I managed to miss the Igloofest by Piknic Électronik this weekend, which was kind of a bummer since it seemed like it would be such an awesome event. But with a downturn in the temperature -- another -20C day yesterday, with wind chill bringing it down to -28C -- it was just too hard to justify bringing a 1-year-old to an outdoor event.
We did manage to do some fun things this weekend, anyways. Saturday was our first day house-hunting. We're planning to buy an apartment or condo in the Plateau Mont-Royal this year, before July 1. July 1 is the traditional Moving Day in Quebec -- the day that every renter in the province either renews their year-long lease or moves to a new apartment. We're going to move out of Renterhood this year altogether, and get into the fun of home ownership. Wish us luck.
Anyways, we saw a great place this Saturday, and we plan to do some more house hunting over the next few weeks. We're going to make a decision about whether to stay in our current apartment or not before March 1, when we begin our big road trip down to Austin for South by Southwest.
tags: montreal quebec piknicelectronic igloofest cold house-hunting moving day
Bruncher
This afternoon we had a great bruncher with friends at our (current) apartment. We invited over Jeremy and Lina and their two girls Syvlie and Clea, who arrived at our door like an advertisement for a skiing school. I love talking to the girls -- they're really smart and sweet people.
We also had over Maj's friend Emi and her husband Stef, as well as their daughter Isadora. Emi is originally from Oaxaca (city), and Stef is German. They moved here a few months ago, and Maj and Amita June met Emi and Isadora at their playgroup. This was the first time I met Stef; I got to use my German introduction lessons for this week on him. Guten Tag! Ich heiße Evan! Freut Mich!
Isadora speaks Spanish with her mother and German with her father. She'll grow up bilingual, but unfortunately not speaking either of the languages of the bilingual city she's living in. My guess is that she'll probably be pretty expert at four languages by the time she's 10 or so.
Maj cooked today, and made a really great smoked salmon gratin, white bean vegetable soup, and hors d'oeuvres. I put together a green salad to round it out. We opened up a couple of bottles of crispy vinho verde and had a very nice afternoon time. The kids got along great; Sylvie and Clea are several years older than Amita and Isadora (one day apart!), but they were really gentle and nice with the little ones.
tags: bruncher lina jeremy emmy stef amitajune german isadora sylvie clea