Fellow Canadians

Yesterday afternoon was awesome. After packing up our cars we set off for Virginia Beach and Cape Henry Lighthouse. My dad used his GPS to find his way and it led us in a huge circle all over Norfolk before finally bringing us to Virginia Beach. (Later in the evening my dad called Ty and told him he realized what the problem with the GPS was. He had put it on pedestrian mode several days earlier during a walk and had forgot to change it back to vehicle mode therefore the GPS kept trying to tell him to get off the road and wouldn't give him the right directions until way after he passed the turns.) When we got to the lighthouse we found out it was in a military base, Fort Story. We had to stop at the entrance, open up all our car doors, the hood and the trunk and stand to the side while officers did a quick search of the car, even using a mirror on wheels to check the undercarriage. I thought the whole procedure was quite fascinating to watch and kind of wanted to take some notes, but thought that might be a bad idea. My notebook was in the car at any rate, so I just took mental notes. After our vehicles were checked we were let into the base and parked near the lighthouse. We didn't get to climb up to the top since there was a fee and we didn't want to pay that on Sabbath, but we made up for it by getting tons of pictures in front of the old Cape Henry Lighthouse (which I don't believe is actually used anymore) and the new one (which is made entirely of cast-iron). Then we drove to the Cape Henry Memorial and read the information signs to figure out what the whole place was famous for. (You, too, can learn more about the Cape Henry Memorial.) After that we walked over the sand dunes to the ocean and spent time playing in the sand and surf. My mum, of course, took numerous pictures of the whole affair. When my feet were about frozen off from the frigid water, we headed back to the cars and made sure all of our stuff was in the right vehicles. Then, just as our parents were going to say good-bye to us and have a prayer for safe driving, this lady who was standing with her husband and grown-up children at the car next to ours walked behind our car, looked at the license plate and exclaimed, "Ils est Canadiens!" to the others in her group. Then she turned her attention to my mum standing beside me at the passenger door and asked, "Tu est Canadiens?" to which my mum responded in English, "Yes, we're from British Columbia." I wondered for a second if the lady could speak English cause she kept on blabbering away in French, but then she made the switch to English and had a lengthy conversation with my mum. Her husband and sons engaged my dad in conversation, too, and I spent the next little while people-watching/listening. It's always cool to meet fellow Canadians while traveling and find out where each other are from and compare notes about the part of the country you live in and where you are traveling to. These people were originally from Gatineau, Quebec (which is right across the Ottawa River from Ottawa, Ontario), but they'd moved down to the States 30-something years ago. The lady said that she and her husband always go "home to Quebec" in the summer and that, even after becoming American citizens and after all those years of living in the U.S., it's still home. I was encouraged to hear that because I know exactly how she feels. As soon as I get across the border in any part of the country, I give a sigh of relief and think to myself, Ahhh, I'm home! Since coming to Southern I get the same type of feeling (although to a lesser extent) when I land at the Sea-Tac airport and know I'm back in the Northwest. I've often wondered if I'm crazy for feeling that way, but this lady made me know that I guess I'm not the only one to feel like a foreigner in this country. Anyway, finally my parents said good-bye to their new-found friends and we said our good-byes and had a prayer before starting out on our respective journeys. We stayed traveling behind our parents truck for almost two hours and then they took a road going up to Washington D.C. and we kept going west to hit I-81 and come south. We three took turns driving and finally made it back to our apartment at 1:45 a.m. Ty was still checked out of the dorm until later today, so he just slept on our couch. And that ended the great Virginia coast Thanksgiving break Q. trip 2009. It was awesome while it lasted, but now I have to gear up for another two and a half weeks of school. Christmas can't come soon enough!