Saturday, May 21, 2011

 Today is my dad’s 84^th birthday. Since the phone man never showed up Friday we drove to the trading post and I used the pay phone to call and wish him a Happy Birthday. That was rather frustrating since dad can’t hear very well and I’m yelling at him inside the trading post. I guess everyone in Grand Portage now knows it’s my dad’s birthday. I also called the phone company while we were there and they said the phone installation had been changed to Monday. Hope that works out alright....since we start our schooling that day and no one is going to be here. Then I called John to wish him a happy birthday. He’s going to be 40 tomorrow. Brings a tear to my eye to think my baby is going to be 40. We were going to introduce ourselves to the post office lady, Mary. The post office is at the trading post. We hear she knows we’re here...even knew our names. When Sharon, our neighbor stopped in there when they first arrived....Mary informed her we were already here. So we thought we better go say howdy to the lady. However, the post office closed at 10:30 today so we’ll try again Monday during lunch time. It’s gray and 60ish today...it seems pretty chilly because there is no sun. It has just started raining. No walk this afternoon, I guess. Maybe tomorrow. Monday we start our classes. 8 hours a day Mon - Fri .Dale’s already worried. He’s afraid he’s not going to be able to remember all the facts. So far we’ve learned a lot just by reading the mass of books they sent us and just by talking to people. It’s hard to imagine they transported goods and fur in a canoe. A very big Montreal Canoe. 36 ft long. It carried between 3 and 4 tons of merchandise. Those canoes were a lot bigger then those little things that people float down the Jack’s Fork River. The English would transport goods like yard goods, blankets, flour, sugar, tobacco, cookware, firearms, wine & hard liquor to trade for furs. I’ll be sure to include photos of us in our costumes, once they have been assigned to us.