We arrived in Hong Kong a few days before Christmas and then transferred for the 14 hour flight to the Toronto Pearson Airport with a chair that wouldn’t recline and 50 bad movies to choose from. After the ordeal (don’t ever watch "Watchmen") we ambled out to meet our relative(s). Say, did you know that 0.3% of road accidents in Canada involve moose? Someone needs to tell me why they let moose behind the wheel.

The next few days were spent (after loitering in our Grandma’s house) in the little aging town of Belleville to help move our other Grandma’s house. You know that feeling when you know somebody and think it’s normal until you suddenly realise it isn’t? Or rather if you’ve seen the film "A Beautiful Mind" when they walk into Nash’s office and see what he’s been doing all that time:

Yeah, it’s something like that but a good 10 times more shocking.

To abruptly change the subject to a considerably less vague one we then hopped onto a train to Quebec. If anybody tells you that you need to speak French in Quebec, they lie – everybody there can speak English fine and just conceal it to poke fun at tourists. If anybody tells you that all Christmasses in Quebec are white, they’re not lying – it snows like it doesn’t care you exist. -15 degrees on the street and the most fattening fast foods in the world (Poutine – a French-Canadian concoction comprised of french fries, gravy, and cheese curds) is definitely something to reckon with.

The Christmas day itself was spent in Quebec. Then it was back to Toronto.

I was introduced to a lovely tradition on Boxing day known as lemon gift giving. This is where you wrap up all the terrible "gifts" that nobody wants and you give them to people. You’re then allowed to trade (well "trade" with only one party’s consent) a maximum 3 times until you get stuck with the lesser evil. I ended up with a large size union jack. Oh, aren’t we so Canadian.

The rest of the plot of this mother of all summaries of a holiday recount was something to do with maple syrup, those heavenly Decadent cookies again and something to do with a snowstorm in Philadelphia.

The moral of the story is that when you grow up, you should definitely buy a fooseball table.

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