Here’s your quick French-language lesson for the day: want to know how to say “zoo” in French? I’ll give you a hint… it’s pretty close to the english… got it yet? That’s right – it’s “zoo”! Although to be fair, it is pronounced more like “zoh”.
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In any case, we greatly enjoyed a day trip this past Saturday to a zoo in the town of Granby, which is about an hour west of here. The zoo was really well designed for kids, with a lot of interactive exhibits… when reasonably possible, of course! i.e. the kids got to go into a pen with sheep and pigs and goats… but not with lions or tigers! There was a cool parrot house, where parrots could land on you, and you got to walk through the wallaby enclosure and get close to them, too!
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There was a fun playground in the middle for the kids *ahem* to play on, too.
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In the wallaby enclosure, you could see what it was like to be a joey, or baby kangaroo…
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Jacob’s favorite exhibit was the tigers – it’s easier to show you than to describe it – so here’s a pic:
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My personal favorite exhibit was the hippos – we got to walk through a glassed-in tunnel and watch hippos swim around us. I liked it when two of the hippos “kissed.” Tim liked it when the mama hippo pooped underwater right in its baby’s face. Either way, it was fun.
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The day that we visited, it was “Halloween at the Zoo” day, so we saw lots of kids – and their parents – dressed up on costume. At the end of the day, three-year old Brady (another MAF m.k.) was asked what his favorite animal was. His answer? “Spiderman!”
Posted November 1st, 2011. 1 comment
While I know you all harbor images in your heads of how hard we are working here in Quebec to learn language (and oh boy, do we work hard!), we did enjoy a mini-break from classes this past week, and took a couple of day trips – one to Ben & Jerry’s in Vermont, and one to a nearby zoo!
We are two and a half hours from Waterbury, Vermont, where the Ben and Jerry’s factory is located. It was a beautiful drive through the northern part of the state – the leaves were past peak, but the contrast of the evergreens, bare brown branches and pockets of aspens which were still bright orange and yellow was striking! While I didn’t take pics out of the car, you should google “Stowe Vermont” to see a quintessentially charming Vermont town that we drove through – we hope to go back there to visit sometime this year! Gabled houses, Victorian style, festive displays of chrysanthemums and pumpkins… it was beautiful!
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But of course, our destination for the day wasn’t Stowe, it was Ice Cream Heaven! After we arrived, the adults spent a couple of minutes by the cars, getting diapers bags, purses, etc… but the kids just couldn’t wait – they raced on up the stairs towards the ice cream!
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Here’s the entrance to the fabled factory…
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We took a tour of the factory, which included a video on the history of B&J’s, a tour of the factory floor, and a healthy-sized “sample” of the flavor of the day, which was Triple Caramel Chunk. Yumm! Then, just because we were there and you just have to… (right?) we also ordered small servings of ice cream from the scoop store – I chose a test batch of Pumpkin Pie, which I heartily approved of, while Tim enjoyed some Chocolate Fudge Brownie.
After our treats, we let the kids play on the playground while the adults took turns checking out the “Flavor Graveyard” – a mock cemetary to lay to rest the discarded Ben & Jerry’s flavors. Among the deceased were “sweet potato pie” and “peanut butter and jelly.”
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And of course, if you’re just hankering to pretend to be Ben or Jerry, there’s the obligatory “stick your head here” photo op!
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Next up, the zoo!
Posted November 1st, 2011. Add a comment
… or at least it feels that way, when I’m trying to formulate a sentence, and hoping my grammar is better than a two year old’s! This youthful feeling was continued this past month, when I took a field trip for school!
Any of you who have studied language will know that language is best done by immersion. They take that seriously here at our language school, knowing that while we do live in Quebec, if we don’t brave the unknown and get out into the town around us, our language skills won’t improve as quickly as they could and/or should! So, built into our language program is one field trip per month, that takes us to a local place of interest for a few hours, where we interact with native speakers.
September’s field trip was to a local apple orchard. They had decorated beautifully for the fall season!
The owner of the orchard was our tour guide. He told us about the history of the orchard, showed us all the different types of apples they had, and explained how they graft trees to create new varieties of apples (all in French, of course!).
Our interesting apple trivia for the day… if you plant an apple seed, say from a granny smith apple, did you know that that seed can potentially grow into any type of apple tree *except* granny smith apple tree? Apparently when the bees pollinate the tree, once it has grown, that is when and how the type of apple tree will be determined – the seed has nothing to do with it!
Then… we were set free to pick some apples! We each came home with a bag of Spartans, since that was what was in season at the time. We also took time for a photo op of some of the kids…
The view was beautiful, the air was crisp… and then came the best part: pie! It was so beautiful – and delicious!
And of course, I had to do something with all of those apples we picked, so I got started on that after we got home, and baked some pies of my own! I made apple strawberry, strawberry peach, and plain old apple spice pie… which was the best. yum!
Posted October 27th, 2011. Add a comment
