O the weather outside is...oh come on it's awesome!

What a wonderful weekend we had here in Durham! The snow started on Saturday morning and it was just beautiful to watch it come down all day....

and the next day! It continued to snow on Sunday, so the boys ended up going out for a while with their friend Titus.

Can you find Jake in this pic?

Garrett and Titus buried him in the snow...alive. What a good brother and friend he has. :)

I took some pictures out our back door...

I zoomed in on our neighbor {and 1st year Church Planter teacher} Peter.

...and out the front door!

Here goes the grade 1-6 kids out sledding for gym class.

These 2 guys are making their wives very happy by cutting some pine branches for our front porches.

Bill & Matt headed out to get branches near Jungle Camp. Every where you look out here was just amazing. It was so beautiful.
This is part of the path that we drove on to get back out.


Matt & Erin and Bill & I got our front porches all decorated, but not without a snowball fight first.
Our friend Deanna showed up so Matt and Bill started throwing snow at her. Poor Deanna...poor Erin who came out the front porch and almost got hit!

Here is the finished product tonight.
This is the front of our apartment.
{We are in the upstairs part, and the 2nd year staff offices are downstairs}
Here is Matt & Erin's
Aren't they pretty?
I couldn't get all the way back but Matt & Erin's apartment is on the opposite end of the building than us. So having the two ends decorated really looks nice.

Our neighbor's Peter and his wife Kathy have a beautiful little pavilion tucked in the woods behind their house. They put lights on it and tonight it looked just perfect!

Another picture from our back porch tonight!
...and to all a good night!

Culture Event # 1...destination Kensington Market!

We got up Monday to head to Kensington Market in Toronto for our 1st Culture Event, only to wake up to snow! UGH! We traveled down with our language helper, Cynthia, which was really nice visiting with her and hearing about her life.

As we began our day our first stop was Tim Horton's 1/2 way there so I thought I should get the word for bathroom and toilet in Spanish...uh the joy of knowing this wonderful practical expression. :)

Oh! one last potty break before we got on the subway. I had to take this picture in the bathroom at the mall. Isn't this sink awesome? {Thank you Emma for being such a wonderful model}

We traveled to a mall close to Toronto to jump on a subway. This was fun!

Which took us to a Trolley Car...This was really fun! We all stood in the aisle because it was packed. I actually stood by the driver and Bill and another guy in our class actually stood on the steps...but there was still room for one more :)

We were dropped off close by the market.

Just down the street a ways we arrived...here's our sign!

We were to take pictures of several nouns and verbs...of course my second favorite noun would be "shoes".

What an awesome market place...we just love places like this!

Doesn't the food look good?

It wouldn't be complete without nuts, beans, and rice, veggies, fish and goats meat! :)

Anyone for a dried rat? Just kidding, I guess it's a "pepper"...yea right! :)

We had decided not to eat one big meal at one place but to eat all day...and we did!

Here is some of the things we ate...it was all so good!

This is a chicken empanada. I make these at home but I bake mine. This one was better because it was deep fried. mmmmmm

Yuca before we ate it.

This is fried Yuca...mmmm

Don't forget the spicy dip for your fried yuca!
This is some greasy, yummy pork...mmmmm
I'm glad to say 2 days later that none of us have gall bladder problems. With all the grease we all felt just fine at the end of the day.
A couple of things you don't see everyday...
Sugar Cane...

A big box of very hot peppers. I loved the color of them.

Cows hanging from ceilings!

Austin Martin...Garrett and Jake loved this!

and Bill walking around with a pink bag... :)

We were grateful that the snow was not here and it was actually a perfect day. We had layers on so having it a little cooler kept us comfortable.

It was time to leave so we headed back to the Trolley Car that took us back to the subway. Here is a video after we got back to the mall.

Hope you enjoyed our day as well! We are now in the process of learning the nouns and verbs from our day. I'll post video later so you can understand how we are learn a language and will learn when we go to the field.