Day 13 - Pancake Bay to North Bay,ON (361km from Ottawa)

Today was an early start. The mosquitos were killing me so at 5:15, without the aid of an alarm clock we were loading the kids into the van and movin’ on. We drove for about 6hours, stopped for breakfast and gas and got to North Bay at about 1:00pm. North Bay  is located on the North East shore of Nipissing Lake (yes I did spell that correctly - that’s what the indian’s called it).

It’s hot and humid and the mozzies and black flies are starting to get at us. What have we had, three days of bugs? Are you taking bets as to how long we will last?

I’m not joking, its so humid it feels like it is about to rain. It did rain a bit but we need a good storm to clear the air. Hopefully, we will have one tonight. There is a storm scheduled for Ottawa on Canada Day so that should be fun/scary/interesting.

Oh...I just heard some thunder....

The kids are swimming in the pool regardless. Sorry about the bad quality photo but you had to see this. 

Ryan Home Schoolin'

North Bay, ON Swimming in the Rain

Technology, entertainment and keeping the kids occupied

We are just coming up to our 14th day on the road and you may be wondering how we keep the kids occupied during the long drives.

Technology - we have a DVD player built in to the van, so the kids loaded 48 movies into a wallet before we left. So far we have watched only about 8 movies.

The kids each have an ipod touch (thanks Nanny for Jemma’s recent ipod touch gift). They also each have a Nintendo DS. However we do restrict ‘screen time’ to about 2hrs per day. We find that when we ask them to put the ipod away or when the movie ends they turn into instant gremlins so the best result is starting a 2 hour movie when we are about 2 hours away from our destination.

We also have a laptop with a Rogers communication stick (supplied by my work so I can stay in touch (and Blog)) and my iphone. All of this takes some managing to make sure devices are charged and of course, security to make sure none of it gets stolen.

The most important factor with keeping the kids busy is Jenny’s rigorous home school schedule.

Goal	Time	Jemma	Ryan
1	10 min	Record all expenses daily	Morning message/dictée
2	3 min	Math timed timestable drills	Math drills-addition and subtraction
3	15 min	Blog/Journal each day	Journal
4	30 min	Music read along	Music read along
5	10 min	Keep Excel spreadsheet up to date	Math pages
6	30 min	Mapping Across Canada	Mapping Across Canada
7	90 min	Choice (movie, ipod, DS)	Choice
8	10 min	Sight word games	Sight word games
9	30 min	Read and respond -Biblical	Read and Respond- Biblical /Printing
10	15 min	Oral language listening	Oral language listening

If you did not already know, Jenny is a school teacher and this stuff comes naturally to her. The ‘mapping across Canada’ work has been particularly good as the kids are getting to know a little about each Province as we drive through. We have a Grade 3 Geography book too which has tons of useful facts in it.

Finally, who is Natalie?

Remember Natalie, our friend from Red Deer? This is a great story. Hopefully I will get this all down before Jenny and the kids come in from the pool.

Back in 1996 Jen and I set off on an adventure around the world. We went to England first for my sister’s birthday, then went to Egypt, Israel and Jordan or two months. Then we did a ten week safari in Africa (yes TEN WEEKS) which took us overland from kenya to Zimbabwe and then we flew to India, Nepal and Thailand. Quite an adventure. We both lost about 50 pounds and had to be dewormed for several months after.

Jenny met Natalie in Africa. We were taking a particularly strong anti malarial drug called Larium. There were many warnings on the label but what are you going to do? Get Malaria? The side effects are colourful dreams (not bad) violent behavior, psychosis, and schizophrenia - charming!

Having been on Larium for several weeks Jenny had a bit of ‘turn’ while driving through Tanzania. It was about an old girlfriend (another story) but basically, Jenny flipped out, I mean really flipped out and demanded that the safari truck stop so she could get off. We were in the middle of no-where. The guide managed to persuade Jenny to hang on at least until we got to a town and the very next morning, having had some time to think about it, she hopped on the first bus back up to Dar Es Salaam (about 12hrs away).

This is about where most of my weight loss occurred but this story is about how Jenny met Natalie.

So here’s Jenny, wandering around the streets of Dar Es Salaam planning to do who knows what when she wanders into an office of ‘Save the Children’ where she asked for directions or to sue the phone or something. I could get Jenny to clarify but the story would go on longer than the actual events.

Jenny met a guy who was the Principal at a school and suggested she meet the new teachers from... Red Deer, Alberta.

So Jenny hooked up with Natalie and her friend, Steve, and told them the story. Their first advice (thank the Lord) was to stop taking the Larium! After five days of actually teaching in a little school in Africa (one of Jenny’s dreams) she decided to try and get back to the tour and get back with me.

This is where the real miracle happens. So Jenny has to hop on a flight to catch up with us since she had gone North while we were still driving South. So Jenny hops on a plane and meets a really nice African, Christian family who offer to put her up for the night in Lusaka, Malawi. The next morning, they put her on a bus and she heads South to meet with us. She is warned to keep to the public buses and not sue the smaller, private min-vans as people have a tendency of going missing.

So Jen gets as far as she can on the public bus and is just contemplating taking a private min-van when she looks up and sees a big blue army truck - which is the truck we used on the African safari - and sure enough, it was our truck! The chances of meeting like that were infinitesimal. At the time we credited the event to angels or a miracle but now we realize that we were in God’s hands all along and he has a plan for each and every one of us, even if we stray from the plan!

We have been friends with Natalie, who later married Trevor, ever since.