Alberta!

On our way to Guelph on Friday, we had some time so we stopped in Toronto for a movie. Rhonda had a completely private screening of Miss Congeniality 2 (there was no one else in the theatre) and the rest of us saw Sahara. I really liked it; it was pretty good for a fairly mindless action movie. I mean, don't expect too much more than entertainment. I LOVED the character that Steve Zahn plays in it, but then, I always love the quirky sidekick. We decided that in the Spread the Word movie that will be made about our trip, Jeremy will be the hero, Rhonda will be the love interest, I will be the quirky sidekick, Jonathan will be the gadget guy who can do anything, and Reneyah will be the comic relief.
The next day, we drove through Toronto's Chinatown on our way to Knox Presbyterian church. I've never seen so many people on a street at one time! Maybe on Yonge Street, but somehow this seemed busier. There were street vendors all along the road; selling fruit, vegetables, clothes, pillows out of the back of a van, and a zillion other things with a zillion people milling around and speaking Mandarin. Or possibly Cantonese. At least 95% of the people were Asian.
We performed that night at Knox Presbyterian. This church was something else; it was over a hundred years old. The sanctuary had huge vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows, with a pipe organ taking up half of the front wall. We didn't perform in the sanctuary, but we did go to church there the next morning. We sang hymns from a hymn book to a pipe organ. Crazy! I'd never done that before!
After church we drove up to Ottawa, stayed the night at Rhonda's parent's place, and flew out the next day. Back to the homeland, where there's no PST or HST, where the oil flows like water, where the trees are few and far between, where the highways are straight and long; that sunny province we call Alberta. There's something odd about seeing something that has always been familiar and yet seems out of place. After two months out east, I was used to seeing blue and black Ontario license plates. Now that I'm in Alberta, the red ones look so weird! But I've been used to them my whole life...it shouldn't look that strange. It's a very odd feeling.
Anyway, we're in Barons until our next show on Friday. It's great to see a familiar building with familiar people for a few days. It is such a blessing for people to allow us into their home, but after a while it's hard to answer the same questions people ask when they first meet you. (where are you from, what do you do, how long have you been on the road, etc.) Eventually I realized that everywhere we go we meet strangers, and we are strangers to them. And I can't wait to go to Edmonton, where the city and the people are familiar! We actually get to spend a whole week there, from the 22nd to the 28th.
As of May 2nd; four months down, two to go.