So I've been in Ottawa for nearly two weeks now, and so far, it's ok. I mean, it's nice enough, but I haven't really seen or done enough yet to give it much of a review either way. It didn't help we arrived ten days before any of our furniture did. Sleeping on the floor has a way of taking the magic out of things, especially if you're prone to a bad back.
But that's not to say I've been blind to what's around me. There's plenty that's caught my attention. For example, the milk. Can you believe it comes in bags here? It's the strangest thing. Where I come from milk is sold the natural way: in plastic jugs. Milk in bags seems, well, wrong. Like Ontario as a province suffers from a subconscious longing for breastfeeding.
Something else I've discovered: shawarma. It's a Lebanese food where chicken or beef is cooked on a spit, and it is one of the tastiest things I've ever had. I could seriously eat this every day. Unfortunately, shawarma leads to smelly burps, and my wife has recently decreed I am only allowed to eat it on Tuesdays, preferably when she is out of the house.
And I can't forget about the francophones. I knew before moving here that there is a lot of french in Ottawa, but I didn't know to what extent. Enter any store and half the conversations are in french. It's bizarre. Almost like I've walked in on the set of one of those CBC shows I used to watch when I was a kid. My wife is a francophone, so for her, it's great. For me and the kids, though, it will take some getting used to.
There's more of course. I hate the local hockey team's logo. And there's more deciduous trees than you can shake a stick at. And there's actually a man a few doors down whose name is Luscious. But before I write about that I need to take some time and absorb my surroundings, so that the next time someone asks me if I know where such-and-such street is, I can do more than dumbly shake my head.
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