The Sweet & Long Awaited Blogger Meet Up

The sweet part first, if you're wondering what it's about:Now that you're there drooling over those most amazingly delicious and gorgeous macarons from the suggestively named "boutique" Point G that the friendly blogger bought for us to share, I'll share the background story.

Many years ago (more precisely 15-13) K had a student (math in 7th, 8th and physics in the first half of 9th grade) named Keiko (her late dad was Japanese, thus the beautiful Japanese name, which is actually her middle name, but the one she was known for). Keiko -- who a few years earlier also happened to have been one of the lead singers in a children musical group from the institution where we worked -- I say that just to embarrass her ;-) -- is obviously well over 10 years younger than K and I, but little did we know that 10 years after we left Brazil to the U.S. she would be making the same trajectory and becoming one more rare kindred spirit in our circle of friends.

It is very rare and precious indeed to find people who understand K and I in all aspects of life: expatriate from Brazil in North America, doctoral student/researcher, parent of young kids, not to mention having grown up in the same place where I lived from 13-25 years old (in her case from 0-25, I guess). And to top it off, she and I have one more thing in common, which makes the connection even greater: she blogs!!! Unfortunately she does so in Portuguese or I'd recommend that you read her humorous, witty and well written posts about her life as an expatriate-doctoral-student-mother-of-young-children (not that she's having a lot of time to blog lately -- sadly). (A few more words about her blog. It's titled Tirando o Sapato-- Taking off the Shoe, which is a reference to the fact that in Canada everyone takes off their shoes when going into other people's houses. If you go visit over there, make sure to refresh the site a few times to see the several cute shoe pictures!!)

A meeting had been in our plans since she started blogging (and us interacting via blogs and email) back in 2006 and the idea of my brother-in-law and his wife emigrating to Canada was only that, a very abstract idea, almost a dream really for them. Three years later, BIL has been in Montreal for six months and we have visited him twice already. It so happens that during the first visit, Keiko had gone to Brazil for a few days with the, thus frustrating our plans of meeting. We even went to her house (with a bunch of other people) and her absence, as well as that of her children, was keenly felt.

Until last Friday, that is, when we finally managed to meet (albeit later than we had intended -- see lack of time mentioned above)!! Our children played together -- well, the baby girl mostly watched her brother and these two big boys play and be really noisy (particularly Linton and Zack, 5 and 3, who hit it right off). Here they are playing trains:
Oh, and last but not least, my friend lives in an awesome place, here (July photo):She lives in one of the buildings shaped like a triangle at the back of the photo which were part of the former Olympic Village from the Montreal 1976 Olympics. The buildings have a view to this place (which is were the photo above was taken -- from the inclined elevator):

The Olympic Stadium and the Biodome.

What about the macarons, you must be asking yourself? Well, there is an explanation. A while back, more precisely six months ago, Keiko posted about them here (scroll down for cute photos of her daughter). And ever since I saw those pictures I've been dying to eat them! So Keiko was kind enough to purchase some (the plan was to meet at Point G, but that didn't work out) so I could try them. Yummmm! We had to cut them all in four so the kids, and Keiko's sister-in-law (visiting from Brazil) could also have a taste! OK, here's Zack, ready to dive in (let me know if you're OK with the photo, Keiko, 'cause it shows both of your kids):Of course this post is missing something... a photo of the two bloggers. We forgot to take photos, though, because we were too busy talking away! Maybe next time. :-)