Christmas is around the corner

December 17, 2007 at 2:17 pm (Blogging, Life, Love, Madagascar, Travel)

It’s been quite a while since I posted anything on my blog but the reason for that are the holidays.  With X-mas around the corner, I’m quite busy with my foie gras since people usually eat that during this season.  A good friend of ours is also in Madagascar for the holidays so we are always out.

I’ve decorated my pine tree right outside our house, it looks weird but my mom suggested I do so and I thought it was a good idea.  The tree is young so it doesn’t have many branches but the more I look at it the nicer I find it.  In Madagascar the holidays are very different from the ones in Canada.  For one, there is no snow, it makes a huge difference.  Then, there isn’t as much publicity around it and there are less decorations.  In Canada, as soon as you leave your house, you see lights and decorations and people dressing in Christmas colours.  Here, nobody decorates their house, on the outside anyway.  Some people decorate the inside.  The only thing that is the same around this time of year in both countries is the traffic!  It’s taking an eternity to go to town and traffic does not move.  I also have to do some shopping and I’m dreading it a little because it’s going to be packed everywhere.  Over here, if you have a restriced budget, you have to go to markets to buy your things and most of the people do that so it’s even crazier than for example Fairview!  Anyway, I hope that I find what I’m looking for quickly and get it over with.

It’s also our first wedding anniversary on the 21st. We don’t have any plans yet and I think that Erky will be flying…

After all that madness, we are going on vacation on the beach, and I’m very much looking forward to that.  It’s going to be one week of swimming, water-skiing, volleyball, and relaxing.  I can’t wait!

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Malagasy Weddings

October 1, 2007 at 2:06 pm (Blogging, Canada, Life, Love, Madagascar)

We were invited to Erky’s cousin’s wedding on Saturday.  I was really anticipating that event since I thought I was going to have fun.  I wore a nice dress, put on some make up and since I dropped a few kilos, I thought I looked really good.

We get to the wedding reception a little late because Erky was working that morning, and as we get there, people had already started with the entree.  In Madagascar, most people have buffets at their wedding.  In general, everyone runs to the buffet and people push each other around to get closer to the food.  It’s pretty annoying, and especially if you are one of the last people who get there, there isn’t much left to eat.  But this time, they made people go table by table to avoid this kind of situation.  That was the positive side of the party.

Then the music started playing and to my disappointment, it was always the same music they play at every wedding here.  I don’t know why I expected something different.  They play 70′s and 80′s music, then some music to dance the Maddison, some Rock’n'Roll and a little bit of Tango and Valse.  Then they play a little bit of malagsy music and back to the 70′s and 80′s.  I don’t think I heard any recent song over there.  So in the end, I was really bored, I didn’t even dance.

People started leaving pretty early.  In Madagascar, most people leave after the cake.  It’s considered rude to leave before.  But even then, at least half of the people left before the cake and everyone else left right after it.  At first, when I got here, I didn’t understand why people left right after having the cake, but now, I realize that they don’t really want to be at the weddings they are invited to.  When I went to weddings in Canada, at least half of the people were partying until early morning with the bride and groom.  But not over here, mostly, it’s the close family and friends that stay after the cake. I think it’s pretty sad.  At our wedding, we didn’t have a cake and people left quite late considering it was on a Thursday.  When they bring out the cake, they light some sparling lights all around it, have some fast music going on and someone makes a speech.  Malagasy people love to make speeches, it lasted about 15 minutes, of course, I didn’t understand anything so another reason for me to be bored.

In any case, the party was boring, the food not that great and the music… well, it really sucked.  Then we get home and there was a party in the area, and the music they had was great!  I wished that DJ was hired for our party.

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What’s up?

September 24, 2007 at 11:27 am (Blogging, Cats, entrepreneurship, Life, Love, Madagascar)

My kitties left last Thursday.  They both went to the same owner and that’s a good thing because they will not be lonely.

My husband finished all of his testings on Sunday and he will start flying on regular flights as of tomorrow.  He’ll be working around 4 days a week but each days is around 9 to 10 hours of work.  He feels so much better now than before and that makes everyone happy.

When I’m not working, I’m killing time on my new Nintendo DS.  Erky got me the Dr. Kawashima brain training game.  It’s really cool, you do some math, some word scrambling and you get to test the age of your brain.  The game says that if you play everyday you won’t have any more of memory loss or you won’t be looking for your words when you speak.  I actually found out that it was true.  I use to forget everything all the time because I’m not using my brain much at work so it’s kind of like a bicep that is not being used, but now, I can honestly see a difference!  The game is really cool.  And I have the Diddy Kong Racing as well, that’s cool too.

For this week, I have a few orders and some hotel in Nosy Be asked for my prices, so I’ll be busy with that.  On Saturday, I have a wedding but Erky is working, so I’ll have to go alone.  I have to go but it’s ok because I love weddings.  It would be much more fun with him around but if he can’t make it, I still have to represent.

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Time to go again

August 10, 2007 at 11:37 pm (Blogging, Canada, Life, Love, Madagascar)

It’s already been three weeks since I came back to Canada.  Time flew by.  I had an amazing vacation at home.  Spent time with family and friends.  It’s almost as if I had never left.  Now I’m getting ready to head back to the other side of the equator with sadness and anticipation.

I’m sad leaving everything behind again, my family and friends, and the life style I have here.  I’m anticipating to getting back to Madagascar for one reason: the faster I go back there, the faster I’m coming back to Canada.  I think time will fly by.  I have about a year left, I’m planning on getting myself occupied more than I have been in the past three years.  The hard thing is that I’m going home to an empty house.  My husband has three weeks left in Belgium and I know that these three weeks will be the longest ones.  But after that, I’m sure everything will go as a breeze.

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Finally a vacation

April 2, 2007 at 11:09 am (Life, Love, Madagascar, Travel)

After the wedding I was finally able to travel and visit this beautiful country.  It ended up being a vacation/honeymoon since my parents came with us because they wanted to visit also.  Of course for tourists, there is nothing much to see in Antananarivo but the coast is said to be beautiful.  So we headed out west to Morondava where they have great baobabs; the main reason why I wanted to go there.  We were scheduled for a three day stay.  The fist day, we got there in the afternoon, we wanted to go out to the sea with a “pirogue”, it’s a small simple wooden boat used all over Madagascar and I’m sure in other countries in the area.  We asked the hotel manager if you could do such a trip and he said “of course”.  So we start going down this canal which we thought would bring us to sea.  There were two rowers and they had trouble with us since we were four adults that were not exactly small.  So we continue going down this canal which stunk by the way and we could see the sea.  We thought “great, we’re getting there”, but to our disappointment, we only got to go across the canal to a small village.  We walked through it in about 10 minutes, the rowers rested a little and we went back.  Back at the hotel, there was a wedding.  My husband wanted to order a snack but they didn’t have any left because of the wedding…  There was no air conditioning in the rooms and in Morondava it’s about 35 celcius in the sun and no wind, so needless to say that were did not sleep very well.  My parents who are used to a little more luxury were not very happy with the service.  The next day we went to see the baobabs.  That was beautiful!  I think that site made our trip to Morondava worth it.  We found another hotel that looked better and slept there the two following nights.  It was better in the sense that we had the beach at proximity and it was windier that the other place.  On Christmas day we gave out toys and drinks to the kids form the surrounding villages.  It was nice.

My mother was glad to be back in Tana because she couldn’t stand the heat on the west coast.  Two days later, we set out to the east coast to Ste-Marie.  It’s a small island off Madagascar, and that is just one beautiful place.  The hotel and service was not that great but the beach was beautiful and we could do quite a few activities (as opposed to Morondava, there was nothing to do over there).  It was also very hot in Ste-Marie but it was much more bearable.  We went diving and cycling around Iles aux Nattes (a small island south of Ste-Marie which is where we actually stayed), and of course we went to the beach.  To go to town, that was another story.  We had to cross the small canal that seperated Iles aux Nattes from Ste-Marie by pirogue which was fun, then we had to take a taxi to town which was about 15km.  Sounds not that far right… wrong!  The roads aren’t paved so it’s quite an adventure.  At the hotel they actually suggest to take a bike but that’s for people who are in shape!  It took us a little less than an hour to get to the city.  We wanted to buy some souvenirs that were typical from Ste-Marie but we realized they had all the same things as in Tana.   But at least, my father found a diving place and that made him very happy.  I actually went diving for the first time.  It was absolutely beautiful.  The sea is very clear and you can see very far, even at shallow depths you can see many fish and also beautiful corals, and the water is warm.  My father went deep but since I had no training I only went a few meters.  You can also dive with whales in September.  They come around Ste-Marie to mate around that time.  My father said he’ll be back for that but I’m not sure it’s going to happen.  So we spent about a week in Ste-Marie, it was nice but it was also nice to be back.  Madagascar has still a long way to go in tourism.  The island is beautiful and it’s worth it to make the trip all the way here but the hotels are not “au point”.  There is no air conditioning in the rooms, it takes at least an hour to get the food, the beds are not comfortable, there is no hot water in the shower.  There are not many activities and the roads are pretty bad.  But if the person knows what to expect, then its fine.  Like I said, it’s beautiful and worth seeing.

So those were our trips, fun but rustic.  It was fine for me but my parents and my husband like to have all the necessities and found it a little difficult.

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The wedding

March 21, 2007 at 1:47 pm (Life, Love, Madagascar, work)

Funny how everything in life changes all at once. Either nothing changes, or everything. Well for me, it was the case. I was getting married, I quit my job and my parents were coming to visit me for the first time in two years. Enough to say that my life at that time was pretty stressful.

A multicultural wedding is not that simple. Especially in my case since it was more of his culture than mine because we are in his country and I have no family here. Nevertheless it was quite something. For example the date was chosen by an astrologist, it has to be during the rising moon. Of course all his family had to be invited, even if we personally did not want to invite everyone (since it was only a civil wedding) but customs oblige. I had my dress made by a tailor. At first I was pretty excited by the idea but as I was doing try outs of the dress, it kept getting worst and worst. She was not able to replicate the model I had chosen the way it was suppose to be. It was ready at 1 am the day of my wedding, imagine the stress. The little gifts we were giving out for people at the end were not done until the DAY of the wedding. The tables the hotel (that’s were we had the reception) ordered were all unstable and had to fix them the night before the wedding. On top of that is that we took our precautions and ordered everything well in advance. But as always, everything in this country is MORA MORA. Oh and the best, my hair dresser was late to fix my hair for the reception and therefore, I was late for my own wedding. But after all those incidents, the party was pretty cool, everyone had fun and well and danced well. I didn’t even taste the food I was so busy talking to everyone. But I guess it’s like that at everyone’s wedding.

So I said before that I quit my quality assurance job. I did because my boss was a royal asshole and I was working crazy hours for very little money.  My mother in-law had bought a small handcraft company that made foie gras.  I decided to take it over since she did not have time to take care of it because of her other two jobs and all.  So my husband and I redesigned the logo, changed the prices and started to prospect all over town (that was just before the wedding).  It was almost Christmas (which is the biggest foie gras season) so we could not afford to miss it.  Our hard work paid off because we were a smash!  Everyone just loved it and I made quite a few clients by presenting our product at a big cocktail that 600 people attended.  It was great.

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