Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.
Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.
Last summer I went on an Alaskan cruise with my spouse, parents, brothers, sister-in-law, and nephews.
I was fascinated by the flora and fauna of Alaska. It’s nothing like Ontario.
My parents had been curious about taking a cruise for years thanks to the stories they’d heard about other cruises my spouse and I had been on. Mom had also been wanting to see Alaska for herself for quite some time, too. We were thrilled to find a cruise that fit everyone’s schedule by picking it out about eighteen months before we actually sailed.
My mom hugging me. I believe this was a day we were in Glacier Bay.
It was a week that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. We saw whales swimming in Glacier Bay and seals resting on small pieces of ice that floated by our cruise ship. Visiting various towns in Alaska on port days was fascinating, too. We skipped over the touristy stuff to explore the history of that state and look at the gigantic crows and beautiful flowers that don’t exist or are quite different where we all live.
It was so much fun to watch our nephews, then age five and twelve, react to all of the new experiences they had during that trip, from the formal dinners in the fancy dining room to Alaskan wildlife and more.
Our older nephew was old enough to be pretty independent as far as setting his own social schedule goes while we were on board but still young enough to think it was cool to spend time with family. Twelve is such a great age.
They even had fancy, dairy-free desserts for me in the main dining room!
The younger nephew loved the magic show we saw one night of the cruise. He also loved telling us all sorts of interesting facts about the Titanic and how we were not going to sink like it did because we have computers to navigate a ship and plenty of lifeboats to save everyone now in case of emergency.
Photo credit: Jim Schoch
Alaska is such a picturesque part of the world. I highly recommend visiting it if or when you’re able to. These pictures are such a small slice of something that everyone should experience for themselves.
My brothers and oldest nephew. Other relatives are more camera shy, and I respect that.
It’s so much fun to look back at the photos everyone took of this trip and think about the good times we had. May there be another extended family adventure in our futures at some point in the years to come.
If only you all knew how hard it was to narrow this down to only ten books!
I remember a Canada Day spent on a rooftop party hosted by a friend of a friend. The view was spectacular.
Each month I share photos from one of the parks in Toronto to show my readers what our landscape looks like throughout the year. This is the fifth instalment of this series.
One of my college professors sent us out to eavesdrop as part of a creative writing assignment. We were instructed to write down the conversation and then analyze the flow of it in order to make the dialogue in our stories more realistic in the future.
Listening to the way people really speak was also incredibly informative. The conversation I overheard was filled with friendly interruptions and all sorts of detours into other, mostly-related topics.
None of these anecdotes have made it into one of my stories (yet?), but they have taught me about the ways people think and how many different ways the same tale can be told depending on whose perspective you look at.
In “
Summer weather in Toronto begins in June and runs through the end of September (or longer some years).
