Debi van Zyl

I am going to one of my favorite places tomorrow: Canada.
I spent a lot of years as a kid/teenager in Vancouver though I haven't been back in a long time. That will be another trip. This time I'm meeting up with R in Montreal, a city I've been to only in the Spring.

While Los Angeles is going through its own version of a cold snap, I'm excited to experience real cold again. Of course I am ill prepared and some extremity will suffer, but I'm only there for 4 days, so I'll just make do.

A wish list for while I am in Montreal:

1. to conjugate my verbs correctly... my French is getting rusty. But I can't wait to be surrounded by another language. R has never heard me speak French to another person, so I might get a little shy.

2. for it to snow on my birthday... I know the chance is slim, but fingers and toes are crossed.

3. that my body, in trying to keep itself warm for lack of a good winter coat, will metabolize all the pastries I eat faster than ever and that I come home thinner than when I left :)

4. go ice skating... this one might be a little hard as I hear it's not as cold as usual and no outdoor rinks are frozen. That's fine, I can cope... I'll take whatever indoor rink I can get, but I must skate. I say that like I'm good at it or something, but I'm not. I've only gone skating maybe 5 times and I just generally fall over, but I love it. When I was nine years old I remember telling my friends in South Africa that my family was moving to Canada. I remember two very distinct things from that conversation: 1. that I would have to start pronouncing tomato differently, and 2. that I would get to go ice skating all the time. A nine-year old mind is a wonderful thing... when in Canada, one must skate. And so I will.

{image via alexicaro)

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update: I did an OK job at conjugation, it did snow on my birthday, but, alas, I did not skate.