A christian weekend (somewhat)
We had a nice weekend this last one.
On Friday night we went climbing at a climbing gym which is not our usual one. We usually go to Rock Oasis, which is very crowded and loud but also closer and easier to go to. This time we went to Joe Rockheads, which is more open-space and quiet and we like the walls better.
On Saturday morning we drove to Waterdown, a town about an hour away from Toronto. Audrey (Denise's mom) used to be a nun there and she still goes and visit there so we joined her to see it. The place is big and used to be the headquarters of this particular unit for Ontario. They were concentrating on teaching, so the new nuns will be trained and then will go live in small communities and help teach. Audrey actually lived in the headquarter in Waterdown and was teaching there. This was many years ago and there are no new nuns now, so it is more like a retirement home. They have the sisters (nuns) live there on the second floor and an area for the sick ones on the third floor which is a little bit like a hospital. They all eat together in the dining hall and they have different activities here, it is a retirement home in practice.
We met up with a few of the sisters who were there together with Audrey. Most are in tehir late 70's and up to their 90's. One of them lived in there for 75 years! Sister Evelin showed us the place and told us about the history and the people who live there now. They have a lot of art there, paitings, thread-work etc. It was intersting to se it and actually really sad to know that this way of life is disappearing - there are no young sisters there and not too long in the future the building will probably be a regular retirenment home, maybe a museum, I don't know.
From Waterdown we went to Waterloo, where Denise is from and where the church where her parents go was having a Seder! This was pretty interesting, doing a Seder in the church with all Christians. They had special Hagada's written in the US by a Rabbi specifically for Christians who arehaving it so they left some of the long things out and concetrated on the inportant story of getting out of Egypt and on all the symbolisms in the Hagada. The songs were mostly in English but we had two ladies, one with a guitar, and the blesing for the wine we did in Hebrew. Everyone was helping out, we had little notes with what we need to do (Denise was serving food, I was clearing the plates off the tables etc) and everyone was excited about it, especially the priest.
OK, Denise is already asleep so I will stop here, but come back because Denise will write a little more and we will post some more pictures.