Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Quebec Trip

Lydia's French class at Diamond had a field trip this spring to Quebec -- here are some photos.

In the runup for the trip we discovered that Lydia's cell phone (an old Nokia inherited from Ethan) was in the process of dying -- although it would receive texts and calls for some reason things were broken on the outgoing side. I ordered her a new one (Moto G) and got it set up so that she would have a way to communicate.   I think the old phone did us a favor by kicking the bucket at just the right time, since the new one has (of course) a much better camera.

After scrupulously careful packing and organization, Lydia and Amy and I arose at the ridiculously early hour of 5am (yeeks) and had a nice breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, and we got her lunch all packed and ready to go. I drove her down to Diamond parking lot where she piled onto the bus. I chatted for a while with some of the other parents, then got in my car and started to drive off when at the last minute I noticed Lydia chasing the car to try to get me to stop. It turned out that she had forgotten her wristwatch, so I zoomed back home, got the watch, drove back to the parking lot, ran as fast I could over to the bus and delivered the watch (whew). Drove back home again, only to see Amy running out the kitchen door waving something. It was Lydia's wallet (with all her money) -- she had left it on her chair at breakfast. So I got in the car again, zoomed down to the parking lot, but the bus had already left at this point. Oh well -- we texted her about it and just told her to ask one of the teachers for a loan of some spending money.

Packing and departure mayhem aside, she had a fine time on the trip.

En route, stopping for a snack of "poutine":


Nous sommes arrivés...



This is the Chateau Frontenac hotel I believe


The tourist info center, where else...


More city photos


Cool mural




One of several breakfast photos. I can see that Lydia is making sure to get her daily minimal dose of chocolate...


This water bottle looks like something out of a Tintin cartoon for some reason:


Church visit:




 


Visit to a waterfall:
 




Friends:


Lunch! Looks like C.M.?


I love this photo --

More meal photography, NB -- what are these teenagers drinking?

 

Reading on the bus ride home:

The new phone was great for her to have on the trip, but it wasn't until she got back that it really began to kick into high gear-- the circle of friends with whom she'd been hanging out on the trip started a "group chat" via text, and her phone was absolutely deluged with text messages the following week.  It became fairly clear after a few days (and several thousand messages) that the prepaid plan was no longer going to cut it; we actually had to one that included unlimited texting. Dragged kicking and screaming into the cell phone age...


No comments: