Hilary and Mark on way back

Hilary and her friends Taurie and Jordan are in Amsterdam after checking out Europe for the past two months: France, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Hungary and Greece. For their stories have a look at their blog at www.chasingthesun92.wordpress.com where they posted many photos and some short stories. Hilary will be back in Niagara on Monday and back to work next Friday. Mark will be back next weekend after driving back from Calgary where he did his internship of three months (electrical engineering). Mark will then a week later start year 4 of his studies. Almost there.... :-)

Music on the water

The theme of this month seems to be "water". Last night Mary and I were walking along the Welland Canal when we heard some music from the Andes. It turned out to be from the Welland Friday music series which always takes place on a stage built on the water of the recreational Welland canal.

People enjoyed the music in the late afternoon sun. The group from Ecuador played music from the Andean region (Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia). In the end they played their version of two songs from a popular Colombian singer, both were hits in Colombia when I was there during 2013. Some of the audience braved to dance; this couple gave a good show.

After the Latin American group we were entertained by a reggae band from Jamaica who played a lot of Bob Marley oldies. A nice unexpected evening of entertainment.

More activities on the water

Today more water-sports. This time with a Seneca College team in a dragon boat at the small lake at our King Campus (see one of my June 2015 posts on that campus). On Saturday August 15 we will be hosting a competition with about 25 teams as a fund-raising event for the United Way North York campaign 2015. I signed up to be one of the 20 paddlers but because I busted my back the past few weeks, I decided to sit out the practice and just make a few photos from the side....

Here you see the team in front of the "Eaton Hall" (see my June post for the description of that special and historic building). The race is only on a 250 meter course (compared to the 1000 meter course we paddled the past years on the Welland Canal during some dragon boat events).

After an hour of practice the team started to paddle somewhat "in synch" :-)

I noticed that the Seneca summer camp for kids also has a few small sailing boats...

It was a nice hour in the early evening. The rain stayed away. Another practice next week.

Week at a cottage

The past week Mary and I joined Susan, Ralph and their daughter Fiona, and Marcy, Joe and their sons Spencer, Parker and Will in the cottage we rent each year for one week together. It was the first time that neither Hilary (in Europe) or Mark (in Calgary) were with us there. It was also the first time that we tried out our Laser 2 with some nice quiet weather. Later in the week we tried it with a bit more wind, but it takes some getting used to again after 35 years no sailing....

We had a very nice week with absolute gorgeous weather every day. The batteries are charged again for a few busy months at work ahead with travel to Mozambique to start up a new project, and to China and South-East Asia for new business development.