Today, we made it all the way from St. Hyacinthe to Quebec City. Dong Eun checked the map and noted that we have come REALLY far. Everyone we meet says the same thing. What will they say when we get to St. John’s, Newfoundland?

Video to come!

Morning

When you’re driving across Canada in a VW Westfalia camper van with two adults, a 9 year old and all our stuff, space can get tight at times. But to be honest, it’s a comfortable tight. And even cooler is when you get to have popcorn with your oatmeal for breakfast because we can. The drinks are hot soy milk with blackstrap molasses, btw. Yummy!

After breakfast, we get ready to set off and have got our routine down, for the most part. Ethan helps with the dishes, while I pack away the porta-potty. Then we pack up the table and all our PJs before pulling the tent down and driving off. A last minute bathroom run is also mandatory.

For Ethan, the riding in the van has been quite easy because he has his podcasts, Kindle and origami to keep him busy. But because we want him to expand his learning and experiences, we’re trying to introduce new things for him to read or do. Harry Potter has been a good start, as he loves the books and is now on the fourth.

Our destination in Quebec City (QC) is the local library so that I can catch up on work, and so Ethan can do his fourth grade assessment. We started the other night in Montreal, so we wanted to make sure he gets it done as soon as possible.

We’re trying to teach him to do things right away and not put them off. Better not to create a procrastinator, right?

Afternoon

We arrived at Library Monique-Corriveau and were quite surprised by the modern design of the building. It was a cool introduction to QC. We immediately searched out the outlets so we could set up and get some work done.

Ethan worked on a new video about phones versus computers.

Here’s the completed video…

We’re not exactly sure what inspired him to make this video. Maybe it’s because we’ve mentioned how his directed learning community, SelfDesign, will be providing him with a new iPad in January and he’d rather have a laptop. The one he’s using is my old MacBook Air, but the screen is in poor condition and the battery only lasts about an hour.

We don’t want to get him something new, yet, as we feel it’s important to learn to make do with what you have and not go running out to buy something impulsively. We want to teach him not to be drawn by consumerism, so that’s why we ask him to make things, rather than buy them.

This trip has hopefully helped in that regard because he’s making do without any toys, other than his Rubik’s Cubes. Actually, he’s hardly played with them at all.

Lunch time is always something we look forward to because we never know what delicious meal Dong Eun will come up with. Today, it was spaghetti with frozen spinach and tomato sauce. Oh, by the way, our fridge stopped working again after we accidentally turned it off, so we have to go back to only buying what we can eat that day.

Only buying what we can eat that day is also a good thing for Ethan to learn because it means making do with what we have and being grateful for it.

The library only allowed two hours for parking so we had to leave. They actually gave out parking tickets to a few unlucky people. So we drove over to the nearby Walmart, but didn’t realize it was in a shopping mall. That turned out to be a good thing because the mall had fast wifi and places for us to plug in.

Ethan continued working on the phones versus computers video. He took this photo of a bathroom sign, as he was probably curious what bathroom was in French.

When we started on this trip, I let Ethan use one of my cameras so that he could document the trip from his perspective. Not sure why his interest faded but perhaps we could get him to do it again. It’d be a great way for him to remember what we did and saw.

Evening

The mall closed at 6pm… Actually, everything in QC seems to close early, unlike in Montreal, where we saw several 24 hour places. Anyway, we went to a nearby Walmart to stay the night. Normally, it’s easy to find Walmart stores that allow overnight parking, but in Quebec, it’s been more challenging. A lot of the stores have been located in shopping malls and they don’t like overnight campers.

The one we stayed at was fairly close by, so not a big deal. I went into the McDonald’s to finish a project while Dong Eun prepared a chicken stew and rice dinner.

About 20 minutes after I sat down, Ethan came running in saying there was an emergency… Juju Jr. finally ran out of propane and Dong Eun was in the middle of cooking. She actually wondered this morning if that would happen and sure enough, it did.

We were amazed that we had gone for a month on one tank of propane, while cooking three meals a day. But reality hit and we had to find a place to refill the tank, or there would be no dinner.

I called several nearby gas stations asking first if they spoke English, and second if they had propane. It was a fun way to practice speaking a bit of French.

We finally found an Esso station only 3.5km away that refilled auto propane, but they told us the propane is only available from 8am to 5pm… and it was after 7:30pm. We got a lead from another gas station that said Costco could refill auto propane and lucky for us, Costco was less than 2km away.

But to get there took about 7km because there was no direct route. And when we arrived, they told us that they don’t refill propane.

We wondered what to do about our dinner. Dong Eun said the chicken was about half cooked. We had no choice but to wait until morning when the Esso opened. Since it was already cold, and it was supposed to get even colder, we put the pot of chicken in the trunk… our fridge doesn’t work, remember.

Ethan asked if we could have Costco food for dinner. We didn’t want to but given the circumstances, we had little choice. So that’s how we ended up having Costco hot dogs and fries for dinner.

Two things happened when getting our food… First, I tried to order in French. I was doing quite well until I asked for the hot dogs and he asked me something I couldn’t understand. I then had to ask if he spoke English and found out he was asking if I wanted a regular hot dog or a spicy one. Oops.

Second, instead of fountain drinks, we got canned pop. We don’t let Ethan drink pop, so he was pretty excited. But we didn’t let him have any since it was almost 8:30pm and we didn’t need him to have a late night sugar rush.

The fries here were awesome, by the way! The hot dogs were pretty darn good, too.

Overall, it was a fun day again, with unexpected things happening and plenty of opportunities for learning.

If you’re just reading this blog for the first time, we are a family of three traveling across Canada (and likely beyond) in a 1994 VW Westfalia camper van called Juju Jr. Our son Ethan, age 9, is unschooling and so we want him to learn from being on the road and traveling. So he’s also now a roadschooler and we are documenting the trip and his learning on this blog.