Jessica and friends in the mud

Twice this year, in August and November, we saw our teenager friend Jessica in Ottawa, who's now in her last year of high school, exploring a variety of hairstyles and ideas for her future. She cares greatly about animal welfare, but Art and Maths interest her too; it will be interesting to see what path she chooses next. On both visits Chris took her flying, on the second occasion with her cousin Roland. Some passengers like taking control of the aircraft, some do not; Jessica does!

The weekend she stayed at our house was a good occasion for getting in touch with the German family she got to know in 2018, so I invited them to a Zoom meeting at breakfast time / mid-afternoon, and the two girls, Jessica and Toni (whose English after a year living in New Zealand is now flawless) spent a good hour happily catching up with one another's news. I found that very rewarding to witness, since Chris, I, and Jessica's aunt Carol, had introduced the girls to one another back in 2017, a long time ago from their perspective, when they were 12 / 13 years old.

  

Sunday November 21 was a wet, grey, and muddy day, as we discovered when I had the silly idea of taking Jessica for a walk in the Chelsea woods, with Carol, Elva and Laurie along. Jessica called this walk "a team-building exercise" because the trail was so slippery and steep. Setting off from the parking lot opposite St. Stephen's Church we meandered through the new housing development to the banks of Chelsea Creek and then across a series of hurdles on the trail through the woods, crossing bridges and climbing up and down flights of steps, having to hang on to fences, trees and helpfully proffered hands and dead branches on the way, to avoid falling into the mud. Nobody actually sat in the mud, but it was close, and our boots took an hour to clean, that evening. We finished the walk in the sombre old cemetery, where the dates of death at a young age, carved on the gravestones rising from the turf, imply hardship for Chelsea's 19th century settlers.

At the beginning and end of the weekend Jessica took the Toronto-Ottawa-Toronto train.

Lunch out with cardamom-flavoured coffee

It was a strangely unfamiliar experience to wear smart shoes and go out to lunch, especially when lunch was at the reception hall of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates. A few of our Diplomatic Hospitality group had been invited there as a treat. 

 

We were coaxed into sampling a whole range of Middle East and North African specialities personally prepared by members of the embassies that took part (the UAE, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon) with such delicious flavours in the ingredients!— Mediterranean herbs and spices in the savoury dishes, rose water in the desserts. It was healthy food too; it's rare that I consume so much without suffering any indigestion afterwards. To drink, Yemeni coffee or Iraqi tea, Rarkadeh, lemonade or chai was served, no wine of course. 

The cheerful atmosphere was intoxicating enough without alcohol. A musician played dance music on a Syrian lute and the Ambassadors' wives who were our hostesses moved gracefully around the room in their national clothes, greeting everyone and encouraging us to dance.