Mon. Oct. 26, 2009

12:46 p.m.

I have safely returned home. I was even able to get up at a decent hour despite having arrived home so late last night (well, technically that was this morning). The Greyhound bus I was taking to Ottawa left at midnight and I was confident I would catch it since the McGill bus was supposed to arrive in Montreal by 10:00 p.m. at the latest. Unfortunately, the troubles we had at the border on the way down in no way compared to what we experienced coming back into Canada.

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
5:58 p.m.

Dinner time! Middlebury just won the College Quidditch Cup for the third consecutive year, narrowly defeating Emerson College. McGill lost to Middlebury in the semi finals and proceeded to play a number of scrimmage matches with some of the other eliminated teams . . .

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
1:48 p.m.

McGill’s seeker just caught the snitch to snag McGill a win in the team’s quarterfinal game. The owls finally came and have been quite a hit. A group has also been running a great business selling Quidditch shirts and scarves under the name Madam Malkin’s Robes . . .

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
10:50 a.m.

Eighteen to go. I am getting ridiculously excited to unplug my computer and leave this spot. The ball jugglers have been replaced by knife jugglers and people on stilts.

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
10:47 a.m.

Thirty-three to go. Now the little boy has found some similarly dressed friends and they have all picked up branches and are having a wizards duel. One of them just avada-kedavra-ed (used the killing curse on) the others and now they are dying in the leaves.

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
10:46 a.m.

Thirty-six to go. A little boy dressed up as Harry Potter almost stepped on my computer.

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
10:39 a.m.

Seventy-seven to go . . . I am remembering Adam Dietrich (the Charlatan’s photo assistant) telling me before I left that 1GB would be lots of memory on the camera . . .

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009
10:37 a.m.

Seventy-nine photos to go . . . There are now jugglers behind me juggling.

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009

10:29 a.m.

The snitch was just caught in the game in front of me and people are going nuts! He ran onto the field, let the seekers get close and dug his hands into a huge muddy puddle and splattered their faces with muck. Only in Quidditch can that be appropriate in a sport! Still 110 photos left to upload . . .

Sun. Oct. 25, 2009

10:18 a.m.

We arrived right at 9:00 a.m. and those on the bus who were playing had to sprint to make the opening parade. The parade was amazing — so much energy from everyone! McGill is the only team from outside of the United States but a number of teams have travelled quite a ways to get here. There’s a team here from Texas.

The first games started right away and McGill was on one of the four fields.