I see London, I see France, I see color in Halifax!

Spring and warm weather has finally arrived! It was 70 yesterday and 75 today (yay!). I found out from my justice that it's never humid. AND PEOPLE ARE WEARING MORE COLOR! Hello, orange cardigan! I will wear you on Monday, my friend.

So yesterday I got to cut out from work early to go to a conference with all the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia justices. I learned TONS of stuff. I will make a post in the future about it when I get some info back from my Civ Pro professor, BoRut.

So, there was a reception afterwards and they had all this fabulous finger food. It was really intimidating being around all the justices, but they were all so nice to me and incredibly warm. I was probably more nervous hanging out with Charlie, my old boss at the law firm I worked at, then with these justices who have among the most power in the province. These two female justices found out I wasn't getting paid, so they kept encouraging me to eat more and more and more. They were hysterical. This one justice kind of reminded me of Abbott from Abbott and Costello. They all knew who I was since apparently an e-mail went out about me, so they were more than happy to come up and introduce themselves and say hello and ask about me and how I was doing. I've found that all of the justices here are like that. They love dropping by my office and inviting me to chambers or to sit in on things. And they all make sure that I know what's going on and explain things if they think it's different than the States. They also will ask me questions about differences between the American and Canadian system, and actually listen to my answers (as if I know anything!). This could have been one of the worst experiences ever, but I am finding it more and more rewarding as I go along.

So after massive amounts of fried lobster rolls and salmon ceviche and these duck spring roll things and mushroom and leak soup in a puff pastry bowl (all good and I don't even like seafood!), my roommate texted me to find out if I wanted to go to Sushi. OK!


We went to Hamachi House. The sushi was really good (try the spicy tuna roll), but the service was incredibly slow. We had to go in twice in order to ge our orders in after we had gotten the menus. It also took a ton of time to get the check. So all the restaurants in Halifax make outdoor patios on the sidewalk and then build out walkways into the streets where the parking spaces would be. It's not that big of a deal since noone in this city drives anyway. I'll try to get a funky cool picture of it.

So afterwards we went to a concert. The music scene here in Halifax is insanely awesome. There is live music EVERYWHERE and it's all different. That Mexican restaurant that Robin and I went to earlier had the best guy singing and playing classic rock. Every resturant has music nights and everyone knows about it. Even the justice that I work with (who's at least 65) was telling me about his favorite bars that he goes to on certain nights in order to hear his fave music. How awesome is that? So everyone plays an instrument and is a singer-songwriter. In all the parks and on the streets there are always street musicians. Paul McCartney is making Halifax his only Canadian stop on his tour. He's coming during the Tall Ships Festival and so is KISS. I'm trying to decide if my dad will think that this is a legitimate purchase...

Ashley's roommate was playing and they kick started their tour here in Halifax. The venue was cool, but it was in a super shady part of town. I wish I had brought my camera, because this would have been a great one. Instead you have to settle for a crappy camera phone pic:
So the two girls on the left are actually the ones touring and the girl on the right is just guest singing. So that's Carmel Mikol, Kim Wempe, and Norma MacDonald. They were all amazing. If you're in Halifax, check out if they're playing. It'll be well worth it. Kim was phenomenal. She has this voice very similar to Adele, but more powerful and I think better. I'm contemplating buying her stuff on iTunes. D/L "Oh Heart" and "Out of My Closet" if you can afford it. The concert was great; part comedy, part music, part showcase. I'm glad I went, even if it was super late.

Today, I took off to go to part 2 of the conference. More about that later. I had filipino food for lunch at a buffet. It was like $10 and was really good. YUM!

The day was so beautiful that I walked all along the waterfront (a much longer way home) so that I could be by the water. There's also a Chilean ship in town that I wanted to see. It's like a pirate ship! Here she is, the Esmeralda:
I don't even want to tell you how MASSIVE this thing was. When I stepped on the boat, I was happily stopped by a Chilean sailor who wanted to know if I had any questions. There were tons of sailors on board milling around, but they only stopped groups of women. How funny is that? That's him on the left -- Cristobal:
So, I asked all sorts of questions. The ship is 140 meters long (I think that's what he said. At any rate, bigger than 2 hockey rinks). The masts are 46 meters high. There are 305 crewmembers on board and the space is tight. They are all officers. After graduating from the naval academy, all officers do a tour on this ship before they go to their real ones. Technically their mission is "Navigation." For exercise each morning, they climb up and down the rigging.
Yikes! I would not be doing that. On a good day, it takes about an hour to raise all the sails. I asked if the food was good. Apparently it's not bad, but it's definitely better in port. I found this little hatch that looked down into the kitchen, so I took a pic for you, mom. No galley tours though. It sure smelled good!

I wish I asked how many meters of rigging was on this boat. There were ropes EVERYWHERE.

Canada-Chile Love

Bet that little ship has a bit of a complex next to this one

Ahoy!

So, Katie went to PEI for a few days and is supposedly on her way back. I assume we're going to do something interesting tonight, so if something fun happens, I'll post!