Monday, August 4, 2008

Farewell For Now

For the past week, a friend of mine, Helen, has been in town visiting all her Canadian friends. I met her about 4 years ago when she came to the University of Ottawa to study for 6 months. Since then, she has been back three times but not always long enough for a visit. This time around, I was fortunate to see her 4 times. The final time was yesterday. I invited some old and new friends over to my place and we had a farewell lunch for Helen before I drove her to her bus.

Initially I was really worried because it looked like no one was planning on coming. No replies or negative replies. Thankfully, however, Helen made some further invites that I was unaware of and our turn out was very successful. I kept it simple and bought the lasagnas, made a broccoli salad, cut up some baguette and offered pop and water. Dave was out of town from Saturday to Sunday evening so doing it alone meant keeping it simple.

In this picture we have everyone who was there except Vanessa and Cory who were busy with baby Henry ( Cory) or taking one of the pictures (Vanessa).

Here are all the women folk. Somehow we ended up separated by gender and all the women were at one end of the room and the men on the other.

It was a really nice gathering. I hadn't seen some of these friends for a long time. Others had never been over to visit before. It was just a really nice afternoon. Although I was tired and in pain afterward, it was a worth while experience. Especially to be able to bring all these people together for one last gathering before Helen left to return to Europe.

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