First day of school

Posted by Ali

I’ve always been pretty excited for first days of school. In elementary school it meant a new teacher, classroom, and probably a fancy new lunch box. In high school it meant being able to hang out all day every day with all my friends. Today it meant new courses that are actually relevant to what I want to do for the rest of my life, wearing a cute back-to-school outfit, and unfortunately saying goodbye to Marc-André so that he can get ready for his first day of school next Monday.

First days of school also tend to mean new people. Today that included a professor who started the class off by taking a sip from her water bottle and proclaiming, “Mmm, this vodka is just the kick I need to start off the school year.”
I associate the first day of school with a bunch of other things too. September is a time for fresh starts and new school supplies! For me, it’s also an excellent time to decorate my new apartment, with my three lovely roommates. And one of my favourite things that we have up in the house is this baby:

It’s a wonderful dry-erase board and it’s pretty much the first thing you see when you enter our place. I think it’s going to be a pretty sweet place to leave some “petals” for the three super fun, kinda kooky, girls who are going to make every day this year feel as exciting and fun as the first day of school.

Letter #53: Dear Verena

Okay… so this is a bit of an unofficial letter. See, I’m writing to Verena, the mother of the family who is letting me live with them for three months. It is Mother’s Day, and she’s been pretty amazing so far, and I definitely want to thank her for that. But I also want to do it in German. So, at the end of the summer, I will write her and Oliver properly, but for now I have a mini letter that I wrote, thanking her for making my first week and a half in Germany perfect!

And P.S. Thank you for filling my room with pretty flowers, like this:

Lettre #52: Grand-maman!

Salut tout le monde, happy May Day!

Aujourd’hui, j’écris finalement à une personne pas mal incroyable et à notre lectrice la plus assidue, nulle autre que ma chère grand-maman.  Demain, c’est ça fête, donc une raison de plus de lui dire merci!

Yup, you’ve figured it out, this is a letter for my grandma, a pretty epic lady.  It’s her birthday tomorrow, so that’s one more reason to write to her!

Thanks for reading, and hope you had a fantastic weekend!  I’m still home, in Sudbury, and got to see old friends and family, prepare for my term in Ghana, and… get excited for the results of the upcoming election.  I voted (for the first time) early in the Waterloo-Kitchener riding (Peter Braid, the current conservative MP only won by a handful of votes last time around, so I had to vote there, to do my job to avoid the blues…).  Regardless of your political convictions, please vote my friends, it’s the least we can do to respect our democracy, plus it was pretty fun!

Merci d’avoir lu une lettre pour une grande dame!  Je vous souhaite d’aller votez en grands nombres mes amis!  Merci de prendre le temps de montrer que vous tenez à coeur notre démocratie.

Bonne semaine, et à bientôt!

Marc-André

Letter #51: Guest Post, the Sequal! And an update on us…

Hey everyone! It’s Ali and Marc-André, because we’re both still in Sudbury, for two more days. ‘Two more days?’ you ask? Yes! Two more days! ‘Why?’ you ask? We are going to be travelling the world this summer. Read this letter, then we’ll tell you more about our adventures on different continents.

Thanks for the letter Jess!

Alright, ready for a pretty intense segway, by Ali? Here goes: Jess wrote to her dad, and this week I’ve got to spend time with my dad, who is pretty awesome. I’ve also spent some time on Skype with his parents, who are also pretty great. And I spoke with a few other relatives on Skype… my Opa’s cousin’s daughter and her family, to be exact. Why did I speak with these distant relatives? Because they were wonderful enough to welcome me into their home for the summer. And guess what… (Sorry, we’re making you do a lot of guessing and wondering and question asking this post.) They live in Berlin! Berlin! In TWO DAYS I will be in Berlin! How crazy is that? (Last question, I promise.) It is pretty crazy, and I’m very excited. This summer, I’m leaving North America for the very first time; I’m going to turn 20 in a foreign country; I’ll be learning to write, read, and speak German at the Geothe-Institut; and I’ll keep writing letters every other Sunday! So, while you should definitely continue to check out Sending Petals once a week, if you’re interested you can also check out: www.verbsandnouns.wordpress.com to read about my European escapades on a daily basis.
There’s another pretty awesome blog, yamsnscribbles.wordpress.com, that’s popped up recently on the interwebz. I’ll let Mr. Simard tell you more about it.

Merci beaucoup Mme Schwabe!  Moi je vais être sur un autre continent, après une couple de semaines èa Sudbury (que j’ai la chance de passer avec ma famille géniale)  je vais me retrouver en Afrique de l’Ouest, au Ghana!  Turns out that Ali and I are trying out some real long-distance dating this summer.  We’ll be on two different continents, I’ll be spending my summer in West Africa, in Ghana!

I’ll be working with an organization that’s doing some very interesting work on the ground in different countries in Africa and here in Canada: Engineers Without Borders.

More specifically I will work in a district in Northern Ghana called Bole and will be partnered with an office of the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture to conduct field research on technology adoption by small-scale farmers.  What does this mean exactly?  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist making you ask one more question…) Well I’m not entirely sure (on second thoughts, maybe I shouldn’t have made you ask it like that!).  The goal is to try to find ways to help government services be more efficient to share new advancements with farmers in a way useful to them.  I’m pretty excited to see where this will lead me…  so I’ll be keeping a blog too over the summer (as mentioned above), and if you’re interested it would be great to have your thoughts on what I’ll be learning!

Happy Easter and have a great week!

Letter #50: Guest Post!

Hey everyone! Today’s letter is pretty late, sorry. On Sunday we were both studying for our last exams, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we wrote our last exams and moved back to Sudbury, and today we spent the day together. It’s been wonderful, which reminded us that we have a wonderful letter to share with you! This week the letter was written by Jessica Scott, a volunteer from the University of Ottawa that we had working with us. Some facts about Jessica: She was born and raised in Barrie, Ontario. She moved to Ottawa in 2006 to pursue her University education. Jessica currently holds a bachelor of Health Sciences degree and will graduate from a Social Sciences degree in April of this year. Jessica became involved with Sending Petals through an experiential learning course at the University of Ottawa. She loves working with children and adults alike and is very excited to be working with Sending Petals and bringing smiles to many people’s faces. Letter writing is an important part of her life , she once sent a letter to the Spice Girls when she was 7 years old and was very excited to get one back! It was fun getting a third person on board; Jessica and I (Ali) delivered a workshop to some Brownies together, and she also wrote a couple letters! Here’s one of them:

One of the most interesting highlights of my week this week was a trip to the war museum! If you have a chance to go and check it out it is really worth it. My trip inspired me to write a letter to all the men and women who have served our country and protected our rights and freedoms…so this week’s letter goes out to the veterans and our troops serving overseas!

Letter #49: Oma and Opa

Hey everyone! If you’ve been checking the 365 pétal(e)s page, sorry it was not updated yesterday! I’ll make it up to you tomorrow night; I’ll post two letters! That’s because I’ll be finished writing the biggest paper of my university career thus far. 20 pages on the history of gender and caste as social boundaries in colonial Indian history! It’s been an interesting paper to write, because it’s not just a source study, it’s based largely on two novels I read. And I would definitely recommend both of them: The Toss of a Lemon and The God of Small Things were difficult to get into at first, but the endings are most definitely worth it!
So, the letter this week is to my paternal grandparents. I’ve always known they were really nice people—they’re two of the few people who send me snail mail—but I didn’t realize until writing this just how much I have to thank them for! This letter just started to cover why they deserve to be appreciated, and I’ll have to talk with them soon on Skype to tell them the rest of the reasons!
Enjoy the letter, and have an awesome week! Good luck if you’re in the middle of exam season like me!

(Click on the picture for a bigger version that you can zoom in to read!)

Letter #48: Jessie

Hey everyone! How are you? I have had a pretty decent week. Last weekend I got to visit Marc, which was awesome! And then he called me on Wednesday at midnight, and we just talked for a while, which was very nice. And then we had a Skype date on Thursday which was lovely. And he played a mean April Fools day joke on me on Friday. And yesterday he apologized for it on skype again! (Don’t worry, it actually wasn’t that bad, and ended up being pretty funny!) And we have just been sending really happy texts all week that make me smile a lot! Man, I am being a little bit gushy for our blog, but I have just felt like a very, very lucky girl this week. I also had a fun dinner with friends in my future neighbourhood (which I adore!) and got plenty of homework done.

This week’s letter is being written to a relatively new friend of mine, but one who I am really happy I got to know. She’s the production manager at my school’s paper, she’s super talented, and she’s made me think differently about a lot of issues. When I lost an election on Thursday, she was one of the first people to cheer me up with a happy text, and I’m looking forward to seeing her on Tuesday. Read a little bit more about why in the letter:

So, the art's lame. But I have more essays to write!


Have a great week everyone! If there’s someone in your life who you think you’re really lucky to know, you should tell them. And…the best way to tell them is probably by writing a letter! If you send it to us, you’ll also be famous! Anyways, talk to you later, wish us luck on exams!

Lettre #47: Ariane Moffatt

Salut, salut tout le monde!

Guess what? I was lucky enough to have visit two weekends in a row (if you recall last week’s letter, I went to the Farmer’s Market with my mother and my sister).

Ali est venue me visiter en fin de semaine! Yup, I did have a great weekend, Ali was here!

We had a barbecue with some friends, went to see a robot competition and design projects, had lunch with some other people, had a candlelight supper for Earth Hour, and Ali even made cupcakes for my birthday! She’s pretty awesome!

This week’s letter is to Ariane Moffatt, a wonderful French singer, writer, composer, musician, etc. Since it’s now exam mode (my first one is Thursday), I won’t have any visit in the next few weeks. Only Ariane in my ears and a pencil in my hand!

So on this note… here’s this week’s letter (you can click on the letter to have access to a bigger version)!

Bon dimanche!

Marc-André

Letter #46: Folks involved with St. Jacobs Farmers’ Market

Hey everyone!

This weekend, my little sister and my mother came to visit me in Waterloo. C’était vraiment super de les voir, merci beaucoup d’être venue! It was awesome to see them.

One thing that we did on Saturday morning was to go to the St. Jacobs Farmers’s Market. This is a great spot and a place we often visit when they come to see me!  Since I have spent close to a year in Waterloo (in periods of four months, with alternating coop terms spent elsewhere), I’ve decided that it was about time to send a letter to thank these people!

Happy Sunday!

Note: Burning the edges of the letter was my attempt at making this week’s letter more visually-appealing without having drawing skills.  The most noticeable result?   Making my roommates believe that the house was on fire.

Letter #45: Ellen DeGeneres

Hey everyone! Marc-André and I are both pretty busy. I’ve spent more than 9 hours in the library so far today, and he spent the weekend in Montreal, winning the Canadian Engineering Competition!

Aren’t you impressed? I mean, not everyone can spend nine whole hours in the library. But I’ve got an essay on Pope Gregory VII to write, so I do what I have to do. Even though we lost an hour of sleep last night. Remember back in the fall, I wrote a letter to the guy who invented the “fall back”, which gave us an extra hour of sleep. That rocked. Unlike losing sleep last night. But I’m very happy that we’ll have more hours of daylight now. Spring and summer are my favourites!

Other things that have been going on this weekend: I got to visit Marc when he was so close to Ottawa! We splashed through a bunch of puddles and I had a pretty great time! I also signed a lease for my apartment for next year, I’m so excited about living with my old roommate, my current roommate, and a new roommate starting in September 2011. They are some pretty awesome ladies (go back and read the letters!) and I think we’re going to have so much fun! And I’ve been writing essays up the ying-yang.

Alright, without further ado here’s the awesome letter, written by some of the Brownie leaders of the group I gave a workshop to a couple of weeks ago! Thanks so much for writing it ladies!

So, I’ll get back to writing my essay now! Have a wonderful week everyone, and keep checking the 365 petals page for Brownie and/or letters from l’école publique Franco-Nord!