Hello everybody! 

As I said last week I was in Montréal and Ottawa with the NSISP. I had an amazing time and it was so much fun! I would recommend this trip to everybody that has the chance to do it! There are a lot of photos already on my blog and I will upload a few videos too! In this entry I will describe everything we've done and because that is easier to do it in days, I will do it like that.

Day 1 (March 11th)

We had to meet at the airport at 10:30am and our flight to Montréal was at 1:00pm. It was a good flight although we had a tiny plane, but because the weather was good, the flight was good as well. We arrived in Montréal at around 3pm I think and we drove to our hotel. We had a coach only for our group the whole week so it was really easy to travel around. We didn't do much the first day. The only thing we did was we got our rooms, ours was on the 21st floor, and went over the rules and stuff and then we went our for supper and shopping in a big mall. It was really fun! 

Day 2 (March 12th)

That day was our only full day in Montréal so we started with a guided tour. We had a guide that came into our coach and we drove and walked around the city and saw a lot of interesting stuff. He showed us some look-offs and some of the houses they build when all the settlers came. They all look the same and have outside stairs, that's why they're so famous. After that we went to the Notre Dame and it is an awesome and beautiful church! One of the best I've ever seen in my life! If you ever go to Montréal, visit this church! After that we had lunch, all the food we got that week was amazing, so I'm not gonna say what we had every day, it was just good! In the afternoon we went to the Olympic Parc. We took a ride to the top of the Montréal Tower and if the weather would have been nicer we would have had a beautiful view over Montréal! Then we went to the Biodome, which is like a little zoo, but it actually wasn't that special and there weren't many animals, but it was interesting. After the Biodome we went to the Butterfly Gardens, which weren't acutally gardens it was just a room and they had all kinds of dead butterflys and bugs, so it was nice to see them, but not my favorite part. In the evening we went to a Sugar Shack, outside of Montréal somewhere in Québec. When we arrived there we took a horse-drawn carriage to the main house and a guy showed us the sugar shack, where they make the maple sirup, and the bakery. After that we had supper, what we had was pancakes, sausages, meat pie, egg and ham. Everything with maple sirup of course! It was really good and there was a guy there that was playing some music and did entertaining. We learned a traditional Québecoise dance, too. That was really fun! For dessert we went outside and a guy put maple sirup on snow and we made suckers (lollipops) out of that. Really good!!

Day 3 (March 13th)

Today we had to change cities from Montréal to Ottawa. So everybody had to pack their suitcases, put them on the bus and before we went to Ottawa we did an amazing thing somewhere in Québec. We went dog sledding! It was such an amazing experience. It was on a frozen lake and we had to do it in pairs of two. We got instructions and the dogs knew that they had to run in a big slope all around the lake, but we were alone with 6 dogs. One of the two had to stand and mush and the other one had to sit and of course we had to cheer for the dogs. I'll upload a video of that! At first Laura, my friend, stood and I sat and after half of the run we switched. It was really exhausting to stand up and mush and slow the dogs down if we had too, but it was so much fun and a great experience! It was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. It wasn't actually planned. Our plan was to go to the snow/ice village, but the problem was that it had melted, so we had to change our itinerary. But I'm so glad we did! Once we were done that, we got on the bus, had lunch boxes from the hotel and drove about 2 to 2 1/2 hours to Ottawa, where we came with a snow storm. We checked in to the hotel and went to an Irish restaurant for supper. Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone, by the way! :) After that we had free time at the hotel.

Day 4 (March 14th)

In the morning we went to see the Museum of Civilization, it was a really interesting and well presented museum! Of course, most of the kids were bored, because it was a museum, but I thought it was pretty interesting! After that we went to the IMAX to see a movie about the space and the building of the international space station. It was a really interesting movie and I love the way an IMAX works. After we went to the mall and had shopping and lunch time there until we went back to the hotel for an hour or so. We went to the Hard Rock Café for supper and then we had our own dance there. It was really fun, probably because I love dancing anyways, but it was just so cool to have a dance with people from all over the world! 

Day 5 (March 15th)

Today we had a guided tour of Ottawa. It worked the same way as the one in Montréal did. We had a guide that came in our bus and we drove all around the city to see different stuff and hear stories about it. Ottawa is a beautiful city! One of my favorites so far! After we had lunch we went to the Parliament buildings to  have a guided tour. It was really interesting and I liked it because the parliament in Canada works different than in all the other parliaments I've been inside so far and I really enjoyed it! When we went up to the tower of the building it finally stopped snowing and the sun came out so we had a beautiful view all over Ottawa, Ontario and Québec that is on the other side of the river. We were supposed to go to the Royal Canadian Mint, but because we were late, we couldn't go anymore, which was really sad, because I really wanted to go! 

In the evening after we had supper we went to the Scotiabank Place in Ottawa to watch a professional hockey game. It was the Ottawa 67's vs the Oshawa Generals. It was so fun to see a professional hockey game (I'll upload videos too). It was 5-5 after 3 periods so they had to do a fourth and after that they had to do a shootout! So we saw a lot of hockey and in the end Oshawa won, but it was a really fun time! I enjoyed it!

Day 6 (March 16th)

That day we had to leave Ottawa and fly home. It was really sad to leave, but I'm happy to be back home again, too! I just love my life and school here, so I was happy and sad at the same time. 

That was my trip and I hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed the trip! It was such a fun time, and I hope that I'll be able to uplad the videos quick! 

Tomorrow I'm gonna go skiing with the internationals! I'll write again, when something happens! 

 I would be glad to have some more comments and questions so that I can see that people actually read this blog or what I could improve!!

Bye for now,

Julia