Festival of Trees

So… yesterday we had two fails. Firstly, Carla was supposed to do Taekwondo demo performance, but it was cancelled at the last minute. Secondly, we bought groupon to eat at a Thai restaurant close to the venue where Carla was supposed to do the performance, but when we got there, the restaurant was closed!

Were we disappointed? Well, no… not at all! Carla’s performance was supposed to be for the Festival of Trees. To be honest, we were not really interested in coming to the festival. Especially since yesterday was cold, snowing… everything looked white and grey and bleak, like this…

If not for Carla’s Taekwondo demo performance, we would have happily hibernated at home and missed the festival, and it would have been a shame, since the festival turned out to be fun for all of us.

The Festival of Trees is an annual holiday celebration, now in its 34th year, organized by the University Hospital Foundation. It’s a fundraising event, and this year the goal is to fund the most advanced CT scanning technology and software for the Brain Centre at the University of Alberta Hospital.

There were a lot of things to see there, mainly Christmas trees, lots of Christmas trees… well, it’s the Festival of Trees after all!

There were traditional Christmas trees, and also some interesting, non traditional ones.

There was also a gingerbread and cake competition. The gingerbreads and cakes were all beautiful and elaborately decorated.

There were entertainment, sweets and treats, ice cream, and lots of activities for children.

Carla and Renan had fun decorating and eating gingerbread.

They also enjoyed visiting the university hospital display. Carla tried to give medicine to the “sick man” and she was excited to “have a picture of her brain” taken.

We stayed at the festival until lunch time, then we went to the Thai restaurant. But when we got there, the place was closed and would only open in at 5. We were hungry, cold, and we didn’t really want to walk in the snow looking for a place to eat. Luckily a cafe nearby was open, so we just went there. It was a 100% vegan cafe. We are not even vegetarians, so normally we wouldn’t even consider going to a vegan place. I’m glad we went there, though… the food was surprisingly delicious and full of flavour. We shared noodle soup with mushroom, tofu and banana flower, young jackfruit enchilada with cashew sour cream and salad, also burger with tempeh and lentils patties. Papai, mamae, and Carla happily ate the vegan food, but Renan wasn’t really impressed. At least he tried.

So, things didn’t go as planned, but we still had fun!