Our time in Mississauga is going by really quickly and we have been taking advantage of every free weekend we have to travel and catch up with our family and friends who live in the Ottawa area (and some in the Greater Toronto Area).
Our children, Hayden (11) and Lara (9) have settled in to their new school and have made some good friends who live in the neighbourhood. At first, they found the move challenging but now are enjoying the Canadian lifestyle. The winter was long, we had lots of snow so we took advantage of all things winter, like skiing and skating.
For Easter we travelled to Albany, NY to spend time with our dear friends. We toured the area and on Easter Sunday took part in the Great Easter Egg Hunt that was held on the field of a high school nearby. As you can see we were lucky enough to get a photo with the Easter Bunny.
The Mother’s Day weekend (May 8-11) we travelled to Ottawa to take part in the CLEE Conference. The secondary teachers visited Sir Guy Carleton Secondary School (vocational school) in the morning, had lunch at Dow’s Lake with all the exchange teachers and their families, then strolled along the lake to take in all the beautiful tulips. On Saturday the group toured the Parliament building, enjoyed a native experience, took a double deck bus tour and had dinner at a restaurant in the Byward Market.
On our way home to Missassauga we stopped in Kingston, Ontario to have lunch with my mother, my aunt and my cousins for Mother’s Day.
During the May long weekend, we travelled to Cleveland, Ohio where we visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We then visited the Ford Museum in Detroit before heading back to Mississauga via Windsor, Ontario.
We have so many more adventures planned and look forward to sharing them with everyone.
We are extremely grateful to our exchange partner and her family as well as Helen Gregory from the IEU and Carol Wilkins from CEEF here in Ontario for facilitating this exchange.
Diane Lefebvre works at Radford College in the ACT and has exchanged to St Edmund Campion Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario. Diane is Canadian and emigrated to Australian 18 years ago.She is an IEU council delegate for the ACT Monaro Branch.