Welcome to Canada

As my first week in Canada comes to a close, I thought it was time to sit down and let you all know that I'm still alive, surviving the cold and most importantly, having a blast!

I arrived in Calgary last saturday night, tired from what is so far the longest day of my life and feeling slightly stressed from too many airports. My spirits were lifted however, by the ease of which my visa was processed at immigration, snow, finally being in Canada and the warm welcome of the family that picked me up from the airport. One of the Frontier Lodge board members, Rene, his wife and 3 beautiful daughters welcomed me into their home and I spent sunday morning helping to decorate cupcakes for Eden's fifth birthday party!

Camp is a 3 hour drive from Calgary, and 2 staff members, Tim and Liz picked me up. On the way we stopped is a small town called Caroline at a general store which sold more guns than food! We also stopped and picked up another staff member, Kristen, from her cabin in the woods!

The staff here are mostly Canadian, with 4 Americans, 3 Germans, a Swiss (Mary, my room mate) and me.

This last week was staff training and so the 5 new spring/summer staff members spent some time learning the procedures etc side of thing and then the rest of the week learning activities! We spent a day climbing, learning how to set up top ropes, which is something that I'd been wanting to learn for a while, an afternoon of mountain biking, something pretty new for me, especially in the cold with a little bit of snow. Wednesday night there was a couple of inches of snow, which meant we couldn't go canoeing on the river, so we went for a paddle on the lake and learning strokes, again most of these were new to me, not having any white water in Australia, so it would have been really great to have had the opportunity to got out on the river and practice them for real before I have to go canoeing with campers next week! It continued snowing a bit on Thursday and on Friday we set out to go caving, not sure if we would get to the cave, after a couple of hours hiking because of the snow and avalanche risk. The snows ranged from a few inches deep, up to above the knees in a few places. We didn't make it to the cave, but it was still really exciting for me to go on my first hike in the snow in the Rockies! This area is so incredibly beautiful. The camp is on the edge of lake with a view of the mountains up one end. A short drive and you are in the Rockies proper, still with a lot of snow around the place.

We had the weekend off, and a few of us went climbing on Saturday. We spent the day practicing our new skills and extending them a bit, with some lead climbing- super exciting! (Sorry for you non climbers reading this) Hopefully with the opportunity to climb regularly on weekends, and bouldering most days (thats right, there is a whole cabin with some pretty sweet routes at camp) I should be a lot stronger by the end of summer!

On Sunday, some of us went to church in Nordegg. We doubled the congregation numbers of the church in a town of 80 people. A fairly traditional, conservative church- very different to what I'm used to at Blackwood Hills, but great all the same, and good to meet a few of the locals in Nordegg, including Rene's parents and seeing the girls again, who were staying with them and excited to see me!

Campers are coming this week! Im doing a couple of days of climbing and canoeing. I'm super excited to start work and hanging out with kids. God is going to do some exciting things the summer, and I would love to have you journey with me, through prayers, emails and maybe even some old fashioned snail mail! Keep me updated with whats going on in your lives. I maybe on the other side of the world, but thanks to email and Facebook, its not that far!

Love Anna xoxo