Winterlude at Fort Dupont – by Mme Hylton

- by Mme Hylton

Yesterday, we went on a special trip with special people and special friends at Fort Dupont Ice rink.

We were scheduled to take the bus at 8:15am. It was too early for some of us who arrived late.

It was Deriana’s birthday so we sang her the happy birthday song in the bus.

When we got to the ice rink the teacher showed us how to be safe on the ice.

Lacing up the ice skates was hard.

First we had a lesson.

There were two groups: beginners and advanced.

Some learned to skate backwards and others to swizzle. Some learned to slide, stop and a lot of cool lessons. We did free skating and they put some music on.

Dylan was the referee for 2 races.

After about an hour our friends from the Embassy Adoption Program came to celebrate Winterlude with us. Winterlude is a celebration in Canada that happens in February when everybody has hot chocolate, goes ice skating and does fun winter stuff.

Some people from Canada who played hockey before as professionals came to show us how to play the game. We got to take shots at a hockey goalie.

Some of us were taught by a figure skater. We learned to cross over one leg and twirl.

While we were having so much fun we had no idea what the people from the Embassy were planning to do for us in a room upstairs.

When we all went upstairs to meet with our friends from the Canadian Embassy we were welcomed with hot chocolate and beaver tails.

We ate beaver tails! Of course they were not real beaver tails. They were fried dough covered in cinnamon and sugar.  They tasted a little like funnel cakes. They were delicious. We also had hot cocoa with marshmallows.

A lot of us got our face painted. The lady who did the face painting was really amazing.

We made valentine cards that are going to go on a poster at the Canadian Embassy.

Dylan, Gregory, Shin Young, Charlie and Mohammed helped to build a fort. Somebody had the idea to crawl through a tunnel. We had a snowball fight with fake snowballs.

Alex threw a box of snowballs to the other team and Eamon kept on throwing headshots at everybody.

One team completely obliterated the other team’s fort so there was no question who the winners were.

In the end we all got calendars from Ms. Leslie.

After that we had to go but not before we saw the amazing Zamboni.

It was really fun. We had more fun than a monkey in a tree house.

It was a great day. It was awesome and we thank our friends from the Canadian Embassy a lot.

The Embassy Adoption Program students