McDonalds WiFi

I'm sitting here in McD's catching up ont he blog so the folks don't worry too much. We're deep in enemy territory...French speaking Quebec...and Dave is trying to figure out how to order a double cheeseburger in French. Turns out he got a McFlurry instead cuz the girl spoke English.

The kids all think it's so weird because in the rest of Canada the signs are bilingual but here as soon as you get across the border everything, even the flashing warning signs, are in French only. So we have absolutely no idea what they say. The roads through Montreal are in good condition but there are exits left, right and below so it's a nightmare to navigate but somehow we made it through the centre of town and from our freeway onto the next one we needed without too many more grey hairs or squealing tyres. We're Alive! We need a t-shirt now that says "I survived the autoroute in Montreal". Some of the other things that are different are that the green lights just flash instead of having an arrow that says you have an advanced turn, you can't turn right on a red light, apparently Arret or Stop signs actually mean slow down and proceed, and those signs that say maximum 100 are really just guidelines.

Most of the people have been nice and friendly to us so far. But the kids are still weirded out by not being able to understand anything. Should have paid more attention in French class I guess though Chris took Japanese so he's forgiven. I wonder if it's like this for people who can't read...it's very disconcerting. We will be going through (or past) Quebec City tomorrow and then up past Trois Rivieres into New Brunswick. Did I mention, I'm sitting on Boulevard Saint-Joseph in Drummondville, Quebec. Not sure I mentioned that. We'll make it easily to New Brunswick barring any problems with the motorhome. I'm hoping that it's all fine though. I've got 15 minutes left to do all my e-mailing so I've got to go. Self-imposed 10:30 curfew.

Hugs to you all. We're all safe and well and the kids may smell bad but their spirits are good. Even Chris has recovered from the devastating loss of his whole world he built on Minecraft that somehow has disappeared overnight. He was quite upset and didn't come see the Houses of Parliament with us but stayed with the motor home parked in the WalMart parking lot. It was....not anywhere as impressive as I thought it would be from the outside. The parking was bad though and so we drove past twice then went back to get the motorhome and get on the road before rush hour. The drive along the river is very pretty and there are lots of beautiful old buildings...but not really a tour the kids were overly interested in. Maybe we'll have to go back and spend a few days some time.

As it is, the kids really just want two things, Slurpees and to get to our new home as quickly as possible. Crawling along at 80 km/h of 50 mph is saving us gas but of course is taking a while too. It's better for the vehicles and tyres though so we'll keep doing it. 1285km left to go. That amounts to about 18 hours of driving so it looks like we'll make it to Greenwood either late on Sunday or early Monday. Another Sunday without Church...it feels really weird. But we're very excited to stop driving and have hot showers again! I don't know about everyone else but I'm also a bit nervous to meet the people I've talked to online but never met in person. What if they don't like me in person? I think the kids will take some time to make friends but it's the beginning of school in a couple of weeks so that will help. We'll get through it.

Time to go. Hopefully our next update will be a happy one from New Brunswick.