Meet the Team!: Guelph!

We arrived in Guelph on Sunday evening after a long but successful day of riding. We settled in at a dorm at the University, ate Greek for dinner, and slept well. We then took the bus to Pleasant Ridge tack shop and got extremely lost. A 30 minute journey turned into a 1.5 hour journey, but at least that created more bus bonding time between teams. When we finally arrived, the Kiwis and Aussies were overwhelmed by the size of the store, while the North American teams were impressed but not shocked. The former group did some serious shopping because they couldn't find many of the items in the store at home. I left my wallet at the college so that I wouldn't be tempted to buy anything!

Then we hopped back on the bus and travelled to Twisted Pine Farm, Dana's lovely facility. Dana is a mother of one of the Canadian team members. There, we met a miniature pony named Trouble, a 30 year-old donkey named Velvet, and a pig name Penny. Then we ate a beautiful BBQ dinner and then had a fun tour of the farm on the hay wagon.

Here comes Trouble!

Trouble eating marshmallows!

On Tuesday, we had a busy day at St. Jacob's Market and a Mennonite farm. The market offered an enormous selection of fruit and veggies, yummy lunch food, and other things to buy. We also watched part of the cattle and horse auction, which was quite sad. It was a solemn reminder of the number of horses in need of homes.

Colourful capsicums at the market.

We then went on a Mennonite farm tour in an old-fashioned horse and buggy. We learned a lot about the culture and traditions, and our guide, Ron, disproved some of the fallacies about Mennonites. Before heading to a yummy buffet dinner, we visited a Mennonite tack shop, where we were able to view a saddler at work with his leather.