Happy Canada Day (a.k.a the party that may or may not be)

Happy Birthday Canada! The one day a year when Canadians get to shed their humble shells and get all decked out in red and white, drink beer, fire up the barbeque and hang out with friends on the patio / at the cottage / at the park / or at the nearest beach. Six years ago, at the end of my first year living in Ottawa, I went to my first Canada Day on Parliament Hill. Needless to say, I was more than a little bit overwhelmed with all the red and white and shouting and waving. As a good Montrealer, I was a little more used to the blue and white then the red and white! Ah Canada Day, the one day when Canadians are given permission to be nationalistic and proud!

As this is the first time that there is an “official” Canadian in Recife, I thought that we should hold a small, but dedicated, Canada Day party. Now, although we have been here for a whole three weeks, I do have to say that the apartment is clearly not ready to host a party. We have managed to plug up several of the holes in the walls and install the light fixtures. We even managed to fit the stove into its rightful location this morning [we still don’t have a gas tank, but this is besides the point…]. But … the toilets don’t all function even when the building does have water [today isn’t a have-water day] and we haven’t yet managed to scrap all the mould off the dishes and furniture. Never to be foiled, we decided that there is nothing like a little pressure and sent out an invitation to a rather motley crew of contacts [having only been here a few weeks, the invitation list was rather eclectic to say the least].

Last night, when I got home from work, I found out the Mark, who is here visiting for several weeks, had been to the mall and checked his email. When I enquired whether or not he had received the invitation, he indicated that no, in fact there had been no email from me in his inbox. No email! What did this mean? Did this mean that none of the emails had gotten through? I had sent them in bcc and copied myself. The copy to me had bounced back, but as far as I was aware, the remainder had made their may through. It was a mystery. And now, of course, we had no idea if the invitation had even been received. What were we to do? Having neither a phone, nor anyone else’s phone number, the best we could do was prepare for the party and wait and see. How sad! So this morning we trotted off to the grocery store and loaded up on food and drinks. We have set a frenetic cleaning pace and will wait and see. So far, no email responses, except from one person to whom the invitation was sent individually. As an aside, the one person who did actually receive the email is return to Recife from a business trip at 10pm this evening and wondered if it would be too late to come to the party. What to say? What to say?

Stay tuned for the outcome of Canada Day: The party that may or may not have been!

p.s. Thanks ms.mac for the happy wishes!