Snippets of Ottawa - Parliamentary Cat Sanctuary

Ottawa has been an interesting city to live in. As in most places, if you live there for a while you will discover some quirky places, foods and other miscellany!

To start us off and to ease me back into blogging, here are some pictures from the Parliamentary Cat Sanctuary.

Will has been to Ottawa before this trip and was told of this mysterious 'cattery' near Parliament, but he had never seen it. One cold day, our friend took me there and I couldn't wait to take Will and show him the cats!

Can you see the second cat? 

The Parliamentary Cats are fed by volunteers and live in this cute little house. They have straw inside and water and food outside. According to Wikipedia these cats were employed to keep the rodent population down in 1955. Both times I went I only saw one or two cats - perhaps they were snuggled further in the house? Squirrels and various birds, like pigeons, also help themselves to the food. In front of the cat house is parliament itself, and the cattery is situated on a bank facing the river. Like I said, it's quirky!

Preparing to hit the road again...

Well, after a brief hiatus (ok, so it has nearly been 12 months since I last posted! Sorry!!), we are yet again preparing to hit the road and continue on our adventure.

What have we been doing for the past 11 months then?

We did make it to Ottawa and then we melted through 6 weeks of job hunting (3 for Will) in the humidity of Canada. At one stage I had 3 jobs, but I quickly cut this back to two. One was teaching at an Orthodox Jewish School which had no resources, hence my lack of blogging and focus on preparing  my lessons! I also worked in retail at Banana Republic, a great clothing store. Will worked for a contracting company, like in Australia, for a big telecommunications company, like Telstra in Australia.

Winterlude, Gatineau, Quebec, Jan 2012

Today was my last day at school. Four hours of meeting, cleaning and whispered debriefing brought an end to my toughest year of teaching!! Yesterday I used the slave labour at my disposal and made the kids clean the classroom (so I didn't have to do it today!). They could be little terrors, but I will miss them! Some of them anyway!!

So I was sad to see them for the last time, but I am so stoked that the school year is finally over!! No more covering myself from head to toe (including toes and collarbone, elbows and knees), particularly as we've had some 40+ days the last two weeks.

Our plan is to leave towards the end of July, after Canada Day and a few summer weeks here in Ottawa enjoying all the things we were deprived of during that long dark winter.

And so I thought I'd better get back into the blog! However I won't be writing such epic descriptions (at least I'll try not to, though this one is getting a bit long) as I've been reading lots of blogs in my spare time to get some ideas. Definitely lots more posts about our travels to come though!!

More soon!