Jet Feet

As an early 40th birthday present, K bought me a 30 minute session on some Jet Feet with Fly Quebec. It was absolutely brilliant fun, really like flying. 

The only trick I tried was diving in, then flying back out again. However, I didn't lift my legs enough on the entry, and they're a bit battered and bruised today.

The session was split into two 15 minute sessions, so I could have a breather in between, as it was rather tiring.  In the second session, I was really getting the hang of it, so I think the jet-ski driver let me have some more throttle, and I went really quite high. Unfortunately, I bottled it a little, and fell backwards. I hit the water quite hard, and I think in doing so, I burst my ear-drum.

All the injuries aside, I had great fun, and would love to give it another go. Maybe getting the hang of those dives....

Summer Camp

As a kid in the UK, I was fully aware of the American phenomenon that is summer camp. Through the media as well as knowing it as something my Canadian cousins did. I wrongly assumed it to be a form of boarding camp where children were sent so spend their summers away from their family, evacuee style. Probably in the back-woods. Kind of what Boy's Brigade camp but for longer, and with bears.  

Needless to say, as a kid, I was abhorred that North American parents felt so little for their kids that they would thoughtlessly send them away for the whole summer!

Skip forward a few years, and I'm a parent in North America, faced with a kid starting school, and therefore having her first summer holiday. Summer holidays are looooong. We only have so many holidays we can take. Enter the Summer Camp. Day camp of course which was obviously the same kind of camp that the bulk of kids were going to, including my cousins, back in the day, when I had falsely assumed they were being carted away to boarding camp for months on end. Far from it. In fact, if I had access to something like this as a kid, I would have loved it, and so far LP does too.

She's being exposed to new sports (tennis and basketball so far) as well as swimming and doing art and drama (learning songs) every day, some of her favourite things to do. Every day I go to pick her up, she's excited to tell me what she's been doing, and her swimming seems to be advancing at a great rate.

If there's a downside, it's that the camp is anglophone. Don't get me wrong, it's great that she's being exposed to an anglo environment that is not her closest family and friends, but she's coming home with this funny accent. Ts are being dropped all over the place, especially in water and mosquito, and there us upspeak! I don't know which is worse, this, or the fact she's learning all the words and the moves to One Direction songs (which she is teaching to her little sister)! The Horror!

Quote of the Week

“When I can’t buy a bagel in French, it really bugs me.”
Jonathan Valois, Parti Québécois president, at a PQ workshop.