The Adventures of Charlie the Frog

I recently completed a solo trip out East from Waterloo to Truro: over 2000 km of driving in my new [to me] car. I do not know when I will be returning to Waterloo, so of course it was difficult to part with the lovely people who I have gotten to know over the past eight months.

I was really blessed by all the lovely notes and gifts people gave me when I was leaving. Thanks everyone!!

One of these gifts was a stuffed frog that my housemates gave me. I named this frog Charlie. This blog post chronicles Charlie's cross-country adventures.

This is what Waterloo looked like before I left... Spring is finally coming! This is the lawn in front of our place.

This is where Charlie was sitting when we began the journey. Unfortunately he had to move later when a cop near Toronto pulled me over for 
a)Having no plates (I did have a special permit, but the officer just did not see it and
b)Looking as if I was kidnapping a child in the front seat (?). Apparently having a pillow and a green frog in the passengers seat is a big no-no in Ontario and is very suspicious.

Charlie made some new friends! I got to stop in and see my sister in-law's family (I will have a sister-in-law next month!). They were so hospitable and I got to enjoy Easter lunch with them.

Charlie then got to visit our nation's capital, and was excited to visit a bakery that is famous for once having served Barack Obama. Even though he is a frog, Charlie has a big sweet tooth. Throughout our adventure, Charlie and I survived mainly on Clif Bars, apples, and Easter chocolate.

This is another new friend to Charlie and old friend to me! We enjoyed the classic Ottawa treat, Beavertails. Thanks Gabby for being an top-notch tour guide.

It was cold in Ottawa, so Charlie warmed himself by the eternal flame.

Charlie does not agree with all of the policies of the current government, but he was happy to visit some of the classic government sites.

Charlie is very thankful for the woman's suffrage movement in Canada and wholeheartedly agrees that women are persons.

Here is another new friend of Charlie. Tucker is SO much bigger than when I first met him (but still just as playful). This is what what Charlie and I woke up to on Monday morning.

Charlie and I became PRO at doing this by the end of the trip.

When we arrived in St. Stephen, we were really stiff from 11 hours of driving in one day. So Charlie and I did some yoga. This move is known as the downward frog.

Happy spring from Charlie at SSU!

Charlie and I took a little side drive with Mary to St. Andrews-by-the-Sea. When Mary and I were little (I think I was around eight or nine), we had visited St. Andrews and had played in this really fun playground. It was our mission to go back there. We did return, and it was just as awesome as we remembered! Charlie agreed. However we went there on a school day and the bell rang for recess, so we had to run away before we got arrested for suspiciously lurking around a school with a camera....

After thousands of miles of driving and months of being in Ontario, the smell of salt air was exactly what Charlie and I needed to smell.

Almost home!

Home again, home again, jiggety jig...
Compare this photo with the one of my front door in Waterloo. The snow drifts here are so high. Our poor little apple trees in our front yard are mostly buried. I knew Nova Scotia had  a lot of snow this winter, but it feels surreal to be coming home for spring term only to find a brand new winter.

Oh, and there's a funny story about me coming home, too. As soon as I went in my house, my car's alarm started going off! Our house is in a really quiet neighbourhood, so I felt super embarrassed! I could NOT for the life of me figure out how to turn it off. So as I was unpacking the car, it just kept on beeping. I read the manual and even when I did what it said I needed to do to turn off the alarm, it just would not go off. I called my Dad but he did not know what to do either. I started feeling a sense of dread: I just bought the car and I was worried that I would have a lifetime of electrical problems. But then, once I was all unpacked, I went to get my phone charger out of one of my bags. At the bottom of the bag, I saw a red light on. I realized what it was: the other set of keys to my car! When I had set down the bag, it had landed in such a way that my laptop was pressing down on the panic button. I felt really dumb but also really relieved. Well, now everyone on my street knows I am home.

Charlie then got to visit our province's capital, Halifax.

 Finally, Charlie moved into his new home with my mom. We were happy to find Mom very well. Over the past few days she has gone from being extremely sick (ie low white blood cell counts, fever, was in an isolated unit in the hospital) to making leaps and bounds in her recovery. We are thankful for everyone's prayers, and we give all credit to Jesus, who heals and restores.