update

Jan.25 - Haven't had much to say over the last couple of weeks. We've kept busy playing golf, looking for alternate digs, playing bridge and sightseeing.

First of course, the golf. The course we play has 36 holes - one course,Centennial is the harder 'championship' course. It's about 6080 yards for the women and 6500 for the men.It's quite hilly and you get some uneven lies. The other course, Tahara, is shorter and more straightforward, but the fairways are in terrrible condition, much like Scottish or Irish links courses, and you play the ball as it lies. When we get back to Canada, we'll be able to play the ball from any kind of lie.(hopefully) Both courses have small, inconsistent greens, but if you chip and putt well, you can score decently. Olga made the mistake of playing pretty well the first couple of weeks and is stuck with a handicap index of 7.9 which converts to 9 on Centennial and 8 on Tahara. Bob was much smarter. He didn't play that well and is currently a 13.5 index. We can't remember the last time he was that high. Anyway, Olga has to give Bob strokes! (but he still loses) You keep that index for two weeks when they update them.

We have been playing about 5 times a week. On Friday nights, there is a competition of 9 holes for stableford points.It costs $5 and there is a roast buffet after which costs $15. The first Friday, we thought we did rather well, with 19 and 20 points, but fifth place had 23 points and the winners were 25. How in the world do you get that many points? Must be some sandbagging going on. Anyway, the next Friday, Olga squawked and complained that she wasn't going to enter the competition anymore since
she didn't have a chance for the stableford points and we could just play the nine holes with our friends Ken and Linda and stay for the dinner. Well, she ended up shooting 38 on the back nine of the Centennial course and winning four bottles of Smirnoff Ice for low gross for the women and some socks for a K.P. So I guess we'll be competing again this week. Also, we have entered a weekend tournament called the Harcourt's(a local real estate company). I guess it's a big local tournament - they use both courses and have a women's division and two men's divisions, 0-18 and 19+ .
It's this weekend, so we'll let you know if Bob reverted to usual form and cleaned up in his division.

We've also started playing bridge after a two month break. There is a nice local club that is under utilized, like many of their clubs here. They meet Monday nights, Wednesday nights and Fridays at 11 am . The first couple of times we went, we did pretty well and know they call us those hotshots from Canada and we are handicapped on the Monday nights. Didn't know they handicapped bridge! We met some nice people at the bridge club, one of them a lady from Kelowna who showed us a couple of flats. We also looked at an apartment in a newer building. It's owned by some Americans who rent it out. It's really very nice and the buiding has a pool and a gym, but at first they were asking $100 a night. We said thanks, but too much money, and they got back to us and we settled on $400 per week. We move in Feb. 1 for the month and we can hardly wait.
Some friends, George and Lorraine Morley are coming to spend a few weeks with us in February, so we wanted to find something with two bathrooms.

We've done a little local sightseeing, since we're waiting for George and Lorraine to arrive so we don't have to do things twice. We've been to the local thermal hot pools - pretty good, but nowhere as nice as Radium Hot Springs back home. We went to a shrimp farm and had lunch, shrimp chowder. We have visited Huka Falls, the Volcano Activity Center where they have some very good displays and exhibits on the area from White Island to Mount Ruapehu, along with some movies that had footage of the eruptions in 1995 and 1996. We didn't realize this area was in the middle of this semi-active volcanic area and we hope it stays inactive during our stay.

Read the election results on the cbc website last night. I bet most of Alberta is pretty happy about the results. Barb's boss, Karen Redman, who is a Liberal MP from Kitchener was thankfully re-elected, so she still has a job, but things will be different for them now.

Hope you are all well - talk to you soon.