What a difference a week makes!

The past few weeks have flown by and I apologize to regular readers for the lack of a blog over this time. As many of you know, I was expecting to be spending these weeks hosting a group of Afghan educators and escorting them to a series of meetings around Ontario, New Brunswick and PEI. We were all looking forward to this opportunity to see how a number of different Canadian provinces deal with issues of teacher education. Unfortunately the applications for visa documents were not processed within the six weeks we thought these things would take ... and numerous e-mails and phone calls to the Canadian Embassy in Islamabad (which is responsible for reviewing visa applications from Afghanistan) have gone unanswered. As a result, no visa = no travel, so the visit had to be cancelled. For now. We shall reschedule this for next year, and this time allow two or three months for the application review process to proceed.

So last weekend, instead of flying to Toronto to meet our colleagues from Kabul, I went to the beach. It was a brisk Easter this year, with a big snow storm blowing in overnight and causing all sorts of problems for the Easter Sunday services. Although according to our Rector, it wasn't as bad as the Easter Storm of 2008. Those of you who are fans of the Vicar of Dibley will understand why nobody in our family could look at each other when he said that. No no no no no no no yes?

But before the snow came, we hit the beach ... note the gloves and hats!

The Angry Birds hat was a gift from my colleagues at the Faculty of Education - thank you to all, it kept my ears warm!

The beach threw up its normal selection of treasures and oddities. We often find a variety of shells, sand dollars are a popular but unusual find, and this week we came across what we laughingly called 'nipple rock'.

Although she's still not sure of going swimming, even Ceilidh had a good time at the beach.

A week later and the weather is gorgeous! This weekend was the one when the Afghan group would have been here with us on PEI, so it's a real shame that the trip had to be postponed. The garden has started to come up, with crocuses and snowdrops poking through the mulch.

Tomorrow I shall go back to the beach, to look for gannets.