Well my last week in Canada has flown by and I am now sitting at Vancouver airport waiting for my flight. The past week has been a little slow work wise, although picked up in the last few days as Perry finally found someone to start corn silaging. It seems that everyone has wanted to chop their corn at the same time, and even though Perry had someone booked to come on the 29th…he never showed. Then on Wednesday Chris and I were cleaning up and putting away machinery when Perry called at around 3pm to say a chopper would be at the yard in an hour. Apparently someone had finished all their contracts and was available to starting chopping for Perry, talk about short notice!!

It has been extremely cold (down to -10), but I was lucky enough to have heating in my truck, which no one else had. It was a matter of starting the truck up before breakfast to make sure it and the cab were warm enough once we were ready to start. The guy who came to chop was quite nice and was very interested in Australia. Apparently he has a daughter around my age who loves sheep so I told him she should come over for a visit! We probably got about half the corn done, although I won't be there to see the finish of it. Hopefully I get to see a picture of the final pit though, as I imagine it will be quite large. Perry got sent a picture the other day of a corn silage pit from a North Dakota dairy farm. They silaged 12,000 acres of corn and I'm not sure exactly how big the pit was, but there were 5 tractors on top and plenty of space around them!!

It is sad to be leaving my Canadian 'family', although with Facebook and emails I suppose it is easy enough to stay in contact. I have had a great time over here but I don't think there is anywhere quite like home and I am really looking forward to getting back to Australia. During my time in Canada I have been called 'dear' by a guy younger than me, asked if I was South African, been accused of stalking my own father (sort of) and seen the wonder of the northern lights. I will miss all the people I have met over here and hope to see them again sometime in the future. They are all convinced I need to experience a 'real' winter, so maybe I might come back for a week or two one year. In the meantime I am definitely looking forward to the warmer climate of Australia and will certainly appreciate our weather more often.

I may never experience Monday the 8th of October, but I can't wait to have a meat pie, go to a decent bakery, eat vegemite and not be considered weird, drive on the left-hand side of the road (which may be hard to start with) and do all sorts of other things that make Australia so fantastic!! Hopefully I get to sleep on the plane or at least have some decent movies to watch. See you all soon xx