so had to fight with a driver to get transfers (this driver, let us say, appears not to have had any good lovin', or any positive human contact, for quite some time. Then we made our way through the enormous crowd of students at the bus stop to get on a bus.

[Aside: I've decided that the incredible sense of tension that is nearly palpable in groups of students waiting for the bus must be due to the fact that students at my university are generally neurotic and constantly worried about (or trying to control) details, but are too polite to actually start pushing and shoving and yelling]

We were travelling fine, when about 20 minutes outside of Kingston, someone tried to change lanes... into our bus. Miraculously, no one was hurt -- the car ended up in the ditch and the bus now has a lovely long scrape on it, but everyone was fine. However, we were stopped on the side of the road while the driver gave police statements for more than an hour. Our bus driver was really nice though -- when he finally did come back he came straight in, sat down, got the bus going on the road and then got on the intercom to give us an update while he was still out of breath (from running back to the bus from the crash site). We finally did get back at midnight, with one more story to tell.

Reuble, I think, enjoyed himself because of all the new things he was doing, but I had a really good time for a rather different (and more commonplace) reason: people. I really do enjoy observing and learning more about people, and this was a great opportunity. I got to know Reuble much better -- we had some fabulous discussions about culture differences, dealing with parents, and our mutual desire to avoid conflict whenever possible. I also got to see my Dad at his very best amusing entertaining mode -- teasing me while we raked the leaves, using large words all over the place to impress Reuble, and telling interesting stories to Reuble and Laurena at the zoo. (I remember pretending to watch a turtle at one point, when I was actually just enjoying seeing Laurena and Dad on the other side of the glass, clearly having an animated conversation)

And, of course, the fascinating psychological study of trapping 50 university students (tired, worried, hungry, and some with exams the next morning) in a bus on the side of a highway for an hour. It was dark, so we couldn't even see the accident. The shift from annoyance over the delay to concern for the other car to confusion about why the driver was gone to mounting anger (and some mutinous mutterings) as our time by the roadside reached and passed the one hour mark was more absorbing than any television or book.