Snow, don'tcha know.

Ok, I haven't actually heard anyone here in Minnesota say "don'tcha know" but they do totally have exactly the accent I thought they would. I dig it.

So what am I doing in Minnesota, with a week left of classes and plenty of work to be done?

My friend Timmy attends St. Olaf College in Northfield, just a little south of Minneapolis. They have a super major Christmas music festival every year. He was able to score an extra pair of tickets and kindly gave them to our now retired choir director and myself. So I'm out here listening to incredible music left and right and generally hanging out for a few days.

Don't get me wrong, every time he has a rehearsal or something, I've been grading papers galore. I did a lot of work leading up to this trip, and am actually in far better shape than I thought upon my return to finish up the semester just fine. I opted to leave my laptop home (am currently borrowing Tim's while he sings in night 3 of Christmasfest, which his parents are attending) and have enjoyed the change of pace. St. Olaf is out in the middle of nowhere-- time seems to go a little slower (it also helps that my body just never adjusts to time change, even an hour difference).

Also, St. Olaf is such a great school. It's a small liberal arts school run by the Lutherans (Norwegian ones, to be specific). They have an outstanding music program (though much to my dismay there is no geography). It's got great campus dining. AND MY FAVORITE PART, CLEARLY: so environmentally friendly. Everyone seems very concious of turning off lights and recycling stuff. The sandwich place on campus serves everything on real plates, with real silverware. Their building renovations include a lot of local, renewable resources and/or recycled supplies. The bathrooms have those magic flush toilets that you have a short flush/long flush option (use your brain, you can figure out why). Also, all of the toilet paper, paper towels and napkins are made completely from recycled fibers. And finally, there is a very lovely wind turbine at the edge of the campus that apparently generates 1/3 of the energy for the campus (which makes me wonder why they don't just build 2 more, but at least they're trying!).

Other things about Northfield: it snowed the first two days I got here and the temperature hasn't been above freezing. The town motto is "Cows, Colleges, Contentment" even though there's way more corn than cows. Northfield is also home to the Malt O Meal factory. It smells like Cocoa Puffs here constantly!

Beer of the trip: Summit Extra Pale Ale. I'm not usually crazy about extra pale beers, but Summit is a Minnesota brew that my uncle had at Thanksgiving (in NJ) and it was fine then, so it was ok now too.

I fly home tomorrow morning to Newark Airport. My home church has its Christmas concert tomorrow night. I'll be up there in the alto 2 section singing Handel's Messiah and other carols, twice in a row. Intense. I have just enough time to get home, shower, and make it to warm up, assuming my flight isn't delayed. All along though, my choir director has joked that surely there wouldn't be a problem in Minnesota's end; if it snows, they know what to do. It's Newark that would fail under any sort of weather pressure. So Newark, listen up. I'm counting on you.

Despite going from 60 degree weather in NJ (yes, unseasonably warm) to 20 degree weather in MN, I am really enjoying this trip and it's allowing me to relax a little before the absolute final stretch of the semester. After all, after this I only have one semester left... it'll be a pretty busy spring semester so I'm not sure when I'll travel next!

borderline ridiculous

This update will hopefully be posted from the Marlborough Hotel, whose wireless internet is kind of misbehaving. I'm updating tonight because everyone else slept like toddlers in the car for our ridiculously long drive today. This morning we decided to change today's route a little bit, leaving Ontario for Manitoba via Northern Minnesota so we could make Fathers' Day phonecalls at domestic prices, get cheaper gas (the liter to gallon conversion leaves us around $6.50 a gallon in Canada), and check our International Falls. It looked as though it would add a little over an hour to today's trip, but since we gained an hour when changing time zones, it was negligible due to TIME TRAVEL!

International Falls is a misnomer. The Ontario side is called Fort Frances, another papermill town, and it was kind of difficult to find the bridge to Minnesota. The "falls" were, as best we could tell, some rapids running under the bitty little bridge we crossed that had natural gas pipelines and a shared lane for busses, trains, and trucks. We survived that, and then there was customs. We were sent to see the Agricultural Dude because we had a small bag of baby carrots (American), a bag of grapes that were going bad that we'd meant to get rid of (Mexican), and two oranges from the last hotel's continental breakfast... all picked up in Canada. Well, he ok'd our grapes, but we kind of didn't want them back, and he ok'd the carrots because they were American, but he claimed our oranges couldn't be transported because they weren't in a box or bag... and then he quarantined those to his jacket pocket. Snacktime for the USDA Border Patrol!

A note to any Mary Washington Geographers who may be reading-- I drove past a sign for Bemidji today! It was kind of several hours out of the way and I already felt bad enough for talking my friends into driving through Minnesota and adding time to our trip... but I pulled over and got a photo. AMAZING. This photo and others will probably not be up till tomorrow because the internet is not sure if it wants to keep working or not this evening.

I drove from lunchtime onward, crossing us back into Canada. We'd gotten rid of our carrots so passed through customs without a problem. The lady asked why we were driving through Canada, and I told her because we thought it was awesome, and she said we were absolutely right. Welcome to Manitoba! It is REALLY flat! And there is roughly nothing within several dozen kilometers of the border. I enjoyed the drive. Everyone else fell asleep till we were pretty much into the city. So far in Winnipeg, we're impressed with the size of the city but how not crowded it feels. Then again, it was Sunday evening when we arrived. We're in a sweet hotel and all rather tired since we feel like it's an hour later than it is.

And now that this is besously long, I'd like to add a post script: Congratulations to our friends Becky and David, who became parents for the first time this weekend! Welcome to the world, Samuel!