Weekend Update

We had a really fun weekend, complete with good food, new friends and outdoor adventure. On Friday night we met up with two other lovely ladies who just transferred here with KPMG - one from Spain and another from Australia. What a great, international group!

We enjoyed some Canadian beers at a popular pub, Ship & Anchor - SITTING OUTSIDE! It seems the Chinook winds (warm winds that blow in randomly during the winter) came through on Friday, making it a gorgeous, sunny day with highs in the mid-60s. We shared a table with two Canadian guys who had been there since 2:30 pm (apparently that's the only way to get a table at this hot spot - they were nice enough to share!), and started to learn how much these Canucks can really drink!

On Saturday we wandered over to the Mountain Equipment Co-Op to peruse ski and hiking gear - after a few hours we were so confused and overwhelmed by the options that all we left with was a warm Patagonia ski jacket for me. It's awesome!! Now we need to work on Ben ...

The evening brought more fun with our new pals - dinner at a "Mexican" restaurant, Julio's. While the food was yummy and fresh, it was not exactly Mexican - I guess we will have to trade the wonderful Mexican food we're used to for really good Asian food, which is in abundance here. Take note of the photo of Ben drinking the place's specialty, margaritas with a beer turned upside-down in the glass. Sounds gross, but is surprisingly tasty!

Although we had visions of spending Sunday hiking around one of the grand Rocky Mountain lakes (Lake Moraine, Lake Louise), we got a late start and instead drove to a local park, Fish Creek Provincial Park, that sits on the outskirts of Calgary. It's 11 miles long - one of North America's biggest urban parks! We learned that Bosco is a total outdoorsman! He loved wading in the streams, running up hills and trekking into brush as tall as him.

The landscape was really inspiring and visually interesting to me - acres and acres of flat and lightly rolling land covered in golden, knee-high grass; inclines through sparsely leafed trees, and meandering streams and rivers cutting through the middle of all of it. The sun looks so different up here - it hits more sharply than in the south. The sky is huge and often clear, so that the sun sits right in the middle shooting out rays, casting an amber light onto everything below.