Day...5?

Today will not be the day that I manage to drive the car and exclusively use the indicator rather than the windshield wipers, to let other drivers know where I am going.

Dave gave driving a second attempt, but there is a lot going on here and the hilly roads and the manual transmission are still causing him grief.  I took over after a feisty older woman specifically roller her window down to tell him off.  I'll have to get him out to the back roads and practice with the manual transmission.  Me learning to drive a manual transmission many years ago was not exactly what you might call a "bonding moment" for my father and I.  Please pray for my marriage.

We met up with a woman living here who grew up in Ottawa.  She gave me a tour of the town while the boys checked out the library.  I will admit that even I find I to be hot here.  I'm not complaining,  but the air conditioned library did feel nice after walking around the town. The house is kept cool naturally,  but there's not much relief to be had outside.  Luckily we are having dinner tonight with a family who has invited us to first come and swim in their pool.  The boys and I will be taking full advantage of that!

We then went to the boy's school to see their classrooms and meet the doodle's teacher.  It is so completely different from Canadian schools that I don't even know where to start.  First off, the school is made up of a series of buildings and the students move from room to room, including the bathrooms, by being outdoors.

 Here's the doodle sitting in his new desk (above) and in the doorway of his class room (below)

The special needs classrooms are in their own section of the school campus and even have their own play yards. We were very impressed with the set up.  We didn't get to met Monkey's teacher yet, but we will on Wednesday when the kids start school.

 This was a dog that one of the teachers had brought in with him today as there are no students in the school.  He was more than happy to snuggle up to the boys as he had stories of long suffering and neglect that none of us believed.

 Tonight we went for dinner at the house of some new friends.  Peady is the dog of our exchange family and he was excited about us from the moment our car (his family's car) pulled in to the driveway.  He is convinced that he is a lap dog and snuggled right up to us.  It was all I could do to convince both Peady and the Monkey that he was not coming home with us.

 Both Monkey and Doodle had a ball with the gaggle of boys who turned up for the dinner.  Here a game of cricket has just sort of happened.  Monkey seemed to be learning the ropes pretty well.