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Not an easy life

2008-05-27T22:07:00.003-04:00

Me with an "African umbrella" on the way to work one wet day.

Today on the walk home I saw a girl of six or seven with a 10L bucket full of water on her head. That’s about 10kg. Girls who grow up in the Tanzanian countryside can definitely have a difficult life. Tanzanian society is male-centred so women are expected to do all the cooking and cleaning. However, it’s often also the women that go and do a lot of the field work, sell produce, go shopping and various other tasks. Aside from their jobs (if they are lucky enough to have one), don’t ask me what the men do, although you can guess who you see filling up the bars and cafes.

There was an article in the paper the other day that brought to mind a conversation that Deo and I had had early in my stay. Given the lack of proper sex education, the social stigma of using birth control, and general boredom when you have few of the modern diversions we enjoy in the west, it’s not surprising that teen pregnancy rates are higher here than in the West. And what happens when an adolescent girl falls pregnant? She is expelled from school. Expelled! When Deo told me this, I nearly fell off my chair. Sure, in Canada many pregnant teens drop out of school because of teasing, bullying or the social stigma, but here they don’t even have the choice – the school expels them! “So how do they continue their schooling?” I asked Deo.

They don’t, was the answer. Rough. Anyway, the newspaper article that I read the other day was an editorial lauding the government for it’s recent move to allow girls to resume their schooling after delivery (though not necessarily to allow them to continue their schooling while pregnant). I guess it’s a step in the right direction.

Despite the rough go they have of it here, the women are tough, mentally and certainly physically. I’d like to see how many Canadian 7-year-old girls could carry a 10-kilo bucket of water on their heads!

Overt racism

2008-05-26T23:03:00.001-04:00

MZUNGU

Yesterday evening Deo’s sister arrived from Dar Es Salaam, where she is in her first year at medical school. She had some kind of interview in Moshi today, so she had decided to take a week-long “personal break” from school. We went with Deo’s wife to a restaurant where a wedding committee that she was a part of was having a meeting. While Deo’s wife was at the meeting, his sister and I enjoyed some drinks and chatted about this and that.

It was dark when we left and emerging into the night, I was taken aback by the night sky. Stars were numerous, bright and everywhere, and it took not 3 seconds for me to see a shooting star whiz across the sky. I will be looking forward to more of this on the safari and kili climb.
Just as we crossed the road to catch a dalla-dalla to the next junction, one pulled up. They asked the bus assistant the price, even though they knew it was 300 shillings. The assistant said flat out, “It’s 300, but you’re with a mzungu (white person), so it’s 500 each.”

Shocking, isn’t it, this kind of overt racism? It was the second time in as many days that this had happened. The overt nature and complete lack of shame just bowls me over. Having travelled in third-world countries enough, I’m used to the let’s ask the foreigner for double, quadruple or ten times routine. Usually, though, it’s done to one or a group of foreigners travelling without locals. They don’t know the price and so getting swindled is all part of the game. Though similar in nature, I still find this quite different from the blatant racism witnessed last night that not only affected me but also my travel companions. Fortunately, Deo’s wife and sister both told the guy to take a hike; we’d catch the next one. Even when they rolled on a few metres, stopped, and called out to us again that they’d give us the normal price, we still told them to get lost. Serves them right. I just couldn’t help thinking the kind of reaction (social and legal) that that kind of treatment would produce in Canada. In any business, racism that overt would be suicide!

Arusha

2008-05-25T02:33:00.003-04:00

Wow! Didn't expect to see that here!

I guess the fact that I haven’t written anything in 3 days verifies that I haven’t done anything significant over that period. There was, however, an interesting incident at school on Thursday, which you can read about more on the teaching blog. In a nutshell, there was a soccer match between Mangi Sabas and another school further away, played on the grounds of neighbouring Mawella high school. The soccer pitch was sloped in two directions so that the lowest point of the field was the far right corner. Still, it was a great atmosphere for the game, out in the open with the corn and the trees all around. If the skies had been clear, a towering Kilimanjaro would have added to the scene.

The game was good, especially from the Mangi Sabas point of view, since our boys won 4-2. Unfortunately, celebrations at the end disintegrated into post-game fan violence (started by the girls!), and things got out of hand quickly. It was an unreal spectacle to watch. In the end, fortunately, there were no injuries to report.

Yesterday I decided to go to Arusha for the day. About 70km away from Moshi, Arusha is the hub of northern Tanzania and the main centre for safaris in the northern parks (Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Manyara) as well as the departure point for most Kilimajaro treks. When I had mentioned my plan to go to Arusha, Deo volunteered his brother Julius to go with me. I accepted, knowing that getting there and walking around would be much easier with someone in the know. It meant covering all his costs, but at about $8 for the day for transportation and food, that wasn’t an issue.

We arrived in Arusha at about 1:00pm after a 90-minute bus ride from Moshi. Having Julius with me was handy at the bus terminal in Moshi as it is chaotic and there are touts everywhere trying to get you to get on their bus. As a foreigner, you don’t really know what the standard fare is, so they can easily rip you off. With Julius, that wasn’t an issue, so we paid the proper fare to Arusha, 2000 shillings or about $1.65. There’s no real schedule though; the buses leave when they’re full. Fortunately, we got the last two seats on a very full bus and were off in no time.

Arusha has nothing significant to see in itself. It is simply larger, with much more hustle and bustle than Moshi and a few of the streets looked somewhat “city-like,” meaning they were lined with mostly respectable-looking buildings and had some semblance of a sidewalk. The weather there is a few degrees cooler than Moshi as it sits a little higher, on the slopes of Mt. Meru. The mountain gets little recognition since it sits just 70km away from the roof of Africa (Kilimanjaro), but at some 4600m, it’s the 4th tallest mountain in East Africa.

After looking into some flights for June, we simply walked around taking it all in. Julius doesn’t often come to Arusha, and even when he does it’s more to meet friends, so it was a bit of a tourist experience for him, as well. We just went wherever our feet took us, and managed to cover most of the town in the 4 or so hours we were there (it really isn’t that big). Of note was the first traffic light I have seen in a month, although I did only see one. We also found a proper supermarket and even a gelato shop.

Soon enough, though, it was almost 5p.m. and time to head back to Moshi. As the bus pulled out of Arusha, the skies cleared significantly and Mt. Meru was fully visible. With its lower height, it has no snows on the top and its peak is pointed in contrast to Kilimajaro’s rounded top.
After the 90-minute bus ride, the dalla-dalla and walk back home, I was exhausted and was in the door just under a minute when Deo called. “I’m coming home now so we can go out to a club,” he said, and I groaned. I was tired not only from the day but also because his father had woken up and blared his radio and TV (simultaneously) starting at 5:45am this morning.

Despite my numerous excuses, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so within an hour we showered, had dinner, and caught a taxi into town. Why he wanted to be there at 9:30pm was beyond me, as the place had no one in it. Admittedly, it had a charming little atmosphere and the dance floor, while extremely small by Toronto’s standards, had everything necessary for the club experience, minus the go-go dancers. Still, as nothing was happening, we sat and nursed drinks for about 2 hours before things started to pick up. It never really got packed, but by about 11:45 there were a good 50 or so people on the dance floor and others around it, so it did resemble a club atmosphere. Unfortunately, the music was mostly Africa beats, which my body doesn’t move properly to, and Deo doesn’t like to dance anyway (so why did we come??), so we mostly just took in the show. His wife got up to dance a couple of times and just before leaving Deo and I joined in for a bit, but that was about it. Despite the different music, people here don’t really dance any differently than those in the clubs back in Toronto.

Sun out, lights out

2008-05-21T23:45:00.002-04:00

More students (can't help it, they come with the territory)

Today started out rainy but in the afternoon, the sun finally came out for a short while. It was, quite literally, the first time we had seen it since last Friday. I took the opportunity to go into town and get online – just for something to do. Another night of coming straight home and snoozing didn’t really appeal.

I didn’t have much time, since I left school at the end of the day, so I decided to take a quick walk around town. I was lucky today as I had no flycatchers. I think I have found the trick.

Today, as I walked I held a newspaper in front of me, pretending to read it as I walked. Not one person disturbed me the whole time I was walking…it was great!

Tonight, the Champions League final was on. Deo’s father, his brother and I were all geared to watch the game and convened after dinner in front of the television. We watched a good first half that saw a great Manchester goal, and then just as Chelsea tied it up with just minutes before the end of the first half, the lights went out. Why?! Why tonight of all nights? Not last night, not tomorrow night, but tonight! We haven’t had any power outages at night since I arrived more than three weeks ago. Why tonight? Likely someone at the power station watching the game and slamming his fist down in frustration on the console after the Chelsea goal. Anyway, we finally saw the sun today and now the lights are out.

Mbege!

2008-05-19T22:37:00.001-04:00

Thirsty? Hungry? Mbege's got you covered for both!

Yesterday in the late afternoon, after writing the last entry, Deo and I headed out for a walk just to get some exercise. After watching it rain all day, we decided to head out at 4pm under cloudy skies, umbrellas in hand. We were going to walk up Lema road to the Kibosho area, a slightly uphill climb. The road was muddy after all the rains, but we were glad to get out and I was glad to see a bit of the countryside around town. There wasn’t much except fields and the odd house, along with two very small conglomerations of run-down shack-like shops.

After walking a good hour and 15 minutes, somewhere around 6 kilometres or so, we decided to turn around, but not before stopping for a little refreshment at a café/bar. As we walked through the little village centre, all eyes were on us, since not too many outsiders make it up that way. Still, everyone was friendly. Deo had his beer and I had my Fanta.

After looking through the grill at the various other alcohols on offer, we got talking about mbege, what everyone simply explains as “the local brew.” Basically, it’s homemade moonshine made from fermented bananas and millet. You don’t find it in bottles or anything. You go to a bar and have to ask for it, and it comes in either a 1-litre or 2-litre cup. The alcohol content can be anywhere from 5 to 10 percent, depending on the batch.

Just to show me, Deo decided to order the “small cup.” Although it definitely smells like alcohol, it doesn’t look at all appealing. Think light mud water with sawdust mixed in. Why anyone would want to drink it with all those millet particles about is beyond me. Deo says it’s a drink and a meal all in one. Price may be the reason though; at 15 cents for the 1-litre cup, it’s about 15 times cheaper than bottled beer. A bargain, but you never know where the water used came from, and people getting disease after drinking it is not unheard of. Thanks but no thanks, even if I could drink!

This entry is for the birds

2008-05-18T13:05:00.004-04:00

Taken from the bedroom window!

Some things in Tanzania are not so different from Canada. After a work week of beautiful days, this weekend has been a write-off, with heavy rains both mornings and cool, cloudy conditions prevailing for the rest of the day. Laundry was done on Friday, but it still sits sopping wet on the line outside.

Yesterday, after waiting until fairly sure it would rain no more, Deo’s brother Julius and I took a walk into town. I needed to get online since I hadn’t been able to on Friday, and Julius was just there for company and probably something to do. He’s 23 and very easy to get along with. We always have lots to talk about and he’s genuinely curious about how things work in Canada and elsewhere. The walk into town takes about an hour and the round trip made for good exercise and sadly, along with getting online, was the highlight of the day.

Today, more of the same, sans internet. I might crack open the Swahili books. Yesterday, as I was doing some things in my room before heading to town, I spotted some birds out in the garden through the bedroom window. They were amazing colours. There are some small raven-like birds here that are an iridescent blue-green. I also spotted another one with a blue body and long brown tail.Well, that’s all I’ve got. This entry is for the birds!

Delivery!

2008-05-16T22:35:00.000-04:00

Delivery of the new desks. No more sharing!

Today, just as I was finishing up my last class, the carpenter’s truck pulled up with the desks and shelves he has been working on for the past two weeks. They look great – all new and shiny with varnish. The students helped offload them into one of the classrooms where they will stay until Monday, when another man comes to stencil a number on to them (so that they can be recorded as school property). The carpenter will now get to work on the furniture for the staffroom.

As it was Friday, I went into town to get online and file my reports to OISE. We had to come into town anyway so that I could get the money to pay the carpenter for the work. After going around to a few shops with Deo (he wanted to show me digital cameras here), I was really hungry but also had to get online before it got too late in the afternoon.

Surprisingly, there’s not much in the way of portable street food here. Not like you can just grab a hotdog or a burger and get on your way, which was all I was looking for. Here, either you sit down and do the waiting game, or you try to get a takeout box and still do the waiting game. Fortunately, near the shop we found a little samosa shop. There are a lot of Indians in Tanzania, actually, some that have just immigrated and many that were born here and have lived here all their lives. They invariably run businesses and manage to avoid the poverty that afflicts a good chunk of the general population. In any case, with samosas at 30 cents a piece, I was happy for their presence!

Samosas in hand, or bag, rather, I went off to the internet café and was immediately disappointed to see the door closed and the Closed sign hanging. Again?!? This happened last week! At the nearby tables in the little front area, the woman was sitting with a friend and told me that there was no power today.

“Again?!?” I asked, “You have no power on Fridays, is that it?”

The two seemed to find this very funny, that this random coincidence seemed like a pattern. Anyway, after eating my samosas I headed home, but not before getting a phone number from them. Next time I’ll call to see if the lights are on before coming.

On the bus home, there were a couple of Scottish girls squeezed into the bus with me, so we got talking. They are the first white people that I’ve talked to in the few weeks that I’ve been here. In fact, Deo and I got talking about that point the other night, just by coincidence. He found it strange that I didn’t start talking to the white people that I pass in the street here.

“Why would I?” I said, “I don’t know them.”

“But they are mzungu (white people), like you,” was his reply.

“So I should talk to them because they are white?”

It’s an interesting point, actually, and one that I’ve faced a lot in my travels. In Japan, there was even a kind of name for it, “the gaijin glance”. When you’re an extreme minority in the surrounding population and you spot someone like you, what are you supposed to do? This person is as perfectly random a stranger as all the other people around you. Are you supposed to say hi or start up a conversation because you’re both white? Because by that simple fact you’re sharing some sort of experience that requires you to bond? For me, I’ve found it makes for a strange situation, like you almost feel compelled to acknowledge this person even though you wouldn’t give them a second glance if you were back home on the street of your own town. Sure, if the circumstances put you in close contact for a period of time, such as a bus ride, I’m not averse to striking up a conversation, but just for people in passing on the street, I don’t feel any reason why I should greet them or chat them up more than anyone else.

Deo thought that might be just my big city coldness. He said that if he were in Toronto, he would talk to all the black people he passed.

“Then you’d be doing a helluva lot of talking!” I replied.

Routine?

2008-05-15T23:30:00.000-04:00

Brought the camera out at lunch today and the girls just couldn't get enough of it!

For two days in a row there’s been little going on outside of school. Yesterday I decided to drop by the internet café close to the house here, about a 15 minute walk away. It’s just a dollar an hour, and now I know why. At 5 minutes to load a page, it’s not even worth it at that price. I think from now on I’ll just stick with the one in town that has a (relatively) high speed connection.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, the weather has become virtually perfect here these days. The mornings are cool and comfortable for going to school, we get a little cloud from around 9am to noon, and then the sun comes out, the skies are a stunning blue, the fields all around the school are a brilliant green and it’s not hot but not cool…just right. I could get used to this kind of weather.

I see Kilimanjaro almost every day now, usually in the morning around the time I arrive at the school and then again a little before sunset. In between, while the sky is blue all around, the part just over Kili is clouded over.After tomorrow, there will be just two weeks left here. While it seems I will be leaving the school just as I get things going, I am also very much looking forward to the safari and Kili climb. No plans as of yet for this weekend. Maybe I’ll try to explore a little more of the town. That doesn’t come without its hassles, but it’s probably worth a little look.

Forgot to take a picture with the man who got it all started. D’oh!

2008-05-13T21:23:00.001-04:00

This minibus had 28 people in it. But if you think it's full, you must be a naive mzungu (white guy). These buses are never full.

This afternoon after class, I had the pleasure of having lunch in town with Tumaini Minja, the man who arranged this internship for me. It was the first time I had met him as we had been put in touch with each other through a mutual contact at OISE. We had lunch at the top floor restaurant of the KNCU building in town. It was a nice and relaxing place, away from the bustle of the street and with a good view on Moshi and to Kili to the north (it is only a 6 or 7 storey building though).

Tumaini is a lawyer but works mostly right now with causes in the peace and conflict field. He travels an awful lot for a Tanzanian though because of the nature of the work, he extracts very little financial compensation for what he does. Though he does hope to earn more money one day, he is content right now with the experiences he’s having overseas, the charitable work he does, and the people he meets. Unfortunately, I have no photo of him because I forgot entirely to take one.

I mentioned yesterday that it was completely normal here on packed minibus rides for someone to take your bag on their lap if you’re standing and they’re sitting, even if they’re not necessarily sitting near you. I found out today on another packed ride home that that doesn’t just apply to material belongings. We had a packed bus already when we pulled up to a stop where a mother and three of the cutest little girls were waiting. It took only a moment to figure out what to do, and the mother got in the back while the bus assistant swung the kids up on to the laps of two perfect strangers who had the benefit of the front seat next to the driver. Again, seemingly perfectly normal!

Holding down the fort

2008-05-12T21:11:00.000-04:00

Evening Kili

There’s little to report today, as most of the action happened at school. Check out the teaching blog (link on the right) to learn why students were asking ME for permission to go home sick.
I made it into town today to get online and had no problems with the fly-catchers. Damn. And I was all ready for them with my sitaki kununua chochotte leo (I don’t want to buy anything today). Never got a chance to use it, although I’m sure there will be ample opportunity in the future.

After an ultra-packed mini-bus ride back home, I was happy to get out of the bus and into the fresh air. People have told me to watch my wallet on these rides, but the reality is, when you’re packed in armpit to asshole, anyone would be hard pressed to wedge their hand into anywhere to get anything without you knowing. What’s amusing on these packed bus rides is that people have no qualms about holding other people’s stuff. Today, for example, I had to get on an already packed bus and had my full backpack with me. In one clean motion, the bus assistant took it from me and swung it onto the lap of a passenger who was lucky enough to be sharing the front seat of the minibus. He took it and sat with it on his lap the whole ride as if it was the most normal thing in the world. That would never happen on the TTC!Getting off the bus and heading through the bean field on my walk home, I was treated to a beautiful surprise. The sky in the north had cleared and there was Kilimanjaro, or the top half anyway, bathed in the orange glow of the setting sun. It was a rare treat, as Kili has rarely shown itself to me and never before in the late afternoon. I made sure to snap a bunch of photos before heading in for the night.

This panda is doing just fine

2008-05-11T22:20:00.000-04:00

Another lazy Sunday. Gotta love lazy Sundays. The weather has become almost idyllic lately, now that the rainy season has essentially ended (seeming a little early) and the cool season has started. Usually by mid-morning the morning clouds have cleared and we have bluebird skies and bright sunshine. The air is also a perfectly comfortable temperature and the humidity, on most days, is at a manageably pleasant level. Think early summer in Toronto.

I woke up at a leisurely hour and had a late breakfast with the family. I’ve never seen so many people chowing down on bread, margarine, jam and tea. Same food as always, just more people. After breakfast, Deo headed into town with a friend and I enjoyed the morning doing some stuff in my room. As I have a corner room with huge windows on both sides that open fully, I was able to sit on my bed with the sun coming in the room and a nice breeze blowing through and almost feel like I was sitting outside.

Mid-afternoon I poked my head out and found nothing happening in the kitchen. Not surprising, since no one was around. I assumed that because of that, the “housegirl” would not be preparing lunch, so I decided to head out for a walk to get some exercise, check out a bit more of the neighbourhood, and find a bite to eat.

I ended up at Panda Chinese Restaurant, the only Chinese joint in Moshi (and out of town at that). And when you’re the only joint in town, you can pretty much charge what you like and the tourists looking for Chinese will pay it, so that’s exactly what they do. I spent a whopping $10 on lunch, which is almost four times more than I’ve paid for any meal since being in this country. And they were all out of mapo tofu. The food was good, but I don’t feel any pressing need to go back. I assumed that the luxury gated house across the road must have belonged to the owners of the restaurant. This is one panda that’s not at all endangered.My next mission will be to find El Rancho, the Indian restaurant with the Mexican name.

A day out of Moshi

2008-05-10T20:13:00.001-04:00

With the students at the Ndoro waterfalls.

Today was a really great day and a bit of a surprise. Late in my first week, the two English teachers had asked me if I wanted to go see some waterfalls. I said yes and they told me that the following weekend would be a good day. I was looking forward to seeing some sights around Moshi and thought it was nice that the teachers were willing to take me there.

During this past week, though, they had said nothing and then on Thursday, Deo asked me if I was going on the trip to the waterfalls. “Trip?” I asked. I had thought it was simply the two teachers who wanted to take me on a friendly outing. Turns out it was an actual school field trip.
So yesterday, I piled into one of two minibuses packed with students and teachers (so much so that one student had to stand). Kids were wedged in every which way. After stopping in town for a few things here and there, we got on the road leading to Marangu, a small town in the foothills of Kilimanjaro and a starting point for many of the climbers who have chosen to take the Marangu route (there are four or five ways up the mountain).

It was nice to see the countryside around Moshi. It had already been two weeks since arriving, and I hadn’t seen much except the routes to school (which are very nice themselves) and to town. This region is so lush and green that you don’t have to wonder why that colour along with blue (the skies) figure prominently in the flag of Tanzania. It helps that in this area around Kilimanjaro, the temperatures are cooler than elsewhere in the country. It also helps that we are on the tail end of an exceptionally heavy rainy season. Thus if there were one word I would use to describe Tanzania thus far, it would probably be green.

We sped along the highway with the kids singing to the music being pumped by the bus’ stereo. They were all really happy and excited, and I later learned that this was just the second field trip since the school opened over a year ago. Of course, not all the students were able to afford the four or five dollars it cost to do the trip, so we had about 40 of them, along with about 8 teachers.
There was confusion as to where exactly to go as we arrived in Marangu. Various people got in and out of the bus and then we were driving along some bumpy roads up a hill. We arrived at the end of one road only to find that we had come to the wrong waterfalls (there was no water there), so we had to turn around and backtrack a bit. Eventually, we found the right place.

Despite being a tourist attraction mentioned in my LP, this waterfall, or at least the access to it, is privately owned and there is no set fee. When we arrived, I went with some of the teachers to “negotiate” the fee for our group entry. I didn’t understand anything, of course, but it involved a smiling woman and a grumpy grandfather. In the end, it was settled that each child would pay 1500 shillings. This family is clearly doing well off the waterfall!

It was a steep decent into a very narrow but very lush gorge carved by the river. The waterfall, when we got to it, was quite the thundering beast, probably a good 60 to 70 metres high, though I have to admit my waterfall height judging skills are a little rusty. The energy of the falling water was blowing a pretty good mist down the gorge, so it was difficult for me to use my camera, but I was able to get off some shots of the kids playing around. Some went so far as to dunk themselves in the river, and there was one girl who was in there from beginning to end, splashing about as everyone else looked on and laughed. We spent a good half hour down there as people took turns taking pictures and some tried to climb the rocks in the river. By the end of it, almost everyone had become quite soaked by the continuous shower of fine mist, and some of the kids were shivering. It has to be noted that though the sun was going in and out of clouds, the low 20s temperature was definitely on the chilly side for Tanzanians. Ascending back to where the buses were parked, we had a rest and then got out our packed lunches. Afterwards, the bus drivers turned on some of their music and there was about a 10 minute dance-fest that erupted before we had to get back in the buses and go.

On the return trip, we stopped in the town of Marangu so that some of the kids who hadn’t brought a lunch could buy snacks. During this time, I walked around the town with a few teachers. We came upon a village education centre where there was a craft shop and a real Chagga hut.

Though the Maasai is the tribe that comes to everyone’s minds when you talk about Kenya and Tanzania, in Tanzania they are closer to the parks area of the north-west. Here around Kilimanjaro is the land of the Chagga, so all of the students and teachers at my school speak Chagga. It’s quite amazing, actually, since now that they are learning English in school, they are becoming trilingual already.

In the past, the Chagga lived in huts with a shape somewhere between a dome and a cone. The skeleton was made of wood from the forests while the outside was made of grasses collected and piled on densely. The woman giving us the explanation had herself been born in one of these huts whose base is circular and about 15 feet in diameter. Inside, there was a small section (about ¼ of the hut) to keep cows and goats. The “kitchen”, just a fire really, was in the centre of the hut and sleeping areas were around the centre. The door was built purposely low so that potential attackers could not enter aggressively; having to duck to enter, they were in the perfect position for a club blow to the back of the head or neck from the father inside, who always slept by the door.

Outside, pineapples were grown in a ring around the hut. Curious for sure, at first thought, but as the old woman explained, if you’ve ever seen the leaves of a pineapple, you’ll know that they have serrated, knife-like edges, and that was good for deterring any big game attracted by the smell of cattle or other food inside. Thus, the pineapples were dual purpose: food and protection.
What astounded me the most was being told that the Chagga lived in this kind of hut up until the late 60s and early 70s! Indeed, Deo’s father was born in one and spent the first 10 years of his life living in one. Amazing, when you consider the picture of Canadian life during the same period.

I am a fly

2008-05-09T22:45:00.000-04:00

Today I had a run-in with the flycatchers, and not just one but three of them. That is the nickname that they have here for the guys who tag on to foreigners and start to follow them around, offering goods or asking them to come to visit their shop. They are relentless and incredibly annoying, like a fly swirling around your head that won’t go away. Sometimes, if you’re unlucky, you’ll have two going at the same time.

Today I went into town after school to get online. After having a great cheeseburger and chips at Chrisburger (no joke… that’s the name!), I headed to the internet café only to find on arriving that they had no power. Strange, since everywhere else did. They said that it could come back on at any time, so I decided to take a bit of a walk around, since I really hadn’t had much of an opportunity to just wander on my own around town. I had always been with Deo.

After a short walk and a little browsing in one touristy shop, a flycatcher got me coming out of the store. Of course, they start with formalities – how are you, what’s your name, where’re you from, yada, yada, yada. That way, it’s hard to brush them off without just seeming plain rude; all they’re doing is greeting you. Of course, it goes from there into the sales pitch. The shop is just around the corner, come take a look, no pressure to buy, hakuna matata (that’s not just a line from the Lion King). Today, as it were, I had time to kill and though I was loathe to allow myself to be led anywhere by one of these guys, I did so. He said it was a cooperative shop that helped street youth, and true to his word, it was within spitting distance of the main road.

So I went into the small shop and looked around. The guy inside commented on everything my eyes rested upon for more than a fraction of a second, but wasn’t overly annoying. I didn’t see much that I wanted but thought that I’d contribute so I picked up a little bead bracelet in the colours of the Tanzania flag and a flag-coloured bandana. Though I knew they were worth less than 1000 shillings each ($1), I was expecting him to highball me with something like 5000 for the two, after which we could bargain. So when he asked for 14000 for the two, I just put them down. He must have thought I was born yesterday.

I made to go and he started to bargain, but wouldn’t go lower than 10,000 and since I wouldn’t go higher than 5000, there was no sale. But that didn’t stop the guy who brought me there from following me all the way back to the internet café, now joined by some guy who had come out of nowhere and was offering me a similar bandana for 2500. The pestering was unbelievable. You try to be polite, but what do you do when polite just doesn’t deliver the message. By the time I got to the internet café, I was so pissed off with the two of them that even though the second had dropped his price to 1500 shillings, I just told them I wasn’t buying anything and that was that.

I’m sure, as in most 3rd world countries they pester because every sale means a bit more food or whatever, and also because they know that some foreigners will give in to the pestering just to get them off their backs, but I can’t help but wonder if they’d do a whole lot better if they tried to understand that Westerners don’t like to be hounded to death when shopping. That a “no” generally means no. I told them straight out that I had just arrived in Moshi and that I was just looking around for now. When I do get in the mood to buy, I’ll be far less inclined to buy from someone who has hassled me continuously than from someone who has understood me, given me my space, and waited for another day when I might return.

In any case, Moshi’s not that big of a town and the flycatchers remember their pray, so I’m sure that I’ll see these guys again. Time to learn some good Swahili phrases to fend them off.
And after all that, the power never came back at the internet café, and I just had to go home. But not before having to deal with another flycatcher all the way up until the moment I stepped inside the bus. Where’s my @#%$!!# flyswatter?

Work in progress

2008-05-08T22:10:00.001-04:00

The carpenter with a desktop in progress.

Today on the way home from school, Deo and I stopped by the workshop of the carpenter that is making the furniture for the school from the donated funds that I collected in Canada. He’s a very nice man and very trusted by Deo for his good work (he made all the desks that the school currently uses), and from what I saw today, with good reason. Work seems to be progressing well. When we arrived today, we saw the cut and planed desktops in production. It looked like they had completed a good 6 or 7 and would likely have the rest done by tomorrow. They still have to varnish them all and cut the rest of the stool portions of the desks.

After grabbing some quick photos, he led us down the street to another craftsman’s shop where the iron frames of the desks were being put together. Here, the structures are all complete and welded together and one of the craftsmen was just applying a coat of red anti-rust paint. Tomorrow, they will finish the job with a coat of black paint. The craftsmen’s goal is to have the desks and 6 small bookshelves (one for each classroom) ready by next week, at which point they will start to work on the larger tables, chairs and shelves for the staffroom.

And as further note on yesterday’s photo of the woman carrying the wood on her head, today on the walk home I saw a woman walking with a 20L bucket full of water on her head! What weight! I could tell it was full because I could just see the top edge and the water leaping up with the back and forth motion of her stride (though she wasn’t losing a drop!) Again, amazing. 20L of water is about 20kg – it’s like walking around with a curling rock on top of your head, and yet they seem to do it so effortlessly. We also passed a wiry grade 4 boy carrying a 20kg bag of rice slung over his back. We sure have it easy in Canada.

As much as I want to take photos of all of this stuff, it’s really difficult. People don’t really appreciate it here, and I suppose it’s not hard to understand why. They see a rich white guy taking photos of their destitution and difficult lives. It can’t make anyone feel very good. I try to snap a few when I can be discreet, but they’re usually hasty ones. What a luxury it is for us to be able to snap photos of the poverty of others just to show friends at home. I think that it’s good to do so when it’s possible, because the photos also have the opportunity to educate, but I’m not able to at the expense of another’s feelings.

The River Ground Nuts runs through it

2008-05-07T23:32:00.005-04:00

The morning commute. Heavier than a cup of Timmy's coffee.

Today’s photo was taken from the back seat of a car on the way to our bus stop. I never fail to be amazed at the loads the women carry on their heads here. How much must that weigh?!? I’d like to see a strong man do that in Canada, let alone a woman. And yet here, it is only the women that carry loads on their heads. Deo told me today that it wouldn’t be acceptable for a man to do so, but it kind of nullifies the insult “Don’t be such a girl!” Any woman carrying 20kg on her head without even breaking a sweat is probably more of a man than I am!

Deo and I got really lucky today with rides. This morning, walking down his street, a taxi driver friend of his was heading our way and gave us a ride to KCMC. KCMC is the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, a major hospital that is jointly owned and operated by the local government and a German organization. It’s always a hub of activity as many people work there and others come to visit patients, especially during the 4:30pm-6:30pm visiting hours. Usually we walk through the bean field to get there, but the free taxi ride saved us about 10 or 15 minutes. We weren’t standing at the KCMC bus stop for long when Deo noticed another friend who had stopped his truck. It turned out to be the principal of another secondary school, and he was going our way, so he gave us a ride a good portion of our way to school. From there, it was just a walk through the coffee plantations to school.

I was treated to a great view of Kilimanjaro today as the skies around it were cloud-free for a good hour or so. There’s a lot of snow and I’m wondering now if the hikers I brought will be sufficient. I’ll have to check with the tour company. Today was a beautiful day with sun from morning to evening, the temperature just comfortable and the humidity low. If everyday could be like this, I’d be a happy camper.

Just before sunset, I went for a walk with Deo’s little brother Julius. He’s 19 and just awaiting the results of his Form VI exams. We walked town the main road for a bit and then cut off into a quiet residential neighbourhood where a lot of Europeans live behind gated walls. We then continued to a point where we looked over a valley with a fairly quick moving river. “That’s the River Kawanga,” he said.

I asked, “Does Kawanga mean anything in Swahili, or is it just a name?”

“It means ‘ground nuts’,” came the reply.

“I see,” I said, “The Ground Nuts River. Alrighty then.”

I’m sure you can probably find a river in Canada with an equally strange name, but some things must be unique to Tanzania, like the practice sentence below from my Swahili lesson book. We just don’t have the chance to say these things in Toronto.

Kili appears!

2008-05-06T23:00:00.001-04:00

Mt. Kilimanjaro finally shows itself.

Just a short note today as it is already late and 6:00am comes early. The big news in an otherwise fairly newsless day is that I finally saw Kilimanjaro today! I was watching the morning assembly in the courtyard, and just after it finished, I happened to notice the clouds parting in the north-western sky and then suddenly there it was, rocky, black, and looming in the entire corner of the sky. It’s not often that you see mountains like that spiking up almost their entire height at short range. Moshi is at just 800m, so Kili rises another 5100m from here. That’s a whole lotta rock up in your face. Looks amazing though, and I’m told that as the rains continue to fade and the cool season begins, I should be getting more viewing time.

I made a bee-line for home today after classes ended at 2:20pm. After satisfying an incredible hunger (hadn’t eaten since 7am), I took a rest and typed up a few blog entries. Nice to have a day where two or three hours weren’t wasted at a bar or café.

Anyway, bed time.

Again with the drinks!

2008-05-05T22:58:00.000-04:00

By the time that I leave this place, the amount of time I will have wasted away at cafes and bars in the company of Deo will be astounding, I am sure. Today, after a day at school and then spending two hours in the internet café, all I wanted to do was go home and relax. However, since Deo was in town doing some school business and I don’t have a key to his house, he said we would meet up in town after I was finished to go home. I knew what was coming, but there was no way for me to get out of it.

We met at the bus stop, which actually had made me think for a second that we might actually be going home. But my hopes were dashed when he said that Mr.Kimolo was waiting for us at a bar closer to home. Good thing I had my newspaper with me. Mr. Kimolo is a nice man and actually one of the most agreeable persons I have met here, but I have simply grown tired of sitting in bars sipping disgustingly sugary soft drinks (I never drink them at home anymore and certainly won’t when I get back) while Deo goes through a bottle or three (almost always the latter) of beer. When, hours later, if I get some money out to contribute, he invariably hands me the bill telling me the total amount (for all the drinks). I pay, simply because the money ($3 or $4) is not a big deal for me, but it seems to be becoming a pattern that, in principal, I find a little disturbing. I think I’ll leave it at that for now.

On a more positive note, as I headed into town today from school, I was on my own and noticed that I am starting to get a feel for the place and be a bit more comfortable in the surroundings. It sure helps that most adults with even a half-decent education speak English. I don’t think I had mentioned that before but it is in fact the case. Tanzania has two official languages, Swahili and English, and I have yet to meet more than a handful of adults that don’t speak it reasonably well. Certainly, they all have African accents when they speak, but the quality of the English (vocabulary and grammar) is quite exceptional. How people go from the level my students are at to the level I have seen in adults with the instruction that I have witnessed in school is beyond me.

For those who might be curious, I am slowly picking up a bit of Swahili. I haven’t had time to really get down to studying it on a regular basis simply because by the time we get back home after all the time wasted at the bars and cafes, we eat dinner, and then I am tired and still have a blog entry or two to write. However, I am slowly getting the hang of the grammar and very slowly adding new vocabulary, and it helps that Deo was a teacher of Swahili before taking his administrative role as a headmaster. The other helpful thing is that Swahili is written with the roman alphabet and it’s pronunciation is entirely regular. On the flip side, Swahili is a Bantu language in family, and agglutinative in type, meaning that verbs have stems and then the other bits and pieces of information like subjects, tenses and what have you are added as prefixes on to the stem. This can be comfortably regular, but there are also lots of weird exceptions, and having multiple classes of nouns, each having certain rules, helps to make things difficult. Fortunately people are always willing to help and very happy when you manage to spit out a few words of their language.

Well, as the end of my 8th day in Moshi draws near, I have just one thing left to say: I have STILL not seen Mt. Kilimanjaro. Yes, despite eating, sleeping, breathing and working right at its foot, it has still not emerged from the clouds. And I don’t mean just the summit, I mean all of it. Some days here are rainy, although mostly the mornings are cool and grey and the afternoons are brilliantly sunny and hot, but despite the daily clear up, the one part of the sky that never clears is the northwest, where Kilimanjaro sits perpetually clouded from head to foot. They keep telling me that next week I’ll see it. That’s starting to become a familiar refrain though.

Hooray for May Day!

2008-05-01T21:54:00.000-04:00

Today was May Day so there was no school. After a leisurely morning, Deo and I went for a walk into town via a road that would take us by Mr. Price, the closest thing to a supermarket I’d seen since arriving. It took us almost an hour to get there, but I was curious to see what was on offer and for what prices because pretty much all shops here are very small, some just holes-in-the-wall, that have a few jars, bags, and bottles of this and that. Often the whole storefront is behind a grill and you just walk up and ask the storekeeper for what you need and they put it in a bag for you. There are a handful of “supermarkets”, if you can call them that, around town (I’ve seen three), and I was hoping to get a peek after having spent $6 on body wash at one of the regular shops.

Well as it turns out, Mr. Price was no bigger than a good size convenience store in Toronto. Products were lined up to look as abundant as possible, but really there were only three or four of every item. What was shocking, however, were the prices: Two dollars for canned peas; six dollars for a box of cereal; ten dollars for a 3-litre container of vegetable oil; generic biscuits for two dollars a pack and apple juice at four dollars a litre. Wow. You start to get a picture of why people have so little here and struggle every day. They make thirty to fifty times less than we do in Canada, and yet their grocery prices are the same, if not double or triple what we pay in Canada. Gas is also about $1.50 a litre here.

We continued on to the outdoor market in town where Deo bought a few things, but where prices still held surprises for me. About 5 pounds of potatoes went for more than $2, while I remember paying about $1.49 for a 10-pound bag in Toronto.

Before going home we went for a drink at a café. Across the street was a store that stuck out like a sore thumb from its surroundings. It was a Starbucks-esque upscale coffee shop, clearly catering to the tourist clientele. Outside were two Maasai sitting and chatting as they filled their role as security guards. It seems this is a common job for them since they have little education but are known to be tough and good with a stick.

Over the course of our drinks, we watched from our 2nd floor perch as customers went in and out of the store – invariably white tourists. Afterwards, curiosity got the better of me and we popped in just for a look. You could have been in any North American city when inside those walls. The only indication of where you actually were was the price of a latte, going for just over $1 – a ridiculous sum for a cup of coffee for any Tanzanian. Deo didn’t even know what a latte was, so I had to explain a few things on the menu to him. We agreed that we’d come back one day so that he could try one out.

While I’m sure that that café in particular had coffee that Westerners would be very familiar with, for the most part people back home would be shocked by what passes for coffee here, especially since this is precisely where some of the finest stuff in the world is grown. Deo’s father is a big fan of coffee, but the tin of soluble instant coffee he has would, when mixed, cause most coffee drinkers in the West to toss it back. It’s not much more than coffee-flavoured water and they dump a ton of sugar in it, likely to make up for the weak taste. It’s an unfortunate yet not entirely surprising situation given the tendency of western corporations to exploit Africa’s resources and people. Most of the coffee plantations around here, producing some of the highest grade beans in the world, are owned by foreign companies (near the school it’s a German one), that export the beans and the profits right out of the country. The local workers, who perform the hard labour of picking the beans by hand and who we see on a daily basis on our commute to the school, get paid a pittance.

A country with the natural resources that Tanzania has should be rich, but I have been told that when oil prices surged and coffee prices crashed in the 70s, domestic companies and cooperatives went bankrupt and the only ones who had money to pick up the pieces were the foreign corporations. I am hoping to bring some beans home to share with the coffee lovers I know, but I’ll have to try look for ones from plantations grown and operated locally.

Drinks…and more drinks

2008-04-30T22:31:00.003-04:00

More mud

The rains started early today and continued quite heavily throughout the morning commute. At breakfast, I dreaded the mud that awaited us, but was surprised to see that there was actually very little. Deo explained that the mud is only bad when it has rained and then when many people have passed afterwards. The fact that it was still raining had kept many people off the roads and so we got to the bus stop fairly cleanly.

On the morning walk to the bus station, we usually pass a number of primary school children on their way to school. There are uniforms here even at the primary level. The boys wear tan pants and the girls blue skirts, and then both have white shirts and a royal blue sweater. They also both wear socks with thick black and white horizontal stripes, like the Wicked Witch of the West. These days nearly all the students seem to be wearing their sweaters despite the fact that it’s about 20C in the early morning with something like 90% humidity. I’m in a short-sleeve shirt and sweat it up on the way to the bus stop, but for these kids, we’re in the cold months.

Today, because of the rains, the bus driver drove farther up the main paved road, so we only had to walk a road crossing the coffee plantations to get to the school. It was a slow, slow walk though, as we had to choose our steps carefully to avoid slipping. In the end, it took us over an hour to get to school and we arrived shortly after the start time of 8am. None of the other teachers were there, however, though Deo told me this is a common occurrence when it is raining during the commute. One would think that if it were raining, the teachers would know that they have to leave home earlier to make it to work on time, but apparently it doesn’t work that way here, or with these teachers. In any case, the first two periods were virtually thrown out the window and the kids left to their own devices – which meant they did nothing. For more details on the school day, check the teaching blog.

I had been hoping to observe some English classes today, but instead got to observe a math class before Deo and I left for town. He wanted to take me to the regional education office to introduce me to the regional education officer. Just getting into town took us about 90 minutes between the muddy walk down the school road and the jammed bus ride.

We had a brief visit with the education officer and other than his somewhat stern word that the government should have been informed of the internship prior to my arrival, he was all smiles and asked me to encourage others to come to Tanzania to volunteer. Deo and I then went to a café to wait for a teacher to bring exams that he had to submit to the education office for verification. The teachers hadn’t gotten them finished before we’d left earlier in the day.

At café’s and restaurants, the seating is usually plastic (a la patio furniture), though the service is generally good. There’s usually a barrel of water with a tap set up somewhere for you to wash your hands and if not, like at lunch yesterday, a server will come over with a jug and hold a basin under your hands as he pours water over them. Not bad for table service, but with nothing to wipe your hands with, it leaves you a little wet.

I had a Coke, but Deo likes his beer. He had a couple as we sat there waiting for the other teacher to bring the papers. This took an incredible amount of time but he eventually arrived. The papers were incomplete and so Deo couldn’t submit them to the office. While we’d been waiting, though, we had run into Mr. Kimolo, the second master at Mawella SS, and so Deo led me to a different café to sit and wait for Mr. Kimolo to hand his papers in so that we could have a drink with him. I thought I had already reached my two soda limit, but it was hot, so I ordered another one. Deo, of course, had his beer. We had a couple before Mr. Kimolo arrived and then one more with him. Already I’m having trouble doing the math. Deo told me he makes $140 a month and yet he doesn’t think twice about having a couple of beers in town (at $1 a piece) before heading home. Today, it was about 4 and along with the transit fares we paid, that’s already over $5, which if I can divide correctly, is more than what he makes in a day. For someone who is concerned about quality of life, doing distance university courses in the fall, and has a laptop and a motorbike on his wish list for the end of the year, he sure spends his money freely. His wife is a nurse, so they’re doing well with a double income in comparison to others, but I would still have thought he’d be more prudent with his money.

So we spent a great deal of time at cafes today. Sometimes it’s nice, but when it gets excessive, it sure seems like a waste of time. Then again, here there isn’t much to do when you get home, so perhaps that’s why so much time is spent at cafes.

We had dinner later in the evening and then settled in to watch the Chelsea-Liverpool match. Soccer, of course, is very popular here, and there is a big following for the UK’s Premier League and UEFA’s league of Champions. Tonight was a semi-final for the latter. Tomorrow is May Day, or Worker’s Day, so there is no school. A sleep-in will be nice.

A Full (of mud) day

2008-04-29T23:14:00.003-04:00

Better get used to it. It's the last half of rainy season.

Getting up at 6:00am was not as hard as I expected it to be, perhaps because hadn’t slept all that well. The mosquito net was too tight to the bed and thus confining, so I will have to look for a larger one in town. Having a brief rinse-down in the bath tub freshened me up a bit and I went to have breakfast with Deo (the headmaster).

Breakfast in Tanzania is usually nothing more than tea and bread, and that’s exactly what we had this morning. The water for the tea had been boiled, so I wasn’t too worried about it, but the “Golden Pagoda mixed fruit jam,” a cheap Chinese import (like many things here) seems like nothing more than sugar and red dye food colourings that are probably banned in Canada. A little worrisome, but the alternative is just dry bread.

Our commute, I discovered, is quite an ordeal, especially if it has recently rained, which was the case this morning. We began with a walk through a few of the muddy side streets of the neighbourhood which were difficult and slippery to navigate and before long our shoes were caked with mud and our pants stained a reddish-brown. After about a kilometre we cut across a bean field, emerging on another road, where we walked a further 5 minutes to a “bus” stop.

There is no public transit here as we know it. Public transit, meaning that it’s the public that takes it, consists of privately own minibuses that ply certain regular routes. They are invariably decades old Toyota wagons with 4 rows of benches in the back, beaten to death and stripped of any interior niceties. The buses wait around at a stop until they are sufficiently packed to be profitable to the driver and his assistant. “Packed” means just that. A vehicle like this would comfortably hold perhaps 12 people in North America, but 25 is the normal sardine-like situation here. The assistant’s job is to hang his head out the sliding door’s window looking for customers, opening and closing the door, and coaxing potential customer into the vehicle. Surprisingly, there are actual bus stop areas in all this confusion, and the drivers risk fines if they pick up outside these areas, but that rarely stops them.

So we rode a packed bus for a kilometre or more on the main, paved road but because of the rains, it could not navigate the muddy offshoots and so we had to disembark and continue on foot. We walked for another kilometre or so. By this time we were well into the countryside. All around us was lush greenery, mostly banana trees and coffee plantations (some of the best coffee in the world comes from the Kilimanjaro region). At a certain point, we cut off the main road into a dirt path running through a coffee plantation. In the distance, I could see the aluminium roofs of the school but between that and us was a muddy field which we navigated carefully.

As we arrived at the school, the students were all abuzz about the new foreigner and two students came to collect the headmaster’s bag and mine and take them ahead of us to the staffroom. The entire commute had taken us just about an hour.
I’ll give a brief summary of the school day here, but the rest can be read in more detail by following the link to “Chris’ Teaching in Tanzania” on the right.

The school is called Chief Sabas Secondary School (or Mangi Sabasi in Swahili). It is just a year old and was opened last February after the government ordered all wards to build one new school to accommodate the growing number of students. Despite this fine idea, the government contributes only 50% of the construction and operating costs, the rest of which must come from the community and the school fees that the students must pay (about $60/year). This means that schools are often constructed slowly and in stages as available monies permit. This style of progress is well illustrated in Chief Sabas SS and its neighbour (literally, at about 100m away) Mawella SS.

Mawella SS was built in 2000 and, as the only secondary school in the area for 8 years, received all money from the local community to add to its government subsidy. It has also had the benefit of help from aid organizations and development projects by the Canadian and American embassies.

Contrasting with this, Chief Sabas SS has just 4 raw brick buildings, each divided in to two classrooms, where just simple desks and a chalkboard are found. The roofs are sheet aluminum and there are no lights (the school doesn’t have electricity). What will one day be the principal’s office now functions as the staffroom as the other staff building is still in the early stages of (stalled) construction (I am told that it will be completed in July/August). The teachers work at a couple of tables and the rest use student desks brought into the room. There are no shelves, drawers or anything else of the sort, and the extent of their resources are the one textbook for their subject, a pen, and some paper to write on. This is teaching at its most basic. Lessons must all be put on the board and the students must copy them into their books before doing any exercises.

The headmaster called all the students together for the morning assembly in the schoolyard between the two rows of buildings and took the opportunity to introduce me to the students. I said a few words of greeting and then the headmaster gave me a tour of the school. Afterwards, we went to visit Mawella SS and then we continued on to see the second mistress of the school, who is currently on maternity leave. She will be due back at school in 3 weeks as entitled maternity leave in Tanzania is just 84 days, after which mothers must work half-days until noon for 6 months before returning full time.

Everywhere we went we had to walk on muddy roads, which consumed incredible amounts of time. After visiting with the second mistress, we caught a bus into town. We were looking for an ATM, and finally found one that didn’t have 30 people lined up at it. It’s the end of the month and salary time, so it’s not uncommon for people to line up for hours to use the ATM to withdraw money.

I had to pick up a few other things as well, including a bigger mosquito net, a new bath towel, and some body wash. This last item I had deemed a necessity since soap residue is extremely hard and time consuming to rinse off when you don’t have a constant shower stream and one hand has to hold the bucket pouring the water. I found the body wash, at a shocking 6500sh, about $6, and as girly as it might sound, now all I need is a loofah. No such luck on today’s trip.

We finished by grabbing lunch at a local place. I ordered roast chicken, and it came on a partitioned tray complete with a kind of meat soup, baked beans (mixed with coconut milk?), vegetables, and a big dollop of ugali in the middle. Ugali is a staple of the Tanzanian diet and looks like a big plop of mashed potatoes, only it is much stiffer (cuttable with a knife) and made from maize flour. It is bland and tasteless unless dipped in a sauce or soup, which most people do. Then it’s not bad at all. “Vegetables” here, as far as I’ve seen, always consist of shredded Chinese cabbage and shredded carrots boiled together of which you usually get a decent helping. To drink, I had a passion fruit Fanta.

Despite leaving the school mid-morning, we didn’t arrive home until almost 5 pm. At six, you need to close the windows so the mosquitoes don’t come in the house. We had dinner and spent the rest of the evening at home, as the Manchester United game was on TV. More to come on the town and other stuff when I have more time, as this entry has become long enough already.

Finally here

2008-04-28T22:55:00.002-04:00

Pretty decent lodgings for the next month, all things considered.

The bus trip from Nairobi to Moshi by bus went off without a hitch, which is a first for anything on this trip. After a short stop in Arusha to change shuttle buses, I arrived in Moshi with all my gear around 3pm in the afternoon. The driver kindly called the headmaster of the school who came promptly to pick me up.

As the headmaster has no car, we went by taxi to his house. As we headed out of town, he explained to me that he lived in the Shantytown area of Moshi. Uhh…..shit. However, he continued to explain that that was just the name of the area, that it wasn’t actually a shanty town. In fact, Shanty town is the nicest part of Moshi, sitting just on the outskirts where thing become nice and green, the streets are tree-lined and many of the Europeans who live in Moshi can be found (there is also the international school nearby). True to his word, his home is safely behind a big gate and wall on a quiet dirt road off the main paved road. The large yard is almost entirely taken up with growing maize (similar to corn), with a few orange and lemon trees in the grassy area.

The house is a bungalow with a large main living/dining area. It is filled with 3 separate sofa and chair sets, two of which are rarely used, and a dining table. A hallway leads to 3 bedrooms and a bathroom, and there is also a large kitchen. The surfaces are all painted stone, apart from the floor which is varnished cement. Lighting is naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling or else screwed into simple sockets high on the wall.

Prior to arriving, I had no idea what to expect and so was pleasantly surprised with the very liveable accommodations and even more so when he lead me to a spacious, airy room complete with an ensuite bath. The bedroom has nothing more than a double bed, low table and a mini-fridge, but it is enough for me for my five weeks. The ensuite bath has a nice, modern toilet and a simple sink, but the bathtub in the corner is just that, with no showerhead whatsoever, so my “showers” will consist of sitting on an overturned bucket in the bath tub and pouring water from another bucket over myself before and after soaping up. So far, this hasn’t been a problem since the air temperature is comfortably warm. It just takes a little getting used to.

The headmaster and his wife actually sleep in a smaller building on the property but use the house for everything else. In the house, one bedroom is occupied by his father and another by their “housegirl” (their word, not mine). She seems to be in her mid-teens (though I could be mistaken) and takes care of the cleaning, washing, and helps with the cooking and whatever else they need. I don’t know the entire story there.

Lunch had been prepared and afterwards we walked to a small store around the corner where we had a drink and I bought a sim card for my phone. Amazingly, it cost me just 1000 Tanzanian shillings (about 85 cents)! A steal compared to the $50 I paid for my Fido sim card in Toronto. Texting is also cheap here, with international texts costing just 10 cents and local texts about half that. It will be good to be able to have easy contact with home via text messages!

In the evening, I went with him, his wife, his father, and his younger brother to a local outdoor bar to have a few drinks. Beer costs about $1 a bottle (500mL), and as in most developing nations, the old glass bottles of Coca-Cola and Fanta are ubiquitous and cost about 40 cents. Without the option of clean water-based drinks, I think I’ll be drinking a lot of pop this month.By the time we got home I was exhausted after a long day, but happy to finally be here, safe and sound, with all my baggage. I set up my mosquito net (too small) and am all ready for bed. It’s going to be an early rise tomorrow as we have to leave the house at 7:00am for the commute to school. That means getting up at 6:00am to get ready. Fortunately, without internet or numerous TV options, it looks like I’ll be able to get to bed a lot earlier.

It's not Tanzania, but it sure is nice!

2008-04-27T23:59:00.003-04:00

It was nice while it lasted...

For the second night on the ground in a row, I find myself in a hotel and not in Tanzania. At least I’ve moved up a notch. I’m in room 230 at the 5-star Intercontinental Nairobi. You know, the place where Bush stays when he comes to Kenya. I must have deep pockets…or just bad luck.

Everything was going to plan. I killed an interminable afternoon in London at the hotel and the shopping gallery at Heathrow before boarding my flight to Nairobi. Shortly after I sat down, a loud Englishman got on, circling the plane looking for his seat. He found it, eventually – right next to me, of course – and proceeded to talk my ear off for the next 45 minutes. He’d had 9 pints at the airport waiting for the flight, and his incessant babble was a mixture was somewhere between entertaining and annoying.

The flight was virtually empty. Clearly Virgin was taking a big loss on this flight but the passengers were happy as many got to stretch out across four seats for the overnight flight. I parted with Noel under the guise of being in a noisy section of the plane, which was not entirely untrue. The flight passed, quiet and uneventful.

I retook my seat next to Noel for the landing as the flight attendant said they needed two guys in the emergency exit row. We were sat facing the flight attendant during the descent, and the back and forth conversation between her and Noel kept us all unaware of what was going on outside.

We seemed just about to touch down and felt a good jolt as we bumped the runway, but Noel and I could see nothing but cloud outside of the window and then the pilot hit the gas and we took off again. A few white knuckles all around, but when we levelled off again, the co-pilot came on to say that we had had to abort the landing as they had lost visual contact with the runway. We circled for a half hour but the weather was so bad that we had to divert to Mombasa, almost an hour away. No one on the plane was happy. Noel would miss his cab and likely the barbeque in his honour waiting at his mother’s house, and I would miss my connecting bus to Tanzania – for the second day in a row.

We touched down in sunny Mombasa just after the sun rose. It was 7:00am on a Sunday morning, and this airport, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, was dead. Two planes sat on the tarmac, and there was no movement anywhere.

You’d have thought it would be simple: fuel up, wait for the word that the weather had improved in Nairobi and then high tail it back there. The only thing was that Virgin doesn’t fly to Mombasa and as such had no staff, no ground crew, and no contracts for any services there, not to mention that we were showing up virtually unannounced on a Sunday morning. So the pilot was forced to negotiate all of these things with the airport staff. Kind of like pulling your wheels up to a gas station in the middle of nowhere with no price listed. Only you need 20,000 litres.

In the time it took to negotiate the fuel, the pilots ran over their legal flying hours and so that was the end of that. We weren’t going anywhere. This posed a bigger problem, since we would then have to disembark and our luggage would have to be offloaded. As mentioned though, Virgin had no contract for ground crew here and there were no immigration services at the time since we were arriving unscheduled. After over an hour on the plane, it was decided that they would let us into the terminal, so we were guided (and guarded) as we were led to a sectioned off area. The Virgin office in London was negotiating for services and immigration. We spent a good two hours in the airport before they managed to work things out. We then found out that the plane had been slightly damaged in our aborted landing in Nairobi and that there were no aircraft technicians for A340s at Mombasa so one would have to come in from Nairobi. They announced that Virgin would put us up in a hotel for the night and that a Virgin manager was on his way in from Nairobi.

So we loaded into a convoy of buses and headed off to an unknown hotel. People were tired and unhappy but smiles started to emerge when we arrived at the hotel, a luxury resort on a white sand beach. Pools, cabanas, canopy beds and balconies with ocean views. This was going to go a long way to soothing our pain. I, for one, was going to make the best of this unexpected turn of events and quickly changed into a bathing suit and sandals and met up with a girl from the flight to have lunch at the buffet. We were enjoying our leisurely lunch as a nice breeze blew and the band played and had just finished up when a hotel staff member approached us and told us that Virgin had charted a plane and we would have to check out within the half hour. Talk about dangling a carrot. And a luxury carrot at that! Now I really was pissed! But we had no choice and so in a pool of sweat, I repacked my massive bags and we re-boarded the buses for the airport only 2 hours after arriving.

Things were handled quickly at the airport, and they needed to be. The runway lights had failed that day at Mombasa and so we were in a race against the sun to take off. I boarded the rankest, sweatiest plane I’ve ever flown and we took off with about 20 minutes to spare before sunset. Upon arrival in Nairobi, a Virgin agent approached me to tell me that they had a reservation at the Intercontinental waiting. The girl from the plane had offered to let me stay with her at the hotel she had originally had booked there, but in the end we cancelled that to save her the money and so we are both staying here at the Intercontinental on Virgin’s tab. It’s just too bad we haven’t been able to take advantage of the hotel more. After a nice dinner and a drink at the bar, we we’re exhausted and it’s bed time.

It’s not Tanzania, but at least it’ll be a 5-star bed tonight. And the bus company is honouring my reservation from two days ago, so maybe, just maybe, I’ll find myself in Tanzania tomorrow!

Stuck in London

2008-04-25T22:54:00.001-04:00

The Park Inn. Nothing fancy, but the swim in the pool was nice.

It’s Friday night and I am supposed to be on a plane to Nairobi, but I find myself here in a room at the Park Inn, a stone’s throw away from Heathrow. It’s been an exhausting day.

It started innocently enough. I got up at 8am to see Gail and Colin off to work and to say our goodbyes. After a leisurely breakfast, I began the final stages of my packing and the rearranging of the luggage so I could get everything I had into my bags. It was a formidable task. I had some 28 dictionaries and other books destined for the school I will be teaching at as well as almost a hundred wall posters rolled up, some in tubes and some not. Things moved along steadily but at some point I realized that two bags were just not going to do it, so I switched to the 3-bag choice. The difference at the airport would only be $20…nothing major.

Things were slowly getting down to my target departure time of 2:30pm. I wanted to arrive extra early for my 7pm flight as I had extra luggage to check in and didn’t want to be shut out if there were lots of people ahead of me with extra luggage as well. I ran a quick errand around 1:30pm and got back in time with about 30 minutes to spare before the taxi was to arrive. I popped in the shower, emerging with just 10 minutes left, and pretty much all set to go. And calm.

As the taxi was just about to pull up, I put on my jacket, pocketed my phone and my wallet and my…..passport. Shit. Where’s my passport?!? I frantically gave myself a pat-down any cop would have been proud of. Nothing. Gave a quick check through my carry-on knapsack. Nothing. Rifled through the bags. Nothing.

Panic.

I looked out the window. No cab. So I searched the bedroom, emptying bags, looking under beds, going through the closet. Did the cleaning lady find it and put it somewhere? Dumped out a bag of garbage and went through it, then put it back. Emptied out my knapsack and came up empty. Real panic was setting in.

I called Gail, got her answering service and left a crazy message. Checked the window again. No cab. Went through all the bags, my jacket, my knapsack, the bag of garbage, and everything else again. Nothing. Impossible!

Finally got a call from Gail. I told her I thought maybe the cleaning lady might have done something with it; she told me that perhaps it had been nicked in the tube. We hung up and she went to call the cleaning lady. No dice. So she called and left a message on the Canadian consulate’s emergency line. I called the cab company to cancel the cab…my passport was just nowhere to be found.

No way, couldn’t be happening. Not something as important as this! Not at the last second! I never misplace my passport! Checked everything again and for some reason this time checked the inside pocket on my travelling backpack….and it was there.

I was covered in sweat. I phoned the cab company back, hoping that the cab hadn’t left yet. Turns out he had been sitting across the street in an unmarked minivan and was still there, about to head home. I hung up, rushed all the bags downstairs. Called Gail and took off. I had lost an hour.

After the tense drive to the airport I arrived with just 2 hours to spare before the flight. Walking in the door with all my bags, a Virgin Atlantic agent greeted me, asking where I was headed. “Nairobi.”

“Sorry, Sir. Your flight has been cancelled. Please head to that counter to discuss arrangements.”
Incredulous. So here I am, still in London. I am now on tomorrow night’s flight since taking a BA flight in the morning and arriving at 9pm in Nairobi would do me no good. Better to just shift everything one day. The hotel isn’t swank, but the food is really good. Too bad I’ll have the whole day to kill tomorrow before the 7pm flight.

A mini JET reunion

2008-04-24T21:08:00.003-04:00

It took 3 requests and some photoshopping to get this right!

It was a JET reunion for 2 today as Helen took the bus in from Wales to meet me and do the tourist thing in London. I spent 3 years in Japan with Helen on the JET program from 2003-2006. Our villages were about 15km apart, and we were part of a group of northern Hida JETs that became pretty close, so it was good to see her again after almost 2 years.

As with anything involving Helen, though, you know there has to be drama, and today was no different. I was just about to leave the flat this morning to meet her at Victoria station when she texted to say that her coach had been involved in an accident on the highway. They had been rammed from behind by a truck. Everyone was okay, but they ended up being stranded for 3 hours and didn't get in to the station until 1pm. So our day was cut a little short, but we made the most of it.

After a quick bite we headed to Notting Hill to check out the quaint neighbourhood. I can't say for sure that I found the exact spots that were shown in the movie, and it rained on us for the first 20 minutes or so, but afterwards, when the sun came out, it made for a really nice walk around this picturesque neighbourhood.

After that, it was just a mix of shopping on the Strand and a nice walk along the Thames. The sun was shining brightly and we were just chatting it up, snapping touristy shots every now and then. Didn't really accomplish much, but it didn't really matter - we were just having a good time.

All too soon it was time to get Helen back off to the coach station for her ride home. A short day, but lots of fun nonetheless. I finished it off at the local pub with Gail, Colin, and their friend Neelay, where I had the typical fish and chips with mushy peas. Note that in the UK, they leave the skin on the fish when they deep fry it. Odd for sure, but it doesn't really carry a taste or a texture, so aside from the visual, there's really nothing different. And in the end, I didn't actually eat the mushy peas. Not because I didn't want to eat the mushy peas, but because I didn't know that they were on my plate. I hadn't asked what the green sauce was during the entire meal (it had come in the same kind of tiny bowl the tartar sauce was in), but I guess I should have. Turns out they were the mushy peas...just a bit more mushed than I had expected!

Exactly 1:00pm GMT (Gravel Mean Time)

2008-04-22T18:19:00.004-04:00

Straddling the second most important imaginary line in the world.

Standing on imaginary lines rarely gets more exciting than this. Today when I woke up, I could see immediately that the weather was too nice to finish up the paper that's still due. With London weather a crap shoot every day, you've got to take the good ones when they come, so that's exactly what I did. I hopped the tube out to Canary Wharf and then switched to the DLR to get to Cutty Sark station.

Cutty Sark is the name of the last great clipper ship of the era of clipper ships, when they continued to outpace steamships as long as they had their sails billowing. Launched in 1869, the Cutty Sark's record stood (unsurpassed at the time) at 362 miles (564km) in 24 hours. Unfortunately for me, though it is now in permanent dry dock at the Greenwich pier, it is currently under hoardings for restoration.

I walked through the grounds of the Naval Academy and then up the expansive grassy hill leading up to the Royal Observatory. Like everyone else, my destination was the exact demarcation of the prime meridian, the Earth's second most important imaginary line. It was back in 1884 that a good chunk of the world officially recognized this arbitrary line as the line of 0 longitude, and we've never looked back. I can't say that standing on it was exactly a thrill, but that accompanied by the huge parklands and quaint High Street area made for a nice outing on a sunny afternoon.

This evening I met up with a Canadian friend of mine teaching here in London. We emerged from the underground in the area of St. Christopher's House, where the after-work crowd was enjoying the nice weather by milling around and chatting outside of the bars, pubs and restaurants - apparently a very London thing to do. We continued on down to Marylebone High Street before veering off and finding a good yet deserted Indian restaurant for dinner. Being the only people in the place, service was impeccable, and the food was pretty good, too.

Heading home, I opted for a nice 30 minute walk instead of using the tube. While I do have an Oyster card and it has been convenient, I still seem to be spending a shocking amount on public transit... something like $12 a day. Londoners don't seem to think twice about taking the tube for just one stop or two (at $3 a ride), so I made an effort to reverse that trend tonight.

Jazzin' it up with Dave, Hannah, and Ben

2008-04-21T23:57:00.006-04:00

A jazzy night with Ben in London Town

The new week sent Gail and Colin back to work and brought a vast improvement in the weather. Nevertheless, I took it easy all morning and worked on an unfinished school paper until mid-afternoon. By that time, the sun was making its way through the clouds so I decided to head out on what would turn out to be an entirely useless mission.

I only had two simple tasks: drop by the post office to get a package that had arrived for Gail (probably more of my books), and pick up a few grocery items. Upon arriving at the post office, I found them to have closed at 1:00pm, after just four hours of morning service. So I continued on to the St. John's Wood High Street (main street) for the groceries. High streets are quaint. Every neighbourhood has one and they're like a mini-downtown for each neighbourhood - but just one street. I wandered around the little Tesco Express, comparing prices with stuff back home. More or less, it's pretty simple: the numbers are all pretty much the same, only instead of the dollar symbol, you've got the pound sign. And at 2 dollars to the pound, you don't need to be Einstein to figure out that most stuff costs double. Alright, that might be a slight exaggeration, but not much. Anyway, I picked up bananas, cereal, milk and orange juice.

In the evening I met up with Dave and his wife, Hannah. I spent a school year with Dave in Fontainebleau, France back in 2001-2002, when we were both language assistants there. It had been 6 years since I had last seen him, but he hadn't changed much. We had a great dinner at a nearby tapas bar, and then he surprised me with tickets to a jazz concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall down by the river.

On the way, we passed by the Coin Street Community Centre and market. A piece of prime riverside real estate, the neighbourhood was slated for demolition to make way for hotels and office towers, but the locals managed to pull together, lobby heavily, and somehow got the area saved. Not only that, but they managed to get the government to re-invest in the area and today many of the buildings have been restored, the Coin Street market has turned into a minor tourist attraction, and some popular shopping buildings have blended themselves into the area. All in all, a feel-good story.

After the concert, we walked all along the Thames, right under the London Eye and over the bridge to the parliament buildings. Both banks of the river were lit up, and the contrast was interesting. On one side were all the buildings of traditional, elegant London architecture while on the other side were the more modern installments of Southbank. It was all picture perfect, except for the front corner of the parliament buildings, which was left unlit...just to spite visiting photographers!!

Arriving home just after 11:00pm, I was greeted with Gail's laughter. Turns out that she and Colin had gone grocery shopping on their way home from work. You can guess what they had bought: bananas, cereal, milk, and orange juice.

Making the most of mixed weather

2008-04-20T22:10:00.001-04:00

Late afternoon in The Regent's Park

Gail's and Colin's flat is located in St. John's Wood, a quiet, upscale residential neighbourhood of north London. It sits on the corner where their street meets Abbey Road. Yes, that is the same Abbey Road of Beatles fame, and in fact the famous crosswalk on the album cover (and the recording studio in front of which it's found) is not more than 100m from the door of their building. More than anything else, it's an annoyance local residents as tourists from all over insist on making fools of themselves taking pictures in the middle of the crosswalk, disrupting traffic while doing so.

This morning we set off to Canary Wharf for dim sum. The area, indeed once a real wharf, is now a thriving business and shopping district crammed with the tall glass towers of big banks, law firms, and corporations that rivals the city's traditional financial centre. Bombed to smithereens during the war, the docks area lay derelict until a massive revitalization project began in the early 1980s. However, a delay in the extension of the Jubilee (tube) line and the property market collapse of the early '90s threw the project off track and bankrupted the company financing the project. Things got back on track in the mid-90s with a new international consortium known as the Canary Wharf Group. Since the group was chaired by Canadian Paul Reichmann and the underground network of tunnels and shopping connecting the towers was based on Toronto's PATH system, the Canary Wharf area now has many places with names such as "Canada Square" and "Canada Place".

Gail tells me that there are surprisingly few Chinese in London (compared to Toronto, that is), and as a result, finding good Chinese cuisine can be difficult. The restaurant we went to was one that they had discovered and found to be up to par, and indeed the dim-sum was good. Afterwards, I got a tour of their plush offices nearby.

We then did more shopping before finishing up with a walk through The Regent's Park. One of London's largest parks, it was fairly busy depite the less than ideal weather conditions. Beautiful trees and flowers were in bloom and the array of waterfowl, including cranes and herons, was quite impressive. Lucky for us, it was all within a short walk of Gail's flat, where we finished off the evening with a nice home-cooked meal.

Tattie scones and streaky bacon

2008-04-19T20:40:00.010-04:00

St. Paul's Cathedral on a grey London day

It's been almost 11 years but I am back in London again. My first day started off with Gail, Colin and a few of their colleagues and clients at brunch at a fancy place called Roast, in Borough Market. Opened in 2005 in an historic building with tall glass windows offering a good view over the market, it's not a budget destination, so I was happy that it was all being expensed. The £12 "Full Bourough", consisting of smoked streaky bacon, Cumberland sausage, fried toast (?!?), black pudding (congealed blood in sausage format), grilled tomatoes, field mushrooms and a egg, seemed too artery-clogging even for me, so I opted for the "Tattie scone with with streaky bacon, field mushrooms and a fried egg" (£8.50=$17), orange juice (£3=$6) and a cappuccino (£2.50=$5).

If you need a dictionary to understand what it was I actually ate, you're not alone. With other menu offerings including "cottage loaf", "Orkney kippers", and "egg butty", I was glad to have some Brits at the table to translate. My "tattie scone" was essentially two square potato latkes and the "streaky bacon" is what we would call just plain old "bacon". However, this last term is just not enough here since, as our view over the market attested, there are myriad types of bacon available for sale. Breakfast here just insn't as simple as we would like it to be.

My first meal in London was also my first experience in British service. My scone came out sans fried egg, Gail's orange juice was missing the cranberry juice she had requested to be mixed in, and another girl's hot chocolate appeared in the form of a cappuccino. And this is an upscale place! As Gail and other expats would later tell me, the service, or lack thereof, is one of the exasperating points of living in London and it spans everything from restaurants to plumbers to couriers. The upside is that taxes are included in the price you see and tipping is generally not necessary. At $28 for my breakfast, I should hope not.

The bad is measured with the good, though, and there is enough of the latter here to outweigh the former. We headed off to the Tate Modern Museum, which has free entry, as do all state museums in London. Afterwards, we crossed the Millenium Bridge and walked around a few different areas including Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, Soho, and Oxford Street. London has some ridiculously good shopping as long as you know where to look, and Gail and Colin have all the places figured out.

While we had used the underground to get into town, we decided to take the bus to head home. Apparently, while in principle the system is good and extensive, there is no such thing as transfers, so riders must repay the fare every time they switch lines or switch between methods of transport. In addition, it's not uncommon for buses to break down (we passed two for the same route 200m apart), forcing all the passengers to find another way home, without any compensation for their lost ride. The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that getting on and off is rather quick since nearly all riders use the Oyster transit card. It makes sense to do so: with a single adult non-card fare set at £4 ($8), riding with the Oyster card costs significantly less (£1.50 for the tube and 80p for the bus).

And that was the first day. We spent the rest of the evening relaxing at home.

Mid-November Update

2006-11-20T23:20:00.000-05:00

The title's not very exciting, I know, but neither is studying 6-7 hours a day for a test, which is what I've been doing for the better part of the last three weeks. I'm not quite sure how to measure progress on this, but I'm guessing it's slow. All in all, the whole act of trying to cram a year's worth of studying into a single month is a little bit absurd, and if you've taken Level 1 of the JLPT or at least tried, you're probably well aware, as I am, that this is all an act in futility. But I press on, as much for the challenge as for the simple fact that I've got nothing else on the go this month.

With the CELTA course out of the way, and knowing fully that I can't study from sun up to sun down every day, I have slowly been getting back into doing other things. Last week I was able to get back on to the volleyball courts for the first time since leaving Japan, and the exercise sure felt good. Living in the suburbs of a city that's flat and devoid of nature, it's amazing how quickly you can fall into a sedentary lifestyle unless you make the effort to get active. I was itching to get back to volleyball, so I decided to check out the drop-in slot at the community centre. Not exactly convenient with the Wednesday 10pm-12am slot, but since the alarm doesn't call me that early in the morning, it doesn't matter much to me. It does, however, to others I guess, since just the same 6 or 7 guys show up every week, which isn't even enough to get a 6 on 6 going. Last week we were able to play 4 on 4 and still had a good time. The level's comparable to what I was playing in Japan, though the net's a bit more of a challenge here, being set at the regulation 245cm.

For the past couple of weeks, I've also been getting out to a weekly event called JAPANADA. Hosted at a Second Cup on Yonge near St.Clair, it's kind of a Japanese-Canadian meet and greet over coffee type thing that was set up about a year ago by the young manager of the place, himself a Japanophile. It seems to have become really popular, especially with the Japanese students studying English here in Toronto. The place is always packed and you have to arrive early to get a seat. Lately it's been spilling out on to the patio... a little chilly now that winter's coming, but they say they're going to get a nearby second location and split the crowd. It's a great way to get to know new people and make some Japanese friends. The only thing that's weird is figuring out what language to speak in. While there are usually informal staff there to pair you up with one or two members of the opposite nationality, the languge choice up to you. And therein lies a little problem because while each person obviously goes there with the hope of practicing the language they're learning, they're also cognizant of the fact that their partner is hoping the same. And you'd be hard pressed to find two cultures more polite and considerate than Japanese and Canadians, so this kind of mix usually means you'll find the Canadians speaking English to be considerate of the Japanese, and the Japanese speaking Japanese to be considerate of the Canadians, and so no one gets what they want, or else you get some weird kind of patchy conversation that slips continuously from one language to the other. It's fun nonetheless.

Last but not least, a short comment on the new Bond flick, which I saw on Friday. Good job. It was nice to once again see a Bond movie that wasn't just a string of far-fetched stunts dotted sparsely with cheesy dialogue, which is what the last few had degenerated into. Daniels was a breath of fresh air as a less pretentious, more athletic Bond, and the movie was a lot simpler while still having great action scenes, good dialogue, and just the right measure of humour thrown in. Bond is back on track.

There was one more thing. Oh yeah, teacher's college. So sitting on my desk is a printout of the application guide for OISE. The deadline is 10 days away. I can't count the number of times I've said that I don't want to be a teacher (even more if I count the thoughts) and yet here I am, certain to at least submit the application so that I have more doors open come next year. I have my own reasons for thinking it's a good idea, ironically none of which involve actually teaching in an Ontario school. It would certainly open more doors to teaching overseas, is a prerequisite for UofT's M.Ed in Second Language Education, and would also be good to have as a backup for any point down the line, should I want to settle down and do that in Toronto. The pension plan they have sure doesn't hurt either.

At this point though, I don't have a very strong desire to teach Canadian kids. I actually like teaching ESL...it's just a shame that it pays shit no matter where you are in the world (unless you're lucky enough to get a tenured university job, but then that's kind of boring, too.) Sure I could teach ESL in the public school system here, and who knows, one day it may come to that, but I don't think that time is yet. Anyway, for now the application is going in. Of course, there's enough indecision with that alone. Junior/Intermediate or Intermediate/Senior? And what teachables? I hear you can get pigeon-holed if you choose the wrong ones. Damn. More life decisions. What am I going to choose?

I'll let you know when I know...

Let the fun begin

2006-11-02T21:19:00.000-05:00

The Enemy: JLPT Level 1

One month and one day to go until the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Eek. Kinda scary. Especially so since 1-kyu is on the menu this year and because I haven't really studied since I wrote last year's test. Oh well. Being back from Japan, there's a little bit of free time right now, so I've set November aside to do as much as I can to try and pass the test. The plan is to put in at least 5-6 hours of studying every day between now and December 3, test day. That's going to take a whole lot of discipline and in the end it will probably all be in vain, but one thing that's certain is that if I keep to it, my Japanese certainly won't get any worse over the next month.

I was on a website today that said for 2-kyu you need to know 1000 kanji (cumulatively, including the level 3 and 4 stuff). Then for 1-kyu you need to learn another 1036 on top of that. Great, so essentially that means that the kanji knowledge I've built up over the past three years has to be doubled in 30 days. Whatever. It'll be a learning experience. Wish me luck.

CELTA in the bag!

2006-10-30T10:02:00.000-05:00

A real mix: students and their teachers, who were students

So more than a month has passed with nary a new word on this blog. Why? Because for the past month I've been in the grips of a short but very intensive ESL teaching course to get the CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults). The course finished on Friday, and so I am now "qualified" to do what I've been doing for the past five years. (Whoohoo?!) That said, I did learn a lot from the course, perhaps not so much by adding a lot of new knowledge as by adding a whole lot of depth to my existing knowledge. Aside from the piece of paper that I went in for, I came out of the course with a deeper understanding as to what is "good teaching", and a renewed resepect for the ESL profession and its legitimacy as a profession unto itself.

The course has quite a reputation for being brutally intensive, with graduates writing testimonials about how they never got any sleep or saw any friends or family for the entire span of the course. For me, while the at-home work was definitely time-consuming, it didn't reach the nightmare proportions that some write about. On the contrary I, and many of my classmates, found the course so enjoyable and so much fun that we were sad to see it end on Friday.

Three things made the course an amazing four weeks: the 12 people were an extremely varied lot, but put all together, magical things happened and we spent the 4 weeks laughing our way through every day, often to the point of giggle fits that wouldn't stop. Equal contributors to this were our two amazing tutors, Gerald & Alex, who were as fun, easy-going and helpful as anyone could hope for. Finally, the international students that signed up for the free English classes in which we all conducted our "teaching practice" were the same kind of wonderful, cheery, and kind souls that I had come to know and love when I was teaching ESL here in Toronto before going to Japan. I can't stress that last point enough. Being back in the classroom in front of the mix of eager adult students from various countries across the globe and being a part of all that dynamic, interesting and stimulating interaction made me feel the most alive I've felt since returning to Toronto.

We had a nice little party at school after the final class on Friday and then continued on to a bar, and I think everyone had a great time. It's kind of sad now, it being Monday and not heading down to see the gang as usual. Everyone has scattered again, and some will be heading overseas within the next few months to put their new skills to work. Great! All the more places to crash when travelling!

The Silver Moose comes home

2006-09-26T22:00:00.000-04:00

Back home: the only shot for Day 22 and hence the photo of the day

Day 22: Quebec ~ Thornhill (783km)

Another driving day, the final day, and we're home. Without a doubt the most uneventful day of the trip, consisting of almost 800km of highway driving, most of which down the Rte.20/401 forest-lined, divided highways. They give northern Ontario highways a good run for monotony. The only shakeup in the day was the frustration of trying to get through Montreal, which we did, but not without a 25-minute unscheduled detour through downtown. You'd think they could spend a little money on a proper highway bypass instead of a confusing knot that brings all the major expressways into the city before they somehow come out on the other side.

Anyway, we arrived back to the wonders of surburban Toronto shortly after 5PM, 22 days after we started this whole thing. The finish-line photo I took above is the only photo I took today, so it was a shoe-in for photo of the day.

Some reflection on the past three weeks: Canada is indeed a wonderfully huge and diverse country. This trip and the drive out to Victoria three years ago have showed me that this nation is made up of the most incredible variety of people and peoples, all shaped by their culture, history, and the landscape that surrounds them. While there are certainly strong cultural and heritage affiliations in various places, be it the Natives, the Quebecois, the Acadians, the Innu, the Newfoundlanders, or the Labradorians (who insist on their differences from Newfoundlanders), the ties uniting us all are certainly there and can be seen, at least in one form, in the maple leaf that flies from so many flagpoles across the country.

The Maritime and Atlantic provinces have a sometimes beautiful but sometimes harsh environment that has shaped a society overflowing with history into the friendly communities, large and small, that you find there today. They may not have the sophisticated, multicultural depth of Toronto or the modern, dynamic energy of Vancouver or Montreal, but they are equally rich in tradition thanks to a social and cultural palette that hasn't changed much in hundreds of years. And their comfort with this fact shows in their warmth to those that visit them.

Having travelled all over the world and with plans to do so again in the future, I can say that I have truly been enriched by seeing both shores of my own country and all that lies between, and I'll take those experiences and impressions with me the next time I go overseas, so that I can share them with the rest of the world.

Just for the record, here are the final numbers for the trip. Wouldn't you know it, we drove almost as many kilometres on the east coast trip as we did on the west coast trip.

Days: 22
Kilometres driven: 10107
Provinces travelled: 6
Average speed: 84.9 km/h
Capitals visited: 5 provincial, 1 national
Number of gas stops: 28
Amount spent on gas: $933.38
Lowest gas price (regular): 82.9; Mallorytown, Ontario; Day 1
Highest gas price (regular): 139.0; Pointe Lebel, Quebec Rte.389; Day 21
Longest distance between gas stops: 682km
Shortest distance between gas stops: 2.5km
Average Fuel Economy: 8.6L/100km
Different Canadian province licence plates seen: 11 (missing only Yukon and Nunavut)
Different American state licence plates seen: 31 states, 1 district
Most expensive meal: $40.00 (dinner, Harbour Restaurant, Cheticamp, NS)
Least expensive meal: $2.10 (lunch, Mike's Place, Pleasant Bay, NS)
Highest outdoor temperature (while in car): 24C (near Halifax, NS, 3:00pm, Day 10)
Lowest outdoor temperature (while in car): 0.5C (near Fermont, QC, 10:30am, Day 21)
Speeding tickets: 0
Free car washes: 1

Today summed up: snow, $1.39 gas, and sex motels

2006-09-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

Dusk falls on the Saguenay River

Day 21: Labrador City ~ Quebec (1019km)

It got chilly last night in Labrador City - down to about 3C, but not enough to get us the forecasted flurries. We got on the road fairly early, around 9AM, knowing that we had a lot of driving to do, some of it on pretty rough road.

Labrador City sits only about 10km from the Quebec border, where the Trans-Labrador Highway changes into Route 389 that heads all the way down to Baie Comeau on the shores of the St. Lawrence. Being in Quebec doesn't mean that the road is any better. In fact, the first stretch of about 80km of gravel road from Labrador City is the worst that we've faced all trip. The road is narrow and up and down and twisting virtually the whole way, keeping you from going fast anywhere on the route. It didn't take us long to find the previous night's forecasted flurries, as we ran into a little snowstorm in 0.5C weather for about 10 minutes along the way. Now I can say that we've really seen it all, weather-wise, on this trip, from sun and 25C weather to gale-force winds to snow.

The road later turns into pavement at the Fire Lake mine site, from where you get just over 100km of paved, unpatrolled, empty highway that allows you to make up for lost time. The pavement ends again just after you pass through the former site of the town of Gagnon. Gagnon was either a mining or logging town that saw the end of industry work in the area, so the entire town was completely dismantled and no trace left, aside from the main road sporting curbs and sewer grates. The rest has been reclaimed by nature. After the pavement ended, we drove for another 100km or so on gravel before stopping at the only gas stand and restaurant on the route. It truly is in the middle of nowhere, which is why we ended up paying $1.39 a litre for regular gasoline. The lunch was good, however, and not too expensive.

Another 60 or 70 kilometres later paved roads reappeared for good as we came upon Manic 5, a hydro-electric dam of massive proportions and just one of five (the others down river are smaller) that Hydro Quebec has operating on the Manicougan River. After that, about 220km of winding but paved up and downs got us to Baie Comeau, where gas was a wondrously cheap (at least to us) 88 cents.

The drive along the St. Lawrence River from Baie Comeau to Quebec, where we find ourselves tonight, was pretty but rather uneventful, save for the brief and picturesque crossing of the Saguenay River on a (free) ferry. Enroute we booked a motel here in Quebec City, simply to grab some sleep before getting up tomorrow and doing the drive home. Our motel is nice, but we've since begun to doubt the neighbourhood it's in, as the street is lined with motels on both sides, all of which advertise hot tubs and adult videos on their signboards outside, with some even offering mirrored rooms.

Anyway, that's it for today. There's not much material to work with on driving days.

Silver Moose vs. TLH: Round 2

2006-09-24T20:54:00.000-04:00

A scene repeated many times today on the TLH

Day 20: Happy Valley - Goose Bay ~ Labrador City (589km)

She got in a dust up today, the Silver Moose she did. But I believe, when the dust settled (on the car), the Silver Moose came out on top. Today Andrew and I took on the meaty chunk of the Trans-Labrador Highway, from Happy Valley - Goose Bay (HVGB) in the east to Labrador City in the west. A total of about 520 kilometres of gravel from one end to the other with only one tiny town along the entire route, Churchill Falls, right in the middle.

Around 7:30AM this morning, our overnight ferry cut through the glassy waters of lake Melville, docking at Goose Bay just a few minutes later and disgorging about 60 cars and trucks into the tiny town, most of which sped directly for the TLH and Churchill Falls or Labrador City beyond. Not wanting to get caught in the mess of gravel-spewing traffic and also desperately wanting a non-ferry breakfast, we hung around town until the BK opened at 9AM. While waiting we toured the two slightly separate but amalgamated towns, Goose Bay being almost entirely military, and neighbouring civilian Happy Valley. The former had A&W, Subway and KFC, while the latter had the BK. On our mini driving tour of CFB Goose Bay, we noted the extensive barracks and operational facilites for the German armed forces, and despite my shouts of "Guten Morgen, wachen Sie auf!" we saw no one out and about that early on a Sunday morning.

Breakfast quickly downed, we were on the road by 9:30. Although a little narrower in places and with some slightly tighter corners, this section of the TLH was also in really good shape and we had a far more pleasant drive than we were expecting. Entering onto the roadway from HVGB, a sign warns you to check your fuel, as there are no services for 294km. That includes gas and food and even cell phone reception! We saw a more treed landscape than yesterday, a good mix of dark green conifers and what looked to be birch, leaves already turned bright yellow. Every now and then there'd be a cabin with some hardy soul living in the middle of nowhere with a wood stove, a generator, and of course, a satellite dish pointed upwards.

Once again, traffic was light, and thankfully so, since passing vehicles kick up such a cloud of dust that you almost have to stop and wait for the cloud to clear before you can see the road again and proceed safely. This is especially the case with trucks. They start as a white cloud or line of cloud among the trees off in the distance which you can see coming from a couple of kilometres away. As they round the last bend or come over the top of the last hill separating you from them, it looks as if a tornado is chasing the truck as it hurtles in your direction - a menacing little sight, as if the gravel-spitting truck weren't enough. Then the truck passes with a whoosh of white smoke, blocking out the sky and everything in front of the windshield for 5 or 10 seconds and you let out a sigh of relief and uncross your fingers if you don't have a new chip in your windshield, or else let out a terse "shit" if you do. All in all, we repeated this process about 20 times today, thankfully with no new windshield chips.

We stopped just after midday in Churchill falls, entirely a company town dedicated to the operation of the Churchill Falls hydro-electric facility there. It's the largest underground electrical generating station in the world, producing 5500 megawatts, and has a staff of about 250, who with their spouses and families make up the roughly 650 people in the town. The residents have heavily subsizied rental homes, free electricty (they work for a power company, after all - no meters on the homes!), and receive $4400 per person per household per year in vacation allowance. All this in addition to free access to the sports and health facilities in the centralized town building. You still couldn't get me to live up there though. The black flies and mosquitoes alone keep everyone indoors during the spring and summer months, while temperatures as low as -40C greet them in the winter. Sounds great.

The tour and a quick lunch completed, we knocked off the second half of the drive in just under 3 hours, arriving in "booming" Lab City (as we were told last night by the local girl on the ferry) around 6:30PM. There doesn't seem to be much going on here, but there is a Tim Horton's, a McDonald's and a Walmart, so I guess it qualifies as a town, although I'd say the "city" part is in name only.

There won't be much more than driving left after tonight's stay. We're almost 2000km away from Toronto and have two days to drive it. The forecast tonight is for flurries and a low of -1C.

Thank goodness it's all southbound from here.

IBM? What's that?

2006-09-23T22:43:00.000-04:00

Getting off the ferry? No, getting on. This is Newfoundland & Labrador. They do everything backwards.

Day 19: L'Anse au Loup ~ Cartwright (419km)

As I write this, I'm in a small, 4-bed cabin whose joints and corners are quietly creaking with the side to side motion of our overnight ferry, the MV Sir Robert Bond, bound for Happy Valley - Goose Bay from Cartwright, both in Labrador. Tucked away inside the ship in a small cabin, it's easy to start feeling a little uneasy over how trapped you are if something should go wrong, but fortunately we're not that far from the exit and what's better is that we have no other cabinmates. There aren't a whole lot of passengers on the ship tonight, perhaps a hundred or so, but then again, it's not a huge ferry either. In fact, it's more of a cargo ferry that also does a little bit of passenger service on the side, and it shows on the inner decks.

We got to Cartwright after a 330km, 4 hour drive on Highway 510, stage 2 of the Trans-Labrador Highway (TLH), which was completed just 4 or 5 years ago. It's gravel road all the way to Cartwright from its starting point in Red Bay and connects the two towns, both with a population of roughly 600 people. In between is 300+ kilometres of vast wilderness, completely uninhabited save for two or three extremely small communities. The views as you crest a hill and look out over 360 degrees of pristine forest and lakes are simply amazing. That said, after 300km of the same thing, it does start to lose a little of its punch.

It's by no means a heavily travelled road. Most tourists, if they get to Labrador at all, cross from Newfoundland and go as far as Red Bay before turning around and heading back. On the four-hour trip we encountered only a couple dozen other cars and trucks, and fortunately (or unfortunately) only one of them showered us with rocks and sand, leaving a small windshield chip. The road is in incredibly good condition, wide with virtually no potholes, and although it's loose gravel for most of the way, as long as you are careful in the corners and don't try to break speed records, the driving is fairly quick and easy. We're happy to report that the Silver Moose handled this first stretch without any problems.

This morning after a quick breakfast, we were on the road under cloudless skies, heading for the Basque Whaling National Historic Site at Red Bay. The displays and movie at the interpretive centre taught us so many fascinating things about the Basque people and all the whaling activity that went on in eastern Canada half a century before Champlain even showed up. Walking around and seeing all the recovered artifacts and looking at old maps that clearly have the east coast and the Maritimes fairly well mapped out, you're slowly left wondering why Cartier and Champlain got all the credit for "discovering" things here for the Europeans when Basque whalers and other French fishermen had been up and down the coast for almost a century before them.

After lunch at the neighbouring "Whalers Restaurant", we were looking for the town's public internet station to upload yesterday's blog update. Our server at the restaurant gave us directions but said that it was closed on the weekends. I was a little disappointed, because you know that I live for keeping you all updated, but as we were heading for the door she added, "But I heard that if you pull up really close and turn on your laptop, you can pick up the wireless network." Unfortunately, I told her, my battery was shot and I could only work when plugged in. So we headed off for gas, but as we passed the internet place, I noticed a socket on the outside of the building. So we pulled up, I plugged in my laptop, fired it up, connected, and got the update uploaded. A bit ridiculous, but all's well that ends well.

So here we are now steaming for Happy Valley - Goose Bay. When we dock in the morning we'll have an hour or so to look around before continuing onto Churchill Falls via the next stretch of the TLH. It's 280km to Churchill Falls and another 210km from there to Labrador City, where we plan to spend tomorrow night. On the ferry tonight we got talking with a boyfriend/girlfriend couple returning home to Lab City from Newfoundland. She told us we talked "slow and all proper," and not quickly like they do in Newfoundland & Labrador. She went on and on for so long about how great their accent is that I didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd take slow and proper over twangy and goofy anyday.

They were nice people, no doubt about it, and definitely at home in middle-of-nowhere Labrador. When she asked what we did, Andrew said that he worked for IBM.

"What's that?" came the inquiring reply.

A night out in Labrador

2006-09-22T23:43:00.000-04:00

Square-dancin' away: nightlife in West St. Modeste, Labrador

Day 18: Flowers Cove ~ L'Anse aux Meadows ~ L'Anse aux Loup (310km)

Andrew and I just got back from a Friday night out in Labrador. Sure it's only 10:30 and sure we didn't close out the joint, but it was fun all the same. More on that in just a bit.

The north peninsula of Newfoundland doesn't look like the most hospitable of places. The land is low, the sea offshore a deep, cold blue dotted with rough whitecaps, and the trees and bushes along the coast are all bent inland to 30 degree angles by the unrelenting wind. For us, these past 24 hours, it seemed all about that wind. Arriving at the B&B last night, a gale was blowing, and our attempts to dry out our wet tent outside nearly led to us being blown into the next lot. Overnight the wind picked up even more, howling like a demon of the dark to the point where the house (and my bed) was shaking. I half expected to wake up and see the legs of the Wicked Witch of Newfieland curled up under our displaced B&B. And then we sit down to breakfast this morning and Maggie, our host, tells us that we should see it "when it really gets blowin.'" I can’t imagine what the flags look like after when that happens, since already in the community partial flags greatly outnumber whole ones. And just FYI, in Newfoundlandspeak, they don't say "it's windy today." Maggie's elderly aunt came into kitchen this morning and as she was stirring her oatmeal, looked up and commented in her curling Newfoundland accent, "It blows hard." There's your language lesson for the day.

Loaded up on 4 types of homemade jam (one fresh that morning) at breakfast, we sped off towards L'Anse aux Meadows, site of the only established Viking settlement in North America, a National Historic site and the first ever cultural site on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Time was a little tight, as it was 130 km away and we had to get there, see the site, and return to catch the ferry to Labrador by 2:30PM. The coastal drive to the site was spectacular in the bright sunshine, and long, empty stretches of the highway allowed us to test the prowess of the Silver Moose, our new nickname for Andrew's bimmer. She didn't disappoint as we got her up to 161 km/h on one open stretch before fear of an untimely popped tire cartwheeling our car and catapulting us into the St. Lawrence got the best of me and I eased her off. Long story short, we made it there, saw what there was to see (the recreated sod buildings are far more interesting than the grass mound remnants of the originals), and sped back, reaching St. Barbe just in time for the ferry departure.

Ninety minutes later we were in Quebec again. Yep, despite all the signs calling it the 'ferry to Labrador', it actually docks in Blanc Sablon, Quebec, where a big blue fleur-de-leafed sign welcomes you to Quebec...for about 2km until you cross into Labrador. Maybe the ferry gets federal funding this way, by it being inter-provincial, even if it's only just. We stopped at two information offices, only to find both of them closed for the season, and so continued on, in search of a B&B to spend the night. The Labrador coast was rocky and, as we noted with some surprise, devoid of trees. The sweeping views of the indigo ocean were not in short supply, however. After a few stops, one at the oldest burial site in North America (a 12 year-old boy buried about 7500 years ago by an archaic native culture), and the other at the L'Anse Amour lighthouse (the tallest in Atlantic Canada), we arrived in L'Anse au Loup and pulled up to Barney's B&B, our first time having not called ahead for reservations (because cell phone service is almost non-existent up here!)

There we found a whippersnapper of an old bitty, running the joint with friendly smile but an iron tongue. Seventy-four years old but still spry enough to hop on her ATV and buzz off into the hills to hand-pick the monstrous bowl of partridgeberries that I was looking at when she answered the door with a tongue-in-cheek, "Gitcher eyes off my berries!" She had a lot to say and was constantly busy-bodying around, but had us well settled in and looked after in no time. We also happened to find the same Ottawa couple who was in our B&B last night in Newfoundland. I guess there are only so many options. This was lucky though, since they were the ones to give us the tip on tonight's restaurant and local live entertainment.

We found the Oceanview Restaurant in a beautiful log building in neighbouring West St. Modeste, a town so small that across the street, one building served as the Post Office, Youth Centre, Fire Department, Seniors Centre, Regional Development Centre, and at least three other things. Our server told us of the cheap and delicious pork chop special on tonight, but as soon as we opened the menu and saw that caribou steaks were on offer, the deal was done. Not cheap, at $27.95, but were they ever delicious. Just the subtlest hint of tasty, gamy zing and a finer flesh let you know that it wasn't beef, and it was seasoned just right by the chef in the kitchen.

With dinner done, it was time for entertainment. Fortunately, we didn't have to go far, for in the same building there was a square dance and Mummers dance being held to kick off the town's annual Partridge Berry Festival, running all this weekend and which unfortunately we are going to miss by having to head out tomorrow morning. While we sat and chatted with the Ottawa couple, a few of the mummers came out, dressed in wacky costumes and moved about the room. The idea is that they do a dance and you're supposed to guess who it just by their movements, since everyone knows everyone in these towns. It didn't amount to quite as much as we'd thought, but it was interesting all the same. And then the accordian player made his appearance on stage and the square dancing began. It had been a while since we'd last square danced, so we stayed on the sidelines, watching festivities and taking in the small-town Labrador culture.

At 10PM, the fun just too much to take, we made our way out to the parking lot, knowing that we were unmistakeably in Labrador. And turning on the engine, the first words we heard on the local CBC channel drifted out of the radio, "And now, I'd like to talk a little bit about salting fish..."

One regret

2006-09-21T23:22:00.000-04:00

The spectacular Tablelands of Gros Morne National Park

Day 17: Gros Morne National Park ~ Flowers Cove (378km)

This trip was never meant to be an in-depth tour of Canada's East Coast. With just three weeks to cover it all, we had in fact planned it as just the opposite: an East Coast sampler that would let us see each of the provinces and get a little taste of the different people, cultures and lifestyles across this half of the country. And so far, I've been pretty happy with how we've planned things out and how it's all turned out. Sure there are places where I'd have liked to stay a little longer, or places that we didn't get a chance to go that I would have liked to visit, but on the whole everything's been just right, I think.

My one big regret on this trip, however, will be not having been able to spend more time in Gros Morne National Park. The nature here is simply stunning and defies description in words. Photos even, without using a super-wide-angle lens or having a large format camera, simply cannot capture the vastness of the landscape and the majesty of the rock formations. There are plenty of great trails to hike, lakes and rivers to paddle, and a few spectacular boat tours to take....all of which we have had to pass on this trip. Prior to today I was not sure if I'd ever be back to Newfoundland after this trip, but now I'm quite sure I will be, if only just to do Gros Morne more justice.

We woke up to drizzle this morning, which kept us in our tent beds until almost 10AM. No one likes rain when camping, but I think we lucked out by having a nice evening last night, drizzle through the night, and clearing weather as mid-morning rolled around. We packed up camp, had a quick brekkie, and drove off to see the Tablelands, an area of the park highly recommended to us by more than one person.

Where as nearly all of Gros Morne is smoothed, grey, hard rock with plenty of foliage, the Tablelands are nearly the opposite, sticking up from the surrounding terrain like Lego blocks stretched through bubble gum. They're golden in colour, nearly devoid of any plant or animal life and have very much a rocky desert appearance, despite there being no shortage of water. The rock that makes up the Tablelands is geologically completely different from the rest of the park, and if you need more detail than that, go and Google it. The drive was nothing short of spectacular, especially with the bits of sun and blue sky that came and went.

Already short on time, we had to get going on our drive north. Our original plan had been to camp in Gros Morne two nights but a review of the map on the drive from the east coast showed that it just wasn't possible to do that and still see the sights on the northern peninsula and make the ferry to Labrador on time. So after a quick lunch at Jackie's in Rocky Harbour, where they serve up great burgers and fries but play the same annoying Newfie fiddle music without end to improve table turnover, we spent the day driving up through the park, stopping at various lookouts and sights, and taking a little over an hour to do the Western Brook hiking trail. For those that have seen a Newfoundland travel brochure, you've undoubtedly seen the photo of the hiker standing on a rock overlooking a majestic fjord. This is probably the view that every tourist to Newfoundland wants to see. Unfortunately, what they don't tell you is that chances are you're never going to get there. This is because the rock the guy is standing on is an hour or two hike into the wilderness at the end of a 3-hour boat ride from the far side of the lake, which is closest to the highway but still a 3km hike from the parking lot. So in order to get to said rock, you have to do the hike from the lot, catch the once daily boat ride, leave the tour and hike into the back country on a trail that takes up to 3 days to complete. For all this you need to have a back-country permit for which (I believe) you need to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of orienteering (navigation using a compass). So not something for your average camera-toting sightseer, and given our time limits, certainly not something for us - at least this time. Our consolation prize, however, was seeing a herd of caribou at fairly close distance, crossing the boardwalk as we walked the trail back to the car.

Continuing the drive north and out of the park, the sun was sinking lower and lower into the sky. As it did, the number of cars bumping along at slow speeds on the highway started to increase. Every so often we'd see or get stuck behind one of these cars, the occupants of which were invariably wearing neon orange baseball caps. They were on moose patrol, rifle no doubt in the back seat. Gros Morne National Park has the largest population density of moose in North America, and the surrounding regions of the province do well to compete. Throughout our time in the province, we'd seen road signs either warning of moose crossings, warning of moose-vehicle accidents (with a running signboard tally for the year), or worse yet, moose accident fatalities. So in a nutshell, there are a lot of moose, and and encounter with one at 100 km/h would likely be your last. As dusk encroached, twice we rounded a corner and found a moose smack in the middle of the highway, taking its good, sweet time to get from one side to the other. They are massive creatures, and yet somehow managed to avoid my camera lens each time.

Tonight we find ourselves in Flowers Cove, a small collection of low, white houses on the edge of the Strait of Belle Isle, not too far from the ferry port at St. Barbe. Once again we have found yet another terrific little B&B in a tiny, no-stoplight, one diner town. Tonight's diner served much the same as the one in Sandringham, only this time we had an ancient jukebox (2 plays for a quarter!), which we put to good use playing songs from Pink, Santana, Madonna and Hoobastank. The 7 or 8 empty tables in the joint didn't seem to mind our music selection although I have to say the music seemed really strange coming out of a machine that old. Our hosts are very friendly and sport (like everyone else around here) great Newfoundland accents. Breakfast tomorrow morning promises more partridgeberry and bakeapple jam... yum!

Nature at its finest

2006-09-20T22:17:00.000-04:00

Official greeter of Gros Morne National Park

Day 16: Sandringham ~ Gros Morne National Park (540km)

Newfoundland is just big. Despite not really having that many kilometres to cover today, we still didn't make it to our destination as early as we'd have liked. Of course, the fact that we got sucked into a Discovery Channel program at 9:30 this morning that didn't let us get out of the B&B until 10:30 certainly didn't help. It was on the investigation into the explosion and fire that killed 31 people at London's Kings Cross tube station in 1987. Don't ask me why we couldn't peel ourselves away, but we couldn't and so got a late start to the morning. Happily, we were back into T-shirt weather, as 19C temperatures greeted when we walked out to the car.

We had been waffling on whether or not to head up to Twillingate, yet another "traditional fishing village", on our way across to Gros Morne, but we had to gas up in Gander and so put off the decision until then. Arriving in Gander, we filled up and then went to the tourist office, where I spent a good 30 or 40 minutes checking email and trying to upload the last blog update. This didn't work because the office was running a machine that brought memories of my childhood back to me. It was a P2, clipping along at a dizzying 300MHz and running a Win98 platform. So the OS was 9 years old, and when I stuck in my USB memory stick, things just went wrong. I got the blue screen of death more than once and so Andrew and I bailed on that idea and quietly snuck out of the office.

We also decided not to waste any time on Twillingate. If someone wants to prove to me why that was a mistake, I'll gladly hear evidence and decide then, but for now I don't think we missed anything grand. A stop at the craft and souvenir shop next to the tourism office was far more interesting, where we learned a little bit about the popular partridgeberry and bakeapple (which is a berry, not an apple). The former falls into the cranberry family and the latter is more well-known internationally (especially in Scandinavia) as a cloudberry. Anyway, the shop had fudge in both flavours, so I was obliged to partake.

Late in the afternoon we found ourselves back on the west coast of Newfoundland, pulling into Gros Morne National Park. We hadn't driven very far in to the park when the incredible views assaulted us from every direction. Mountains and rock formations of all shapes and sizes with sweeping, forest-covered slopes levelling out to grand plain and valley areas stretched out before us, with pristine lakes and rivers dotting the landscape here and there. The photos I took just could not capture the grandure of it all.

On the way to Rocky Harbour for dinner supplies we spotted a fox crossing the highway. He spotted us too, and as soon as we pulled over, he trotted right up in front of the car (before I could even get a shot) and sat down beside the passenger side front tire. I wanted to get a better look so I backed up a bit, but he was quick to move again, planting himself just alongside the front wheel once more. So I pulled onto the road ahead and made a U-turn to get him in front of us, and tried to quickly get out my camera to get a picture. But no sooner had we turned around did he spot our car again and trot directly over, right in front and along the passenger side, this time to the back wheel. So Andrew leaned out and snapped a few photos at a few feet's distance. Satisified, we wheeled around again, and yet again the little guy started trotting across the road to our car. But this time, instead, he paused for a few moments in the middle of the road, which is when I snapped today's shot. After that, of course, he walked across in front of the car and took his spot beside the tire.

We bought supplies and headed to Lomond Camp Ground, a Parks Canada campsite with great views over Bonne Bay. Fellow campers were few and quiet, and although we didn't get to see it, we were told a moose was feeding a few campsites over. We set up as dusk began to fall and not only did the rain hold off, but we ended up having such a nice night that I was able to sit out in short sleeves right through dinner. The bugs were virtually absent once darkness fell, and it was only as we were going to roast our marshmallows that a few drops of rain started to fall, and so we did one or two quickly before heading to the comfort of the tent. Tomorrow we hope to see a little more of this grand park, but I know that we'll only just scratch the surface.

Drive a lot, see a little

2006-09-19T22:08:00.000-04:00

The colourful houses of historic St. John's

Day 15: St.John's ~ Bonavista ~ Sandringham (520km)

It's amazing, thinking about it now, that the Newfoundland & Labrador tourism guide is as thick as it is. But kudos to the writers and publisher, who have managed to do so much with so little. The Nova Scotia guys have nothing on them.

I am really glad that I have come and seen this corner of Canada and experienced the Rock. The locals have been very friendly, St. John's has a couple sights of interest, and there are opportunities to take in rare spectacles of nature, such as icebergs and giant whales. The vast majority of Newfoundland, however, is uninhabited wilderness. Hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres of rock, moss, scrub and trees, with the odd lake or pond thrown in. Outside of St. John's and Corner Brook, the villages are small, sparse and plain, with few or no amenities at all, and you really wonder how and why people live here. As much as we have tried to believe our guide that a few small houses on a bay is a "charming and traditional fishing village", once you arrive at the cluster of five rather plain residences with nothing else to see, do or learn, you start to wonder why you drove 90 minutes off the highway to get there. You take a boring picture so that the time is not completely wasted, and after a few minutes are back in your car again. It may be a fine way of life (to each his own), but interesting travel it does not make.

Bonavista is a collection of squat clapboard houses dug in against the wind on a rocky peninsula of northeastern Newfoundland. Few of the buildings are more than one storey and all look weatherbeaten by years and years of driving wind, rain, snow and sea-spray. 'Quaint' and 'picturesque' are not words that enter the scene. The town was once a big fishing village but like so many other places in Newfoundland it suffered heavily when the North Atlantic cod fishing moratorium was imposed in 1992. It was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive. And so they chose tourism.

But what do you do when there's nothing to see and nothing to do? You start shovelling. And so the entire Bonavista Peninsula was turned into (on paper, anyway) a fairyland of rustic, traditional fishing villages where, as we were told by the woman manning the tourist office on the the TCH, one could spend "weeks" discovering all the wonders that these little places have to offer. After passing through countless of these tiny treasures, we are thoroughly unconvinced. It's like taking a trip to the next street over in your own neighbourhood. Look! Houses. People live there! Whoo-hoo.

Bonavista, sitting on the very tip of the peninsula, does a good job of dragging hapless tourists off the TCH and through these towns so that they can visit nearby Cape Bonavista, where a statue of John Cabot overlooking the coast stands above a plaque that tells of his 1497 landing in English, French, and Italian (his name was, after all, Giovanni Cabotto). Did he actually come aground there, "discovering" the New World for the King of England? No, and if you read the plaque to the end, it even says that Bonavista was chose arbitrarily as a symbolic landing spot for the Italian explorer. It could have been any of the thousands of points along the north or east coasts of the province. And as we sat on the rocky cliffs eating our packed lunch, watching the ocean smash against the jagged shore, any plausibility to the idea that Cabot had actually been there was further removed from our minds, for he and his crew would have surely perished just trying to get near the shore. I'm interested to find out whether the story and the Cabot statue were erected before or after the 1992 cod moratorium. I'll have to look that up.

The highways in Newfoundland have been exceptionally good. But then, if you've only got one, it's easy to put all your transportation resources toward its maintenance. Despite the miles and miles of empty wilderness, the speed limit is set at 100km/h, and the Newfies follow that pretty closely. Why do they drive so slowly here? Well, when there's nowhere to go, there's no rush to get there.

With a post-11AM departure from St.John's this morning and the lengthy detour to Cape Bonavista, we realized we wouldn't make our goal of Twillingate by nightfall, so we find ourselves here in Sandringham (population surely under 100) on the Eastport Peninsula. There's nothing here but a few houses, one cafe and a diner, our only dinner option. Tomorrow it's on to Gros Morne, and we may just get the tents out of the recesses of the trunk.

A city of fire and ice

2006-09-18T23:17:00.000-04:00

No, no, this is not my photo. It's what we might have seen had we been here during the summer

Day 14: St. John's

After endless days of good weather our luck was bound to run out, and today we got a taste of good old-fashioned Maritime weather. Eight degrees, heavy overcast, on and off drizzle and a stiff wind persisted all day until just before sunset. We knew there wasn't too much to see in St. John's so we took it easy in the morning, not leaving the B&B until just a little before noon.

St. John's is a surprisingly large city, with a very small feel. Street upon street of colourful clapboard row houses climb the hills that hug the harbour and give the historic downtown area that fishing village charm. They're bright and cheery but at the same time look as if they are permanently dug in against the wind and the cold. While the old downtown area is fairly compact, walking around means tackling the steep inclines - some so impressive that you wonder how it is that all the cars don't slide right down and into the water when the snow and ice hit in the winter.

And speaking of ice, every year during late spring and early summer, St. John's (and other parts of northeastern Newfoundland) are privy to the Parade of Icebergs, hundreds (sometimes more) of massive ice calved from the Arctic and Greenland continental ice shelves that float down from Arctic waters creating great spectacles like the one you see in the picture above. I would love to say that we actually saw a scene like that for ourselves, but in fact it is a photograph of a fairly well-known photograph in these parts, of a particuarly massive iceberg that passed by St. John's Harbour in 1996. Unfortunately, September is well out of iceberg season, so the only ice we've seen has been in our drinks.

St. John's seems to have troubles at the other end of the spectrum as well, falling victim to numerous city fires, the ones in 1846 and 1892 so big that they got the "Great Fire of" designation. The current layout of the old downtown area is apparently a post-1892 result of trying to make it a little more fire resistent. Seems to have worked.

This morning, not being able to glean much from the tourist info that we had, we were heading for the information office to get a personal opinion when we happened upon St. John the Baptist Anglican Cathedral. The door was open and a sign outside was inviting passers-by for a tour, so we went in to have a look. We couldn't have expected the grand interior that awaited us. Only a century old but built in the gothic revival style, the interior was a splendid combination of Scottish-quarried sandstone pillars and arches, while the walls were old stone quarried locally. An arched ceiling of beautiful dark-stained British Columbia pine covered the rows of solid oak pews below. With the relatively small size of the cathedral, the whole effect was simply stunning. It was old in style but felt newly built; it was gothic but had a feeling of warmth and coziness, the exact opposite of the empty and cold atmosphere of most gothic style churches. Happening on the cathedral was fortunate enough, but as luck would have it we also were there at the same time as another tourist who happened to be an organist in her home town. The nice ladies on duty this morning invited her to play the gorgeous Casavant organ with its 3500 pipes located in the front portion of the church. As the hymns resonated among the stones walls, we walked the aisles, taking in the architecture and the stained glass masterpieces.

We made a quick stop at the fairly empty tourist office and then went for a bite at a bakery/deli that was emitting the scents of fresh-baked bread that were just too good to resist. We went for the sandwich special of the day: turkey (real meat) and stuffing with a cranberry-mayo sauce on multi-grain, and it felt like Thanksgiving had come early.

Back on the street the drizzle had let up, but we hopped in the car anyway to avoid a cold and windy walk up to Signal Hill. We stopped first at the visitor centre, completely renovated just this past July, where we watched a rather interesting little movie about the history of the site, mostly focusing on its military functions. After that, we drove up to Cabot Tower where there was a small exhibit on Marconi's famous reception of the first trans-Atlantic wireless signal on December 12, 1901. With all the fanfare and accolades given to Marconi, and to a lesser extent his assistant, Kemp, you have to wonder about the guy who was tapping out the messages in Poldu, England so that he could receive them. Is the other guy celebrated over in England as much as Marconi is here?

A busload of tourists showed up crowding things heavily, so we headed off to Cape Spear, the most easterly point on the North American continent. The Canadian flag was flapping stiffly in the strong, cold wind, so we read a few plaques, snapped a few photos, and headed back to the city. It wasn't a particularly packed day, but not too exhausting either, and given the weather, not a bad day spent. So with today's shortened report, and given that we are just past the halfway point of the trip, I thought I'd share the trip so far, by the numbers, as of September 17th:

Days: 13
Kilometres driven: 5506
Average speed: 83.2 km/h
Provinces travelled: 6
Capitals visited: 5 provincial, 1 national
Number of gas stops: 14
Amount spent on gas: $466.36
Lowest gas price (regular): 82.9; Mallorytown, Ontario; Day 1
Highest gas price (regular): 105.3; Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland; Day 13
Longest distance between gas stops: 682km
Shortest distance between gas stops: 2.5km
Average fuel economy: 8.6L/100km
Different Canadian province licence plates seen: 10
Different American state licence plates seen: 26
Most expensive meal: $40.00 (dinner, Harbour Restaurant, Cheticamp, NS)
Least expensive meal: $2.10 (lunch, Mike's Place, Pleasant Bay, NS)
Highest outdoor temperature (while in car): 24C (near Halifax, NS, 3:00pm, Day 10)
Lowest outdoor temperature (while in car): 3C (Port-aux-Basques, 7:30am, Day 13)
Speeding tickets: 0
Free car washes: 1

What?! Turn around?!?

2006-09-17T22:54:00.000-04:00

The innacurate and very subtle starting point of the Trans-Canada Highway

Day 13: Port-aux-Basques ~ St. John's (923km)

Well, the picture above says it all. After 13 days, we have arrived at Canada’s easternmost point, St. John’s, Newfoundland. Going any further east would require a prop and some serious waterproofing for Andrew’s car. Amazing, since just 3 years ago we were standing at the mile 0 marker in Victoria, BC.

The ferry ride from North Sydney last night was on board the MV Caribou, Marine Atlantic’s flagship passenger and vehicle ferry. A vessel of monstrous proportions, it held 350 cars one deck above God knows how many transport trucks, and still the passenger decks seemed sparsely populated. Most went straight to bed in cabins, dormitories, lounges, and booths, thus stealing the tables with nearby sockets from battery-dead laptop-toting idiots like me, behind by a day or two on their trip blogs. Geez, what I do for you…

After we hit the hay in our pre-booked bunks, the crossing passed rather quickly (for those that managed to sleep), and we greeted both the sun and the Rock simultaneously as we docked in Port-aux-Basques around 7:15AM. Our first thought was to make a brief stop to see the town, but fortunately, before pulling off, reason got the better of us. We were fairly near the front of the boat as we disembarked, in front of the aforementioned hundreds of cars and transport trucks, and with 900 kilometres of mostly single-lane highway between us and St. John’s, we couldn’t afford to spend a day stuck behind a trail of traffic.

The landscape in and around Port-aux-Basques is stunning: massive, hulking rock mountains sticking up from the ground against the pale blue sky, and as we drove further, we had this sight on one side, with the sun just peeking up over it, and the ocean on the other. It was a crisp 3C at points early on and you could see the frosted evergreen trees glittering in the morning sun.

Let’s fast-forward now. Four hundred and seventy-eight kilometres of forest-filled nothingness later, we stopped for lunch and gas in Newfoundland’s third biggest city (if you can even call it that), Grand Falls-Windsor. We deduced that statistic simply by the size and shape of the letters on the road map – not very scientific but probably accurate. Grand Falls, Newfoundland and Grand Falls, New Brunswick share the same feature of having nothing to recommend them to the passing traveller. The only difference is that at least the New Brunswick counterpart actually has waterfalls – we saw none here in the Newfoundland one.

It was Sunday, and in Grand Falls, Nfld., that means one thing: church and then Tim Horton’s. We arrived in what we determined to be the centre of town (simply by virtue of driving all over the rest of town and finding nothing else) just before the church crowd descended en masse (pardon the pun) on Timmy’s, swamping the staff and carrying the line far out the door, where the drive-thru traffic was already backed up to the street. We were sure at least a quarter of the town’s population was there.

During our very brief stay, we also saw people in shorts and sandals on a 14C day, kids still with rat tails, the intersection of Main St. and Main St., and a grocery store with an identity crisis (see photo). Yes, this is Newfoundland, and things are different here.

After lunch we pressed on for 400 more kilometres of highway cut through wilderness, passing turnoffs for towns such as Goobies, Dildo, Deep Bight and Come by Chance (all of which, I suppose, could have some kind of sexual connotation). Seeing Dildo reminded me of French friends and their town named Condom. Seems like a perfect twinning in the making.

We arrived in St. John’s and drove the Trans-Canada Highway right to the end in search of the kilometre 0 marker. It’s a little known fact that the glorious Trans-Canada Highway does not end at the ocean, nor at a grand square and sign indicating mile 0, but instead at the Robin Hood Bay Landfill Station on the outskirts of St. John’s. Disappointing, but we did find the symbolic yet humble (some might say unnoticeable) plaque in front of city hall, where we took today’s photo of the day.

While St. John’s is larger than I expected, there still doesn’t seem to be a whole to do here, unless you’re heavily into the local fishing industry history. We may check out something mysterious called ‘The Fluvonium’ if we get so bored that we don’t know what else to do. God help us if it rains.

A whale tale/tail

2006-09-16T21:58:00.000-04:00

A pilot whale flips us the tail in Chéticamp

Day 12: Chéticamp ~ North Sydney (369km)

There’s nothing like waking up to a home-cooked breakfast, especially when it includes blueberry muffins cooked fresh the same morning. This is what our spirited B&B host promised us upon check-in, and she delivered in style with the delicious muffins and a great breakfast (I went for the French toast). The people in the Maritimes are so incredibly friendly and hospitable and you often also meet a lot of other travellers at the breakfast table, and hear some interesting stories.

After breakfast, we checked out and headed straight for Captain Zodiac, the outfitter where we had booked our whale watching tour. The zodiacs are great for getting right up close to the whales and Captain Zodiac was offering guaranteed encounters or money back, so we couldn’t go wrong. There was only one other pair on the trip this morning so it was nice and small. We donned big red jumpsuits to protect us from the wind and the spray and riding the big waves like cowboys we zoomed out to meet the whales at one of their favourite spots. It was a beautiful morning and it didn’t take long to spot a pod of pilot whales. Cap’n Zodiac spotted a pair of dolphins at the same time, so we chased them first for a little while before losing them and heading back to the whales.

It was so nice to be out there without a crowd of people or a crowd of other boats all trying to go for the same whales. We spent the next 30 minutes or so slowly moving about here and there to where the whales were feeding. Often they swam right up alongside or under the boat, arching their backs and giving off a puff of spray as their heads broke the surface. It was amazing to see these graceful creatures close enough that we could have leaned over and touched them. That said, they don’t care to pause for photos, so it was tricky getting a decent shot, as they often broke the surface for just a few seconds and you weren’t quite sure where and when it would be. The result: I snapped about 90 shots, of which perhaps 5 are any good.

As if they knew we had to head back, a small group of the whales came right up to the boat to say goodbye, and one even flipped us a tail (whether that was a goodbye or an “f-off and let us eat,” we’ll never know). Of the various types of whales that migrate through the area at different points of the year, we only got to see the pilot whales, but it was an up-close and unforgettable experience.

Back on shore, we bid farewell to the good Captain and continued our drive along the Cabot Trail, entering Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Just as you see on all the travel commercials for Nova Scotia, the roads wend their way up and down along the coast offering stunning views of the red and green highlands juxtaposed against the blue sea.

Somewhere near Pleasant Bay we stopped at ‘Mike’s Place’ for lunch. Why? Three words: Fifty-cent hot dogs. You can’t even get that at a convenience store anymore! Sure, they were just the little wieners and the little buns, but three of those made for the cheapest lunch of the trip so far, all with an ocean view.

As the afternoon wore on we wound our way around the north tip of Cape Breton Island, stopping here and there and eventually making our way to North Sydney to catch the ferry to Newfoundland. Arriving early and finding zilch in the town (this seems to be a common occurrence in the Maritimes), we headed a little further on to Sydney, which seems to have a lot of hotels for no very good reason.

There wasn’t much more in Sydney (is this really the number two city in the province?), so when we stopped to top up at an Esso station, I asked the young guys on duty where we might find a bite. They gave us a few suggestions, but went even further to offer us rags and cleaning spray to clean the rims of the BMW, which were in sore need of it. So we shined up the rims and I was just returning the rags when the one guy shoves a piece of paper into my hand and says “Here’s a free car wash, since you’ve come a long way.” You gotta love the people here! We do, and so does Andrew’s BMW, which headed off to the ferry looking brand new. (Side note: for lack of a better option, we ended up eating at the local Swiss Chalet, whose bathroom had two paper towel dispensers affixed to the wall….right next to a biohazard box half-filled with used needles. This region has either a lot of diabetics, or such a serious drug problem that people are shooting up Swiss Chalet bathrooms. Weird.)

We got one last nice surprise from Nova Scotia. Pulling into the ferry docks, we drove up to the booth to fill our reservation and pay the remaining amount. I gave my reservation number to the friendly woman in the booth, who then shocked me with the following question: “Gravel! So is Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan named after you?”

After picking my tongue up off the floor of the car, I laughed out loud and shocked her back by saying that yes, indeed it was, and for the next 5 minutes we sat chatting and laughing, simply amazed at the crazy coincidence. I’ve never met anyone who knew about Gravelbourg without me having told them. Turns out she was originally from a town called Weyburn, just down the road from Gravelbourg. Small country.

A last big smile and a great send-off from Nova Scotia.

A long way from Fresno

2006-09-15T22:55:00.000-04:00

Evening Harbour, Chéticamp, Cape Breton Island

Day 11: Halifax-Dartmouth ~ Chéticamp (470km)

I took today's picture of the day in the dying moments of the sun's light. And lucky I did, because up to that point I had taken only a handful of shots, none of which were even remotely interesting enough to fill the spot.

After waking up to sunny skies and a wonderful breakfast at the B&B in Halifax-Dartmouth, we'd had a very uneventful morning. We left our laundry at a laundromat that had drop and go service and drove in to Halifax to see the Maritime Museum. For $8.00 we got admission and a cheezy lapel clip that would allow us to come and go for the rest of the day if, for instance, we wanted to break for lunch. "Is there really that much to see?", I asked the girl who took our money. I mean come on, it's a small museum in Halifax.

"Oh yeah," she replied, "Tons," but then proceded to show me a map with two small floors of displays. Needless to say, I doubt anyone spends so much time there that they require sustinence to go on, but at the same time, our 90 minutes there only allowed us to cover the detailed exhibits on the Navy, the Halifax Explosion, and the Titanic, all of which were very interesting.

A quick drive by the Halifax Citadel (great view of the city) and we headed off to grab our laundry in Dartmouth, leaving Halifax behind. The laundry safely collected, we got on the highway and made quick time to Cape Breton. While we have really been enjoying Nova Scotia, we've come to realize that whoever wrote the tourism guide did a lot of embellishing. Countless times we've pulled off a fast route to enjoy a scenic coastal drive or a quaint and charming town only to find the scenic drive 95% treed in and the charming town nothing more than some bland houses on an empty street. This afternoon we got suckered in again, stopping in New Glasgow to grab a quick bite, and it ended up being a pizza slice and a salad eaten off the trunk of the car standing in the parking lot of a strip mall. But I guess that doesn't sell so well when you're trying to bring in the tourists.

Late in the afternoon we crossed the causeway to Cape Breton and drove up the Ceilidh Trail, a beautiful winding road following the coast of the Gulf of St.Lawrence. After arriving at our B&B in and dropping our bags, we headed out to Plage St.Pierre which had a nice point sticking out into the sea. From there, off in the distance, we could just make out a pod of whales and the plumes of water they were shooting off. After watching the sun sink into the sea, we headed into town to check things out. Chéticamp is a small Acadian community in the northeast of Cape Breton, just shy of where the Cabot Trail comes out to the coast from the interior. There's not much here, but we had a recommendation for a place for dinner, so we were heading to check it out when I finally spotted a good photo-op for the day.

I was taking a few post-sunset photos of a dock, boat and lighthouse when a guy came out of the neighbouring restaurant, lit up a cigarette, and started to chat me up. Turns out his name was Paul and he owned the restaurant, and had just bought the place off a local. Here's the catch: he's from Fresno, California. Fresno's a long way from tiny Chéticamp, I said to him, and asked him how and why he had ended up here. He invited us in for a drink and told us the story at the bar, introducing us to the Dave the Bartender, who was actually the outgoing owner (it was his last day). Also at the bar was a funny looking local in a baseball cap, who was pounding back the Dasani and would mumble affirmations to everything Paul or Dave said, though none of it was intelligible to us. Anyway, after hearing the story, I was still a little amazed at his move, but he must have made a good investment because we ended up taking a table and throrughly enjoyed our dinner, especially the scallops au gratin appetizer.

Unfortunately, after getting all the attention we did at the bar, our table was all but forgotten for the rest of the night, but that might have been because they were very busy, understaffed, and had a lot of guests coming in to wish Dave a farewell.

All in all, an interesting night getting out to meet the locals in Chéticamp, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

This boat doesn't stop on a dime

2006-09-14T22:48:00.000-04:00

Striking the sails on the Bluenose II

Day 10: Lunenburg ~ Halifax (211km)

From now on, every time I look at a dime, it'll be in a slightly different way. The boat depicted will seem less mythical, more familiar. I say this because this morning in Lunenburg, Andrew and went for a sail on the Bluenose II. As far as sailing experiences go, it wasn't anything dramatic: there was no sea spray, no rising up on crests and crashing into troughs, no heavy list that required leaning out to one side. The Bluenose II is quite a large and heavy ship, and it takes more than Lunenburg Bay on a calm day to get her to move much.

We were lucky enough just to get tickets, I think, since we arrived in town last night just after the ticket office closed and so had to be down at the window when it opened at 8AM this morning. The friendly woman was organizing the waiting people into those on the reserved list and those on the waitng list, and we weren't on any list. But when we finally inched up to the glass, she said that we were lucky - she still had a few spots left.

The Bluenose II, a perfect replica of the Bluenose that you see on the dime, is a beautiful ship, painted black with gold lettering and having nicely varnished wood decks and brass fittings. She has two masts and eight sails, though we only used four on our trip. At 9:30 precisely we shoved off from dockside and slowly made our way out of the harbour under diesel power. The sky was overcast and it was a little cool, but everyone was just excited to be sailing on the dime boat. Clearing the harbour, the order went up to hoist the sails, which the crew did promptly. There's definitely a little bit of physical work involved, but the real muscle to get the sails up is handled by an onboard motor.

And just who crews this fine vessel? Well, it's a mix of seasoned officers and green deck hands. Getting the six and a half month job as a deck hand is as simple as applying and interviewing - as long as you're a Nova Scotia resident. While some clearly have experience, others are definitely doing this for the first time, as we found out early on in the sailing. I was up near the bow looking around when one of the young girls on watch leaned over and spoke into a communication system under a ledge, "Three tack on the port side," she said, referring to 3 boats off the left side of the ship, where in fact there was nothing but 50 metres of empty harbour between us and the shore. There was a long pause before a voice from the speaker was heard.

"Did you say three to port?" it queried.

After a couple of seconds the girl winced, and with a half-smile leaned over once again and said, "Um...I may have meant two, and to starboard." Oops. Straightening up, she turned to a crewmate and chuckled, "I have a little problem with the sides." Given that the sailing season is nearing its end, you'd hope she'd have this kind of thing down by now! While the crew do work a lot of hours, you'd be mistaken to picture it as a sailor's life of old, up at dawn scrubbing the decks and ruled by an iron-fisted captain. Au contraire. When I asked, expecting "dawn" as an answer, one of the crew told me that they got up at 7:30 and had to be on deck by 8:00. That's better than a lot of people who sail their cubicles in the tall ships of downtown Toronto. I didn't ask the pay, though.

Back in port, we hopped in our own steel-wheeled schooner and made way for Halifax via Peggy's Cove. Whereas Lunenburg didn't seem all that busy, Peggy's Cove was crawling with the tour bus throngs, and the effect was magnified by the tiny size of the village itself. Walking around the town, you have to wonder who decided to start a village on land that is little more than a few tracts of dirt between a lot of smoothly-rounded mounds of rock. But they did, and according to the information plaques that are spread throughout the little hamlet, the population peaked long ago at about 300, but is now much less, if you don't count the thousands of cruiseboat tourists on excursion from Halifax running around taking photos and snapping up souvenirs. While there is definitely a certain quaint charm to it, I don't think I'll ever feel the need to go back...especially not to the loud, crowded restaurant.

So here we are in Halifax, grand capital of Nova Scotia, and while it's true that it's the first time since Quebec that we've seen any tall buildings, there doesn't honestly seem to be a whole lot to see or do here. That fits in not too badly with our schedule, since we spent so much time enjoying the west coast of Nova Scotia that we're left with just an overnight here in Halifax...and we have to get laundry done in there somewhere, too. Tonight we did a little walk around the lower downtown area, which has a very nice waterfront where it seems a fair number of low-rise condos are opening up. Cable Wharf, however, is overrated with its one shop and restaurant (compared to the "shops and restaurants" in the guide).

If I could drink, you'd probably find me running a loop of the Alexander Keith's brewery tour, but as it is, it'll probably be a quick dinner and a few extra Zzzs.

Vive l'Acadie!

2006-09-13T22:27:00.000-04:00

Our new Acadian cousin Nicole (à Russell à Denis à Simide) Saulinier Boudreau

and her colleague Denis (with an equally long name)

Day 9: Digby ~ Lunenburg (396km)

It took us about 4 hours to cover our first 60 kilometres this morning, but it was such a great experience that neither of us were complaining. Thinking we had plenty of time to cover the day's kilometres to Halifax, we started out later than usual under sunny skies and warm temperatures and stuffed on the great breakfast our B&B had prepared. We opted for the scenic and winding Route 1 as opposed to the more inland and speedy arterial highway 101 in the hopes of getting a nice coastal drive and seeing some of the smaller towns and villages along the way.

Our route was to take us through the heart of Acadian Nova Scotia. I admit that before this trip I knew of the Acadian settlements here but was little interested in the people or their history. However, driving through these picturesque little towns on the ocean and seeing the Acadian flag flapping from nearly every home, it starts to pull you in, and so it did this day. Along the way we visited two magnificent churches in two different villages. One, Eglise St. Bernard, was a majestic stone building built by a master builder who was illiterate but could still get by with architectural plans. The second church was St.Mary's, the largest wooden church in North America, and its clapboard facade glowed bright white in the sunshine against the deep blue sky. Strangely enough, despite the fact that it was a Catholic church, we had to pay $2 each just to get in the front doors, something I found quite unusual, since in all my travels in all the world I've never once had to pay for entry into a Catholic church.

Passing St. Bernard's we zipped by a tiny souvenir and information booth along the road, but for some reason it had caught my eye and I wanted to go back and take a look at the souvenirs and perhaps pick up a small reminder of all the flapping Acadian flags we had seen. Inside, we got talking with the manager of the tourism office as well as a colleague who looked to be starting some kind of new display. We ended up chatting for half an hour and learned so much about the interesting history and culture of the Acadians in Canada.

It would take me pages to try and regurgitate all the incredible knowledge that these two shared with us, but it was all so new and so fascinating (to me, at least), and it was clear that they were very proud of their heritage. They told us that in recent times things had changed and within the Acadian community it was now "cool to be Acadian". For those who need a brush up, Acadia was the French name for all of France's North American colonies during the first settlement period (Annapolis Royal was founded in 1605), and Acadia once covered eastern Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI and Nova Scotia. The history is long and involved, but the gist of it is that the Acadians were quite happy where they were and refused to take sides as the French and the British battled for hundreds of years over the colonies. This eventually led to many of them being expelled by the British in 1755 (the Great Expulsion), a dark spot in Acadian history.

These days, as I said, it's cool to be Acadian, and the Acadian language is very much alive and kicking. I had heard about Acadian French but never actually heard it, so I asked Nicole, the manager, and Denis, her colleague, to give me a little sample. I didn't understand a word of what they were saying! I have trouble on occasion with quebecois but can understand it for the most part, but this was simply incomprehensible! Nicole then proceded to give me a quick 3-point lesson on Acadian French, which I'll have to write down before I forget. It's quite similar to the provençal French of the 1700s, when a lot of Acadians came from France to settle there. In fact, visitors from France often tell her that she speaks like their great-great grandfather. She also explained that they don't much use last names to refer to each other or inquire about someone else, since there are a lot of people with similar names. Instead, they mention paternal lineage in the name, and might go back two or three generations with this until it includes someone relatively famous. Thus, she explained, if someone were asking to find her, they might ask where Nicole à Russell à Denis à Simide was. "That's a mouthful," I said.

A good chunk of time later we finally said our goodbyes and went on our way, full of Acadian heritage, but not before Nicole offered us two signed copies of her short book (that was otherwise selling for $10). We continued our drive down the coast looking out for a handful of sights she had recommended and stopping for lunch at St. Mary's Point at a restaurant over looking the ocean and a gorgeous beach. There we dug into Rappie Pie (or Rapure, in French), a uniquely Acadian dish made from meat and grated, de-juiced potatoes (don't ask me to explain), cooked with some spices and broth in the oven until golden brown. Admittedly, the whole thing doesn't look incredibly appealing on the plate, but it was quite good. In the booth behind us, two Acadian women were having lunch and chatting away using an incredible smorgasbord of Acadian, English and French (at times all in one sentence!) that would have left a sociolinguist drooling.

All this Acadian business had put us quite behind schedule and after lunch it was clear to us that we would not make Halifax by nightfall, especially if we were expecting to stop in Lunenburg and Peggy's Cove along the way. So we set a new goal of Lunenburg and find ourselves tonight in this UNESCO World Heritage town in an apartment right by the harbour where none other than the Bluenose II is docked at this very moment. We're going to do our best to be on the morning sailing, so it's off to bed right now!

600 kilometres of "Ocean Playground", minus the ocean

2006-09-12T22:38:00.000-04:00

What else did you expect from Nova Scotia?

Day 8: Hampton ~ Cap Egmont ~ Digby (683km)

It was a little chilly inside our cabin this morning, but not too bad, and far better than bite that greeted me on many a winter morning in Miyagawa. After a quick breakfast, we were on the road again.

We drove out to see a little of the north coast, but decided to abort mid-way for time reasons. Instead, we did a coastal drive down to Cap Egmont to see the bottle houses. These small buildings are found in a yard of a house virtually in the middle of nowhere but seem to get a steady trickle of tourists. Originally, some guy decided he wanted to construct buildings using empty glass bottles and so that’s exactly what he did. Every part of the three buildings is made of nothing other than mortar and glass bottles of every shape and size. Clearly someone with too much time on his hands.

What was more interesting was where it was located. Over our three days on the island, we had seen the red, white and blue Acadian flag flapping in various places, but in the area around Cap Egmont, nearly every house had one flying. After talking to the girl at the bottle houses, I found out that that particular corner of PEI was strongly Acadian and that most there are francophone, something I didn’t expect in PEI.

With it nearing noon, we decided it was best to get on to Nova Scotia, so after a quick early lunch we got in the car and just drove and drove and drove – about 600 kilometres.

For being Canada’s “ocean playground” (Nova Scotia’s motto), our first 600 kilometres saw only glimpses of the ocean and an awful lot of woods, fields, and farms – nothing we haven’t seen plenty of already. Blame that on the route 215 of the Glooscap route. Someone at the tourist office definitely screwed up in marking this as a coastal drive.

So you can understand why the highlight of the day was a stop in tiny Annapolis Royal. Probably unknown to all of you, this town was actually of quite significant importance a few hundred years ago when the British and French were wrestling for control of the region. In fact, Annapolis Royal has the distinction of being the most attacked place in all of North America: it was attacked no less than 12 times, a fact which you wouldn’t guess based on the size of Fort Anne, which sits right in town. This picturesque little town overlooks a beautiful natural harbour and has 150 historic homes as well as the oldest street in Canada, its Lower St. George Street.

However, my reason for visiting Annapolis Royal was entirely different. I came to look up Matt, a curling buddy from UofT, hoping on the off-chance that he would be in his hometown. We always used to tease him about his tiny little town and I never believed that I would one day be there myself. So I went into Ye Olde Towne Pub, gave his last name, and asked the girl there if she knew anyone by it. As luck would have it (or maybe in a town this small luck has nothing to do with it) she did, and she quickly looked up the phone number and rang up his house for me. I talked to his dad for a few minutes and found out that he was actually on the opposite coast, in Vancouver, working on a project for Toronto-based Accenture. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

We now find ourselves down the road in Digby, renowned world-wide (so they say) for their scallops, which we felt obliged to try out for dinner tonight. Yum. Our B&B is right on the waterfront, but then again Digby is so small that it seems everything here is.

A tour of Anne's Land and Charlotte's Land

2006-09-11T21:30:00.000-04:00

A stone's throw from Green Gables, Cavendish, PEI

Day 7: Charlottetown ~ Summerside ~ Hampton (217km)

I had the best sleep of the trip last night and woke up feeling very refreshed, but we were on a bit of a schedule since we wanted to tour the better part of the island today. Foiled a bit by another B&B guest hoarding the bathroom in the morning, we didn't get out until almost 9:45, and headed straight to BK for breakfast. Their signboard out front confused us with its single-word message: FUGITIVE! Was there a fugitive inside? Was BK so quick with orders that fugitives could grab a bite without losing escape time? We didn't know, but enjoyed brekkie all the same.

Under sunny skies we did a short walk around Charlottetown's downtown. It is small - only 35,000 live here and there isn't a single building taller than five storeys, if that. I kind of expected there to be more in the way of an historic downtown area, but while there were some nice Victorian-style homes on the older streets, that was about the extent of it. We ended up at Founder's Hall, a building that houses an interactive historical exhibit on Canadian confederation and the events leading up to and following the 1867 signing. The majority of the exhibit focused on the Charlottetown conference of 1864, where the idea of a federal union was first proposed.

There was actually a fair bit of interesting information presented. For instance, did you know that the conference was originally meant to discuss a union of the maritime colonies, and only turned into a meeting on the union of all the colonies after the uninvited Canadians (East Canada and West Canada, today's Quebec and Ontario) crashed the party and pretty much took it over. And it only took place in Charlottetown because Island politicians were not interested enough to go anywhere else. Indeed, the conference coincided with the arrival of the first circus in 21 years to visit the island, and everyone was far more interested in that. Even after the conference, the idea of confederation wasn't especially warmly received in all of the colonies. PEI backed out all together and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia went through some rough debates before finally signing on. Eventually, PEI did decide to join Canada, but only for one reason (incidentally, the same reason that Newfoundland joined): it was broke. One more tidbit: the name for Canada was chosen from five options, and you might be glad we got the one we did. The other nominees were Hochelaga, Cabotia (after John Cabot), Tuponia, and Ursala. One of the videos really got us chuckling as they tried out the unsuccessful names, showing on the screen familiar logos such as Hockey Night in Hochelaga, Tuponian Tire, and Cabotia Dry.

After leaving there we drove out of Charlottetown through the green countryside of PEI. For some reason I had the image that the island was quite flat, but in fact it seems to be nothing but endless rolling hills. It wasn't long before we reached the pride and joy of PEI and the reason that so many tourists come here. No, not a golf course, but Green Gables, the inspirational farmhouse for Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. I can only ever remember watching the TV series starring Megan Follows on CBC, but of course the book came first and is well known and loved internationally, especially in Japan, where it even became part of the school curriculum starting in 1952! For this reason I expected to run into at least a few Japanese people there, but we saw not one, perhaps owing to the fact it's now September, and also because the yen is low and the dollar is high. Who knows, but I was a little disappointed. In any case, Andrew and I were most likely the least informed of the tourists there, remembering little of the story beyond a red-headed pig-tailed girl and a white countryside home. So we did the obligatory rounds fairly quickly, and I snapped pictures mostly intended for either sending to friends in Japan or showing when I return. The truth is this though: the building was only the inspiration for the novel; it wasn't set there, and the television series wasn't filmed there either (they replicated it on set in Ontario). Sorry to burst bubbles out there.

Our last sight of the day was Woodleigh's Replicas, much hyped by both my parents prior to the trip. We found the place fairly deserted but paid the steep $10 admission anyway and took a quick walk around. The expansive grounds are covered with 30 some odd replicas of various proportions of famous (some more so than others) buildings in Britain. They were nearly all built by a colonel returned from WWII who wanted to capture as a memory some of his fondest places where he had spent time while posted overseas. So he went to great trouble and cost to build them all by hand, in extremely accurate fashion. All of this was lost on Andrew and I, however, since we haven't travelled Britain extensively and knew only two of the most famous buildings. Oh well.

So it's night now and we find ourselves in a cute little cottage steps from the red beaches and looking out over the ocean. We returned to the ones we had inquired about last night, and while we're shelling out a little extra for the beachfront view, it was definitely worth it watching the sun set from the rocking chairs on our front deck (just like the picture on yesterday's post). We also enjoyed a healthy, homecooked meal prepared in our kitchen - a rarity on this trip. With no internet and not much around, we might get to turn in early tonight and get a little extra sleep. We'll need the blankets, though, as it's forecasted to drop to 2C tonight. Yikes!

"It's like Anne of Green Gables...in a BMW!"

2006-09-10T21:39:00.000-04:00

Sunset behind the Confederation Bridge, from Hampton, PEI

Day 6: Fredericton ~ Bay of Fundy ~ Charlottetown (595km)

I feel like I'm in my house of 20 years ago. Andrew and I found a great little B&B in Charlottetown, PEI for just $45 a night. Actually, there's no breakfast included so I guess it's just a B, but it's so homey that I feel like I'm going to bed in my mother’s old room. The curtains are the exact same pattern as my mother had for her bedspread, with just the blue and white parts reversed, and the bathroom tiles are exactly the same as those we had in our bathroom years ago, just a different colour. To boot, she has the same small glass juice tumblers that we used as kids, and the doors lock by pushing the knob in and turning. It should be a good sleep tonight.

Crystal blue skies again this morning as we woke up in Fredericton, New Brunswick, which apparently likes to sleep in on Sunday morning, as we discovered on a brief walk around the miniscule downtown. We wondered where everyone was. Got the answer a few minutes later as we swung by the Tim Horton's and found the place jammed, with adults and kids alike. There are two things that you can say about the Maritimes: one, people are friendly; and two, they are WHITE, WHITE, WHITE. There must have been 20 or 30 people in the Tim Horton's this morning and the Asian girl in line in front of us was the only non-caucasian in the place, and I think she was a foreign student.

Shortly thereafter we were on the road again, bound for St. John. So far on this trip, New Brunswick wins the award for smoothest driving. The wide, two-lane divided highways make for a picturesque scene as they sweep off into the distance, up over a hill and around a corner out of sight. Round the corner, and you see the same sight repeat itself. The limit is 110km/h and the road surface is baby-skin smooth. Let's hope PEI and Nova Scotia can keep up.

We quickly reached St. John, home of the famous 'Reversing Falls'. I suppose upon hearing this every kid (and adult) dreams up this image of waterfalls pouring up. Sounds cool, eh? In fact, the reversing falls could not be more boring. They aren't even falls, but just a lightly churning portion of the St. John River. And you’ll never actually see them reverse unless you've got 6 hours to spare. Since the "reversing" happens as the tide from the Bay of Fundy pushes back against the flow of the St. John River, which only happens once every 12 hours, going at any one time you'll only see a river flowing as normally as rivers do, in either one direction or the other. It's amazing, actually, that they've made a tourist attraction out of this. But I guess high-calibre tourist sights in New Brunswick are few and far between, so you do the best with what you've got. And they have.

We stopped for a quick bite in St. John's Uptown. Another quirk here: there is no dowtown, only uptown - a fact that I checked with a waitress at the Pizza Hut here. Uptown St. John is small but quaint, with a nice little waterfront area and a main street where diagonal parking lines both sides...like you see in old movies. Walking down by the waterfront we got talking with a guy who asked us if we were there for the country thing. Huh? Well, turns out the Canadian Country Music Awards are being presented in St. John this week, which would explain why the Pizza Hut girls were all wearing cowboy getups. "Wow," I said to Andrew, "You could spot a Canadian country music star!" which prompted his reply, "Even if one were standing three feet in front of my face, I wouldn't know it."

As the afternoon was growing old, we arrived at the Hopewell Rocks, just outside Bay of Fundy National Park. The Hopewell Rocks are famous for their flower pot rocks, large rock and earth towers, worn at the bottom into thin stems by erosion from the tides, and sporting little trees and forest on the tops (hence the name). While they are a beautiful sight to see, and look very spectacular at low tide when you can walk up to them on the ocean floor, Andrew and I both felt there should definitely be some discount off the whopping $8 admission during high tide, when we came, since you can't walk down on the sand, and the ocean covers up all the thin 'stems' of the rocks, leaving them much more plain-looking. A 20 minute stop there, and we were on our way again.

It was time for the last grand tourist attraction of New Brunswick: Magnetic Hill, just outside of Moncton. We arrived towards 5:30PM and there was virtually no one around. By the paint markings on the asphalt it seems that you often have to line up to partake in this little illusion, but there was only one other car there, and the booth that normally collects $5 was empty and the gate up, so we were happy. The deal consists of this: You drive down a hill, or what seems like a hill to a white post, where you put your car in neutral and become astounded as it appears your car is being pulled back up the road you just drove down. The illusion is caused by the rise that you look at in front of you as well as the fact that the road you're on is actually sloping down to the rear, so you car is just moving because of gravity. In any case, as cheesy as it had been reported to me from others who had been there, I have to say that the optical illusion is actually legitimate. Looking forward, it does actually seem that your car is moving backwards up a small rise! As interesting as this was, what struck me more about the whole experience was just how dangerous it seemed. Drivers put their car in neutral and then look FOWARD as their car rolls BACKWARD!! It's an accident waiting to happen! Who thought this attraction up? Insurance companies? I'm glad there was only one other car there when we went, and I can't imagine the number of fender benders that happen during high season.

Finally, as the sun began to dip low in the sky, we sped further east towards the Confederation Bridge and PEI. The bridge is long, something like 13km according to the travel literature, but the overall feeling is simply of it never ending once you're on it. But we finally touched wheels on PEI and headed towards Charlottetown. The golden sunlight cascading across the rolling green hills and potato fields was just too pretty. We stopped en route to inquire about cabins for rent on the beach, which is where I took today's picture. It was heading up the road to the beach and cabins that we were motoring along a red dirt country road with lush green fields on either side, prompting the words of today's title to escape my lips.

PEI really is as beautiful as they say, and their people just as friendly.

Nackawic, patty-whack, give a dog an axe

2006-09-10T09:53:00.000-04:00

The world's biggest axe in Nackawic, the world's smallest town (maybe)

Day 5: Quebec ~ St. Anne de Beaupré ~ Fredericton (728km)

Today we feasted on the best sights that western New Brunswick has to offer. More on that in a second, but don't get too excited.

We awoke to thick grey skies in Quebec and had a quick breakfast before hitting the road up the Beaupr‚ Coast. Our plan was to see the famous Montmorency falls and St. Anne de Beaupre Cathedral, but heavy rains put the pinch on that for the most part. We did see the falls twice, from the car on the highway as we zoomed passed them in the pouring rain. I've seen these falls before gushing water like Niagara Falls (they're actually 30m higher, the tallest in Quebec), but today they were pretty pathetic looking, so we didn't miss much by passing them by. Our stop in St. Anne de Beaupr‚ was similarly brief. A rainy dash into the cathedral, a nice look around, and then a rainy dash back to the car, with my $3 umbrella breaking and slicing part of my hand open along the way...nice.

Back through the city and onto the main highway, heading east. The rolling fields and farms hugging the St.Lawrence on our left would have made for a very nice highway drive had it not been for the pouring rain and the roughshod Quebec road surfaces. Fearing a bursted bladder, we stopped for lunch in Riviere de Loup, a tiny two bit down that for some reason seems to think it needs one way traffic on its quiet main street. As we parked, everyone seemed to be heading to and coming from Mike's, and so we did the same. It was a chain restaurant whose fare is Italian-slanted, aside for its big Yankee breakfasts. We opted for lunch and I made the mistake of ordering pasta, which came out bloated and soggy with uncooked meatballs. That's the last time for Mike's on this trip.

Things improved greatly heading into New Brunswick. At the border, Quebec's single lane second-rate roadway turned into a smooth, two-lane (in each direction) divided highway where the speed was soon bumped up to 110km/h, allowing us to fly along even faster than that.

And now what you've been waiting for: New Brunswick's gifts to its tourists. We had a lot of ground to cover, so if it wasn't close to the highway, it wasn't on our list.

First stop and pride of northeastern New Brunswick was Grand Falls, possibly the most inaptly named town in the Maritimes (but we haven't reached Newfoundland yet, so...) The 'grand falls' in the middle of the town were barely a trickle filtering through a vast expanse of craggy rock, although the plaque overlooking the falls assured us that in the spring the flow gushing over the falls is about 90% of what goes over Niagara Falls. I'll believe that when I see it. The story is that in the summer the majority of the river is diverted to the powerplant, and I'm sure the two bored-silly girls on duty at the empty information centre would do their best to try to convince you of that.

A hundred or so kilometres later we came upon Hartland, home to the world's longest covered bridge. No lying here - at 1282 feet, it is long, and only one lane with no traffic controls other than a stop sign at each end, so you've got to peer down the length of the bridge (tunnel) to see if anyone else is coming. Which we did...twice.

Finally, we had the cake-taker: an almost missable sight in an almost missable town on a bend in the St.John River. Nackawic is home to the world's largest axe, 20 metres of stainless steel which is stuck blade-in near the shore of the river. Getting out to take pictures, we were harrangued by two of the local yutes yelling "It's a really big axe" out of their car, which they had parked and were sitting in in the arena parking lot, obviously with nothing better to do on a Nackawic Saturday afternoon. Satisfied that it doesn't get any better than a giant axe, we hopped in the car and continued on to Fredericton, where we arrived after a dangerous empty-tank scare (670km without filling up).

En route we had booked a cheap motel across the river from the downtown core. It's a little strip motel run by a family of Indian descent (I think), and the young son who runs the front desk clearly wants to get the hell out of here. They moved from Toronto a year ago (after asking why they came from Toronto to Fredricton, I didn't want to ask why again after he told me it was to run the motel) and the kid couldn't say enough bad things about the city and New Brunswick in general. Oh well, he was entertaining, anyway.

So what to do in Fredericton? Well to our great fortune, this weekend happens to be the closing weekend of the FREX. Need I say more???

Il faut se rappeler qu'on n'est pas en France!

2006-09-08T23:41:00.000-04:00

Place Royale, Basse-ville, Quebec

Day 4: Quebec

Ah Quebec! Some say it's the most romantic city in Canada. I'd have to agree, although I'm not really feeling it this time around with Andrew at my side. As you're walking around Old Quebec, though, it's easy to forget that you're in Canada an not some quaint old town in France. Narrow streets meander through the old stone buildings, many of which date back to the early 1600s when Sam de Cham and his crew founded the city (Canada's oldest) in 1608. Street artists, quaint cafes, restaurants with terraces and horse-pulled carts round out the picture postcard image.

As frilly as that sounds, Andrew and I were looking to get some of that but we woke, instead, to the pitter-pattering of rain on aluminum, the material of choice for many of the buildings in the Old City. This significantly slowed the pace of our rise and breakfast as we tried to think out a wet weather plan. Fortunately, by the time we got going the rain had let up and after a tour of the Citadel, the almost star-shaped fortress built to guard the city, the sky had cleared and a beautiful afternoon followed.

The Citadel is an interesting story. It was built by the English using a French architect's design, and not right after they captured the city in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759, but rather in the 1820s, after two failed American invasions. The location and design of the fortress were such that the city became virtully impregnable (indeed, it was dubbed "The Gibraltar of America" by Charles Dickens, and perhaps as a result of this, it never saw any aggressions against it and so was never tested in battle.

After a short walk on the Plains of Abraham and a quick lunch, we headed to the quaint Lower Town and walked around snapping photos like the tourists that we are. The city is busy with tourists from all over the world but thankfully not overly crowded at this time of year. So we took our time walking around and soaking up the old-world European atmosphere, including Place Royale, which could very well be the central square of any village in France. Vieux Quebec seems to have a fair bit of real estate for sale and rent, with many of the places at bargain prices. Massive condominiums in the Old Port area are going for just $295,000 and we couldn't help but wonder why they were selling for so cheap. Anyway, the walk also allowed us to check out a few of the restaurants with dinner in mind and while the first night I went for traditional quebecois fare, this second day we happened upon a very trendy World cuisine restaurant not too far from our hotel in the Upper Town and noted the menu's offerings.

Later in the evening, after a wicked 15-minute thundershower tore through the city, Andrew and I walked back to Le 48, which was chic and jumping and unfortunately without space for us, since we hadn't made a reservation. We were about to give up but then inquired about eating on the patio, which was mostly soaked except for a few tables under a sturdy tent. The manager acquiesced and so we sat down out there, joining just one other couple in the cool night, with a second wave of thunderstorms threatening. Electricity came in a different form, however, in our serveuse, Alex. Korean-quebecoise, she was the hottest thing I've seen this side of the Pacific, and made the otherwise average meal well worth the money spent.

Our time in Quebec is just about up, but even a couple of days of hearing the twangy quebecois and having the chance to speak French once again has reminded me how much I love the language, and just how much I need to brush up on it. One thing I've realized for sure is that while I do speak French, Quebecois is another story altogether, hein!

A la québécoise!

2006-09-07T23:58:00.000-04:00

Tourtière, a French-Canadian staple...half-eaten

Day 3: Ottawa ~ Quebec (457km)

Greetings from the city of Quebec, where Europe meets Canada. Andrew and I arrived here today around 5PM under stunningly sunny skies. But our day began in Ottawa, so I'll start there.

This third day of our trip we woke to blue sky and brilliant sunshine but chilly temperatures, attested by our visible breath as we sat on the deck of the B&B eating breakfast. Things soon warmed up though. Our plan was to make a quick visit to the Mint before doing a drive-by of 24 Sussex and then booting it onwards to Quebec. Of course, that didn't go to plan as we got bogged down in Ottawa's horrendous rush-hour traffic (all those short blocks of one-way streets and lots of traffic lights'll do it) and consequently missed our 9AM tour at the Mint. So we signed up for the 9:30 and were shortly off on that with just one other guy. Things weren't too busy there that morning, but usually, with all the tour groups going through there (at $5 a head) they're clearly making a mint (badum-ching!) And that's not to mention all the souvenirs that are snapped up afterwards. And who wouldn't want them? They're all in mint condition! (badum-ching-ching!) In any case, one thing I can tell you is that proof sets of the coins don't come cheap. Your pretty penny costs... a pretty penny (badum-ching-ching-ching!)

Following that, we couldn't resist heading back to Parliament Hill for more shots of the magnificent buildings against a perfect blue background (and we got them), and on our return route through the park we were stopped by a videographer for the local A Channel (Ottawa's ChumTV outlet), who interviewed each of us separately for the 5th anniversary of 9/11. So if you're in the Ottawa area at 6-7PM on September 11, look for us on TV!

After our drive-by of Mr.Harper's family hangout (a beautiful stone house in a nicely landscaped and well-treed yard - almost so well that you can't see the house), and a failed attempt at Rideau Hall (only for groups in the off-season), we were on the road to Quebec...or so we thought. Instead, we inadvertently took a scenic drive of the Rideau Canal, which would have been nice for a bit except for the fact that there are no exits, and so finally when there was one we were well off in the opposite direction of where we wanted to be. So we stopped for lunch. By the time we finally got on the 417 headed towards Montreal it was already close to 1PM.

The road to Quebec was smooth sailing aside for some congestion going through Montreal. The scenery is virtually identical to eastern Ontario's expanses of trees, farms, and grassy fields.

The B&B that we have here is right in the heart of the Old City, and their budget option (shared bath and shower but sink in the room) is a great deal at just $65 a night. We are a short walk to everything. And what's great is that an unsecure wireless internet setup in the neighbourhood is allowing me to put these updates on from the comfort of my bed, which I guess makes up for the fact that our B&B in Ottawa that was supposed to have internet never actually did.

Tonight, for dinner, I went completely à la québécoise. French-canadian pea soup followed by tourtière and frites, and finishing up with maple syrup pie. What's maple syrup pie, you ask? Well, to me it looked basically like a slice out of a 12-inch butter tart, and pretty much tasted the same. Andrew's fieldberry crepe was much better.

Ottawa Abridged

2006-09-07T23:38:00.000-04:00

The Supreme Court of Canada: Gail's future home? Suzie's maybe?

Day 2: Ottawa

Day two was all about trying to cover Ottawa in a day. We had pared the offerings of the nation's capital down to 6 significant sights and set out at 9am, after "enjoying" a bland and skimpy breakfast at our beloved hostel. At least he got the orange juice right.

The Supreme Court of Canada was just a 15 minute walk down Kent Street, so we headed there first. Over the course of the walk, the sky turned from brilliant blue to a pillowy, overcast grey, and suddenly it didn't feel so warm anymore - good day to be inside. The Supreme Court building sits like a large stone brick about 500m west of the Parliament buildings. It doesn't seem to get much in the way of tourist traffic, as our guide, a law clerk there, lamented on our private tour. The tour was brief, with just a quick explanation of the photo showing the nine justices (the current chief justice is a woman - the first to hold the position), followed by a showing of the courtroom itself. I was a little surprised that this girl was walking around with the keys of the Supreme Court of Canada in her pocket, but that was indeed the case as she pulled them out, unlocked the doors, and led us into the empty but warmly decorated red courtroom. She then closed the doors after us to leave just the three of us in this room where a lot of the country's big decisions are made...cool experience.

Onwards to the Canadian Museum of War, which moved into its new, expanded digs just a year ago. The new museum's low, concrete design makes it look a lot like a bunker itself, and while the outside is a bit drab, the inside lobby has an equally simplistic but more polished look. It's an incredible tribute to the military history of the nation as well as all those who have served Canada in the armed forces. Unfortunately, after going through the pre-WWI exhibits in fair detail, we were well out of time and had to breeze over the Boer War and WWI exhibit, practically run through the WWII exhibit, and skip the cold war and modern exhibits altogether. The museum can't be done in two days, let alone two hours.

We broke for lunch at the Byward Market - a quiche and salad was perfect - before heading to the Royal Canadian Mint via the spectacular St. Patrick's Cathedral. However, we arrived only to find that gobs of tour groups had filled up the remaining tours for the day. So we scrapped that idea and headed to Quebec for a few short hours. Why? Well, just across the Alexandra Bridge, on the other side of the Ottawa River in Gatineau, Quebec, sits the Canadian Museum of Civilization, purported to be the most visited museum in Canada. The wavy architecture of the building looks great sitting on manicured lawns on the shore of the river, and the inside didn't disappoint either, although once again we found ourselves hurrying through and reading little in the Canada Hall. The exhibit, it should be said, is very 3D, in that consists entirely of a path that meanders through various recreated buildings and outdoor scenes that give the visitor a very visually interactive experience in addition to the text displays and movie and audio clips.

We were bagged. It was 5PM and we had only accomplished 3 of the sites on our list. We had done a lot of walking, covered a lot of the city, and noticed that Ottawa has a lot of pubs, homeless people, and jay-walkers. Related? hmmm... Anyway, our feet were hurting and we were tired and hungry. Suzie came to the rescue again and met us for a nice Italian dinner before inviting us back to her place for frozen tiramisu and a play session with her frisky cat, Toby. And then she worked her tour guide magic and found us a great budget hotel right in the heart of Old Quebec! Thanks, Suzie!!

East Coast Trip - Day One: Toronto-Ottawa

2006-09-06T23:48:00.000-04:00

The Parliament Buildings (Centre Block)

First off, let me apologize for the delay in getting this first day summary out – rest assured that it is entirely the fault of our hopeless B&B proprietors. It’s remarkable that they are able to assure potential guests that they have wireless internet considering that none of them seem to have the slightest idea regarding anything remotely related now that we have established that it is in fact not working. They assure us that the wired internet is running fine, which would be great if I had brought a network cable, which I didn’t because they assured me that they had WIFI. But let me begin…

After a 90-minute departure delay from Thornhill, we were off and running just a few minutes after 9AM this morning. First stop: back to Andrew’s for his forgotten sandals. After that, relatively smooth sailing on the 401 under heavy, overcast skies, found us driving through some of the most boring stretches of Ontario scenery, which we happily tuned out by listening to some new music and keeping track of out-of-province licence plates. Luckily Ottawa isn’t that far away, and it seems to appear out of the bushes as you round a corner on the 417 highway.

Finding our bed and breakfast was easy. Accepting the fact that it was actually where we were staying was a little more difficult. The internet description of being near the city bus station should have tipped us off that it was probably not in the best part of town, but at booking time and without any previous knowledge of Ottawa, economy won out and we decided to stay here, lured heavily by the advertised wireless internet amenity and the proximity to the downtown core. It hasn’t disappointed on the latter, which, since we are but laying our heads here at night, is ultimately the winning point for it, but one can only barely classify it as a B&B given its box-like spartan rooms, shabby décor, and location on a principal freeway exit corner across from a fenced-in school, city bus terminal and empty lot formerly the site of a crack house. The proprietors can only be as perplexed (as we now are ourselves) as to why two guys from Toronto driving a BMW are staying in a hovel like this. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but the truth is that heading east, things can only get better from here.

The lodging situation, however, is where our grievances end, for as we found out quickly when we went out for a late afternoon walk, Ottawa is a pleasant, small city, whose compact, downtown core is graced by grand government edifices, patriotic and tasteful monuments, stylish contemporary museums, and relaxed pedestrian thoroughfares.

The parliament buildings are truly majestic buildings whose setting on an open, grassy expanse can do nothing but inspire a sense of national pride, which it was no doubt meant to do when it was reconstructed in 1927. The Canadian flag that flaps against a brilliant blue sky on the top of the 92-metre Peace Tower seems to be a beacon marking the geographic and symbolic heart of the capital city region, with Ottawa laid out to its south and Gatineau, Quebec across the Ottawa River.

Ottawa seems to ooze the feeling of “government at work”, a turn of phrase that visitors from other parts of the country may consider an oxymoron. But indeed, with so many government buildings and their resident employees who fill the streets, cafes and restaurants at lunch and after four o’clock, there’s an underlying sense of the country’s business being taken care of at the same time that you walk around admiring the sights.

We were fortunate enough to have one such employee offer us an incredibly thorough introduction to what Ottawa has to offer. Suzie, a friend from university with whom I have kept in touch with, despite having taken just one Spanish course together many years ago, met us for dinner tonight after finishing at the office, where she works as legal counsel to the Senate. Over our meal and on an evening downtown stroll afterwards, she shared her encyclopaedic knowledge about the capital, its politics and its history, information that she seems to have effortlessly amassed during three summers of tour-guiding and 5 years of living here since she began law school. We got the low-down on the building of the Rideau Canal as we walked by the locks that connect it to the Ottawa River, the scoop on the bars where the Liberals and Conservatives go (separately) to let off steam after a long day on the Hill, and the little-known fact that the Royal Mint here doesn’t produce any Canadian currency (it leaves that to the facility out in Winnipeg), but rather handles printing and minting for numerous countries around the world.

She did all this, and like the experienced tour guide she is (or was, rather), returned us smoothly back to Parliament Hill just in time for the sound and light show projected on to Centre Block of the parliament buildings. A nice, if slightly cheesy, Canadian way to end an evening in the nation’s capital.

Goodbye August

2006-08-31T17:31:00.000-04:00

Inside the back of a very armoured but prone-to-fatal-rollovers LAV III

So the end of August marks almost a month that I've been back from Japan. I don't have much of interest to say this week, but thought I'd post since it will probably be the last before heading off on the great East Coast drive with Andrew.

Monday was another nice, sunny day and so I went down to the EX with Danielle and Lea, her visiting swiss exchange friend. Dani had never been to the EX, which is not exactly that surprising since Canada's Wonderland is less than a half hour from home and given the fact that the EX really is a rather outdated fair that hasn't changed much over the years. That notwithstanding, there were plenty of people there walking around the grounds enjoying the games, rides and food. Above you can see the three of us in the back of the very protective yet prone-to-fatal-rollovers LAV III, on display at the Armed Forces setup and currently in wide use in Afghanistan.

The food building was really something to see, but the highlight of the day came right after we walked in the gates in the morning. We saw one of those 'guess your age or weight' booths and Dani, looking very much like a teenage Paris Hilton, was sure that the guy would overestimate her age, and wanted to play. She wasn't wrong. The carnie waffled a bit but eventually guessed that she was 20 years old, a full 6 years older than the 14 that she is (well, she turns 15 next week.) Prize in hand, we all had a good laugh as the carnie kept repeating, "No way! NO WAY!"

The only other thing of note this week was finding TWO MORE new Kit Kat flavours, brining my total to 32! One was just dark chocolate, which only just qualifies as new for me, since I've had a few similar to that in Japan. The other, however, was cinnamon, which sounded like a really intriguing pairing for chocolate. I tried it last night, and sure enough, it both smells and tastes of cinnamon, and the combination of that with chocolate was better and dare I say more sophisticated than I imagined it would be. Spice and chocolate? Well after all, that's how the Maya and Aztecs were brewing it several hundred years ago when the Spanish showed up.

Whoo-hoo! The Count Continues!

2006-08-23T00:11:00.000-04:00

nos. 28, 29 & 30!!!

When I left Japan, I thought my affair with new and strange flavoured Kit Kat was over. For those who knew me in Japan, it had become a bit of a crazy obsession, and it got to the point where I couldn't go into a conbini without checking the candy aisle to see if a new flavour had arrived.

So you can imagine my joy this week when I happened upon not just one, but three new Kit Kat flavours in the span of just two days! Granted, they aren't nearly as flashy or unusual as the flavours that you see in Japan, but all the same, they became nos. 28, 29 and 30 on my list.

It's a little disappointing that a lot of the Kit Kat here in Canada seems to be going the way of the "Chunky" style...one big thick bar instead of the four nice little ones (it was especially nice in Japan since they were further packaged into two bars of two), but I'll take what I can get. The big 3-0. I've now tasted more Kit Kat flavours than countries visited or years lived!!

Hida comes to Canada

2006-08-18T15:35:00.000-04:00

5¢ a ride? "yasuuuui!" ~ But no, you can't pay with a $10 bill

On Monday, I got my Japanese vodafone cellphone unlocked and by Tuesday I had a FIDO card in it and was all set up. I even texted a few messages to friends in Japan. For those who knew me before Japan, and even friends from Japan who knew me in first year when I didn't have a cell phone, they'll know that I have been forever changed by having one in Japan. So I have one here now, but it doesn't get nearly as much use as it did in Japan.

On Wednesday, a small group (15-20) of junior high and high school students from Hida City arrived in Toronto for a 5-day trip. They hopped straight on a bus and headed to St. Catharines, where they are now in the middle of a 4-night homestay with local families. Before leaving Japan, I was asked if I would volunteer to come down for the first couple of days and help out a little. One of the accompanying teachers was worried about being able to establish an internet connection using his laptop on the first night (to send trip reports home), and then they wanted me around for Thursday afternoon, when the kids would be let loose in one of the local shopping malls.

So I rented a car (that they paid for) and drove out to St. Catharines. Wednesday went off as expected...we got the internet connection set up and then I went out to dinner with the two accompanying teachers and the Japanese tour guide (the kids were already with their homestay families). It was nice to be able to speak and hear Japanese again...being away from it even for two weeks seems like a long time.

I arrived for around noon on Thursday and met the kids at Ridley College, where they had had 3 hours of English classes in the morning and were then eating lunch before heading off for sightseeing. I only knew one of the kids in the group, and even then only a little, as she was a student at Kawai JHS a few years ago when I helped judge a speech contest there (she won a prize). I knew none of the other kids, but all the same it was definitely natsukashii (nostalgic) for me just to see Hida kids again. I spoke only English with them though, and they managed brilliantly.

We boarded the bus at 1:00PM and headed to Port Dalhousie, where the kids got to walk down to the beach on Lake Ontario, which was smelling particularly foul that day. They were surprised that the sign said it was safe for swimming despite the army green sludge that was lapping against the shore. Coming from Hida where the mountain water is clear and clean, they couldn't have been too impressed. What they did like, however, was the carousel that's in the park there. It's still only 5 cents a ride, so everyone wanted on, although they ran into problems when they pulled out freshly exchanged $10 and $20 dollar bills. The ticket takers wouldn't accept them to pay for such a piddly amount. One person then bought all 20 tickets or so (for a buck) and everyone happily rode.

After that it was on to the Pen Centre, the region's largest shopping mall, for some shopping fun. We entered in through the Bay and the kids were all wowed. I was a little worried at first that they would think that the Bay was the whole thing and never make it out of there in their allotted two hours, but I needn't have worried as they quickly found the mall and all the other shops. I stuck with one of the teachers, helping out where translation was needed. The kids had a great time, I think, although a pair of them came back with nothing but sudoku books!

Today, they'll be doing more sightseeing, including horse-riding at a local stable. Wish I could have done the whole four days with the group, but the two days were fun, anyway. Their plan leaves them with only a half day in Toronto on Sunday before they head back to Japan on Monday morning. Short, but at least they'll get to see some of the city.

Make No Mistake...This is Toronto

2006-08-14T10:31:00.000-04:00

Just off Queen's Quay on the Toronto waterfront

It's not as if I needed a reminder that I was back in Toronto and not in Japan anymore...I've been feeling that acutely for the last week and a half. However, a trip downtown yesterday really drove home the point. I'm not complaining; the day was great and was a good refresher on just how great a city Toronto is.

Living three years in Japan, you get really used to the fact that nearly everyone you see is Japanese, everyone speaks Japanese, you eat Japanese food, go to Japanese events, and so on. Fast forward to yesterday's downtown walkabout with my father and brother. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon so we headed downtown knowing a bit about what was going on but without much of a plan. This is how one afternoon in Toronto went down:

We passed on the Taste of the Danforth Greek food festival and International Dragon Boat Races and instead headed for the Chinatown festival. After walking around there for a little bit, we headed across Queen Street to City Hall and came across celebrations for Pakistan's independence day in full swing at Nathan Phillip's Square. Heading south on Yonge to the waterfront, we happened upon the Spicy Food Festival at Harbourfront where we walked among numerous Caribbean and Indian food stalls, snacked on Spanish churros, and enjoyed a performance of Cameroonian music at the nearby bandshell. We travelled the world on foot in a span of a few hours.

In Japan, I had no problems with the homogenous nature of society. Japan's culture is so rich, deep-rooted and so very different from Western culture that even after three years there was still so much I had yet to see and do and learn that it never became boring. But I have to admit that walking around downtown yesterday, even I was continually astounded at the reminders of how multicultural this city is. Torontonians (and Canadians) come in all shapes, sizes and colours, and there really is no way to point your finger and say "Okay, this is a Canadian, and this is not".

Later this week, some junior high school and high school students from Hida City, where I lived in Japan, will be visiting the Toronto area for a week. While they are spending most of their time in St. Catharines and not Toronto, I really hope they get a chance to experience something similiar to what I did yesterday.

Japan-Cottage-Canada

2006-08-11T18:59:00.000-04:00

The cottage was the best possible buffer

Coming home to Canada to live after three years in Japan is like getting hit with a cultural brick. People are loud, rude, and not nearly as easy to look at as over in Japan. The surroundings are not nearly as pretty, daily life not as convenient, and on top of that, the "interesting" factor is gone. Not really wanting to come home in the first place, the transition was going to be extra hard. Thankfully, my return coincided perfectly with the Civic Day long weekend, and the cottage stepped in as the perfect buffer to ease my readjustment: in Canada, but still well in the peace and solitude of the countryside, much like I was used to in Miyagawa.

The weekend brought lots of family that I hadn't seen in quite a while, and the weather also cooperated, with sunny, cloudless days for an entire week. I spent time catching up with everyone, getting in plenty of water skiing (still got it!), and winning at ping-pong (thanks Miyagawa JHS table tennis club). After the weekend, Andrew came down for a few days to get some R&R. Given the circumstances, it was the best possible "back in Canada" week I could have hoped for.

Sayonara, Miyagawa

2006-08-11T18:35:00.000-04:00

Last Night in Japan: Sayonara BBQ

front row: Taichi, Wakana, Mako, Shiori, Chinami, Kasumi (absent - Yuji)

Saying goodbye to Miyagawa was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. After three years in that tiny little village, I really was a part of the Miyagawa family, and saying goodbye to the people there was like saying goodbye to my own brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles.

Some of my kids, the class that graduated and moved on to high school just this past April, got together, organized, and threw a farewell barbeque for me, all of their own doing. They prepared all the food, performed a dance routine just for me, gave me letters and presents, and then sang two songs for me. We ate, chatted, and laughed into the night.

It was the most amazing way to end my time there, and I'll never forget that amazing place and those wonderful kids. As I promised them, I'll be back.

Why Didn't I Start This Years Ago?

2006-08-11T17:45:00.000-04:00

After 3 years of life in Japan, this is week 2 of being back in Canada, and I've decided to start this blog to get me writing... and thinking. Now that I think about it, it would have been good to keep something like this going in Japan, but life's too short for regrets.

Ever since getting on the plane back in Osaka 8 days ago, all I can think about is going back to Japan. It didn't feel like it was time to leave. However, I'm here in Toronto for the time being and will try to make the most of it. Read on, if you feel like it.