Hello everyone!

Last week I was in Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) for the wonderful Pectinid Workshop! Can you imagine around 70 persons (approx) talking about scallops for a whole week?! Well, I know that's sounds borng for the non-pectinid persons that most of you are, but that was such a good time. Actually, the people attendig that conference are a group of people knowing each other for a long time. Because we are living all around the world and don't see each other very ofthen, we are looking foword the Workshop (every second year). It's actually like a family party and we a good time with each others!

So, this year the workshop was in Halifax and I really enjoy the workshop for 2 reasons:

1) My PhD plannification progressed so much in that week... we did some really great contacts and we're looking for some great collaborations too.

2) It was so nice to see my good friends again! We had big days of seminars, but we had also big nights out to! Well, it took me a couple of days to recover actually!

Well, I'll let the photo talking for me!

We found that on the road to Halifax...

Halifax harbour, the 2nd biggest in the World...

Peggy's Cove (population = 40)

Typical house from there... I hate pink color!

Saw on a car...

 The Bluenose II, Bluenose 1 was the fastest sailing boat... this one is just a replicat of the original one!

Alex and I... ready to go fishing!

Tore and Arne, my 2 great friends from Norway! Can you understand why my neck was a bit stiff by the end of the week?!

I got the "best student oral presentation" award! I was so surprised but really gald! I got a wonderful book about the scallops (it's a reference book which I call the scallop bible).

Well, that's just a few bits from the workshop. Halifax is a very nice place, but quite small... after a few days you've seen everything unfortunately; well if there is no fog of course!

View of the harbour from my window in Halifax...

Hello everyone!

We actually have a nice snow stomr over Québec city today... it's a kind of  "tradition" here! Every year we have a late snow storm around St Patrick day. I think we have actually an accumulation of 25 cm. On the radio the other day they said this year we had 150 cm less of snow... that's terrible! Well, we had snow at least!

The last few weeks I've been really busy with the lectures I had to give to 2nd year student in Biology. It's almost done now and I'm really glad of that! I'll be able to have time to read in preparation of my exam.

Kler-Yann came to visit me a few times and we've been able to do a few things.

1) Montmorency fall is freezing  bit in the Winter and at the bottom of it there is a huge frozen hill that we can climb and slide on it! That's cool and really beautiful.

Kler-Yann sliding... he looks so small on that hill!

No worries, he did survive! Actually, he really enjoy sliding... who wouldn't?

And then he did a snowmen while I was studying... that's a strange snowman, but he deosn't have much experience in building snowman... hopefully he'll get better with time!

And then, another day we went to a special event in the city. It's a ice skating competition.. but a really amazing one. Imagine an ice ramps in the streets with jumps and steep slide and U-turns. It was 500 m long and the skaters were going strait down the slope all along the ramp... the total race time was around 1-2 minutes! Only really good skater could do the competitions! Québec city streets were full of peoples and it was very interesting to see that competition. We tried to take photos, but skaters were too fast and I could't manage to setup my camera to take clearer photos.

So, that's about all for the moment!

Bye!

Isa xx

Dear friends downunder, many of you doubt about the existence of snow... even if I say it's real, some still think itsn't. Tomorrow will be a great day for me... it will be a snow storm day in Québec!!!! Yé! See that yourslef:

http://www.meteomedia.com/meteo/villes/can/pages/CAQC0441.htm

http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/city/pages/qc-133_metric_e.html

Because of the snow, it will be very terrible on the road... so I think I'll work home a enjoy the day with a small walk in the streets when it will snow a lot! Wish all of you were here tomorrow to enjoy that great moment! This year we didn't have much snow yet and this will be our 1st real snow storm of the year! I hope we will have a few of them like that!

Hope you enjoy your sunny and warm summer as much as I'll enjoy the snow tomorrow!

Isa