Happy Canada Day

Fair Warning: This entry will be longer and more serious than the others.

I apologize for the lack of updates this week, but I’ve been working through some challenges and I didn’t want to risk writing them down on the intractable internet before they were organized in my head.

Firstly, I’ve been struggling with homesickness this week. Just in case any of you were wondering that is a legitimate mental state, and it is less than fun. It’s been a long time since I was truly homesick. As in I’m pretty sure the last time something similar to this happened I was 8 or 9 years old at an overnight summer camp. People travel and always cover the amazing, fun things they do, but often gloss over (or make a really entertaining narrative out of) things and events that weren’t fun or amazing at all. Homesickness isn’t like that. You can’t really make homesickness funny. It happens, and you deal with it by forcing yourself to go participate in anything with other people so that you aren’t staying at home wallowing in missing other people and places. You can’t live in two places at the same time so you make a very conscious point of trying to entrench yourself in whichever one you happen to be in. Travelling is something I love and I wouldn’t give up the experience I’m having now just to fly home, but homesickness is part of the experience too.

If you’re interested, the BBC did an interesting article on it in early June.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22764986

Secondly (and much more importantly) how nationality is perceived in Europe is not how nationality is perceived in Canada. I’m going to try very hard not to make sweeping generalizations on how nationality is perceived, but this is something that’s been bothering me since my second week here. I’m also going to preface what I’m about to say with ‘my country is in no way perfect, and we have many problems and inequalities of our own to tackle.’ However, this mentality on nationality that I keeping hearing in France (and echoed throughout Europe) is something that I have been struggling with.

Modern day Canada is a society of immigrants. There are advertising campaigns all over the world inviting people with a variety of skills from tradesmen through to academics and entrepreneurs to pack-up and immigrate. Unless you’re a full-blooded member of the First Nations or Inuit community, at some point someone in your ancestry had to arrive and fill out papers that stated they wished to make Canada their new home. That takes an incredible amount of courage to do, especially if the person who made the choice to immigrate did not speak English or French. To facilitate with this example, we’ll create our own imaginary group of immigrants. We’ll call them Mr. Chen, Mr. McToogle, Mr. Oyari and Mr. Khan. Evidently our group of imaginary immigrants is meant to come from a variety of backgrounds.

Here is where I see the views on a person’s nationality begin to differ. Once any of the above people arrives in Canada, lives primarily in Canada for a set amount of time (typically 5 years, if nothing goes sideways) to fulfill their Permanent Residency requirements, and waits very patiently for the government to process their papers so that they can be sworn in as a Canadian citizen… they’re Canadian. They may be Canadian-Chinese, Canadian-Irish, Canadian-Kenyan or Canadian-Pakistani, but they’re all Canadian. In fact, there are plenty of immigrants whose children never claim citizenship in a country other than Canada. For people who debate this logic, I’d argue that once any one of our imaginary immigrants has married (within their cultural community or outside it) and raised their children in Canada, at the very least their children are pretty indisputably Canadian; regardless of their visual ethnic descent.

Let’s take Mr. Chen as our first example. Maybe he arrived just before the Head Tax was instituted in the 1880’s, but worked incredibly hard to bring his family over under that (very unjust) legislation, and today his family is approximately 4^th or 5^th generation Canadian. In fact, the whole family worked very hard to come to Canada, and being Canadian was a very clear choice. His descendants may or may not speak Cantonese or Mandarin. They may or may not be dual citizens and carry Chinese passports next to their Canadian ones. Depending on who married who, it may not even be clear that they emigrated from China, just that they have some Asian ancestry. He and his descendants are Canadian, and I’d never dispute that. It actually hadn’t occurred to me that someone would dispute that in today’s society.

It’s disputed in France. I used the example of the fictitious Mr. Chen recently in a conversation over lunch with some friends, and was told that Mr. Chen’s descendants may carry a Canadian passport, but that they’re Chinese.

… what?

If you're not familiar with the Chinese Head Tax, I've included a link.
http://www.ccnc.ca/redress/index.html

Glad that at least this was being discussed openly, I pulled out Mr. McToogle, Mr. Oyari and Mr. Khan. In all my scenarios the Irish Mr. McToogle, Kenyan Mr. Oyari and Pakistani Mr. Khan end up with Canadian passports, and are counted equally as Canadian citizens. If you troll around on my Facebook (you don’t even have to look hard) you’ll find friends and relatives who have stories not so different from the fictitious ones presented here, because immigrating to Canada has themes that repeat through history. They’re common themes. Sitting around the table at lunch discussing immigration and identity with a Dutch woman, Swiss woman, a Russian woman, and another Canadian though… these themes that were so familiar to myself and the other Canadian were foreign and incorrect to the others.

If Mr. Oyari - a sponsor child from Kenya - had chosen to immigrate to Switzerland instead of Canada, I was told with no hesitation and absolutely no mal-intent that he would never be Swiss. He could carry a Swiss passport, speak fluent Swiss-German or Swiss-French, live in a set area for 12 years and be voted in as a citizen by his constituency (… that’s roughly how it works in Switzerland, very roughly) but that that whole process didn’t make him Swiss. His skin is too dark to be considered Swiss. No matter what his papers say, he’s from Kenya, and that makes him Kenyan. Even if his children (who could be equally dark skinned, or lighter, either way it made little difference) had only a Swiss passport they were evidently not actually ‘Swiss’ because they didn’t look Swiss.

It took a second for me to convince myself that maybe this was just a Swiss approach. After all, it is notoriously difficult to immigrate to Switzerland. They’re a small country, and almost explicitly not a country that encourages immigration. People from all over the world are welcome to work there, but actually immigrating seems to be left out.

In my hometown, the man whose story most closely mirrors Mr. Oyari’s is a bit of a local celebrity. He’s a personal trainer who has made a successful career for himself, and made the decision to immigrate to Canada while maintaining his roots abroad. His skin is so dark that when he sits down to do an interview on television he has his own spotlight (otherwise people can't see his face), and he laughs because he thinks that’s hilarious. He perceives himself as Canadian, and so does the community around him.

I am here to argue very strongly that in Canada we are taught to separate someone’s ethnicity (which is visual, and can’t be changed unless you’re Michael Jackson) from their nationality (which can be changed, because it’s ink on paper). Without a doubt I agree with the separation of this vague concept of ethnicity and someone’s nationality. Nationality is intangible, and can be chosen or changed over a lifetime; ethnicity cannot be changed, and is a very vague, poorly defined and categorized system of discrimination.

This is the crowd on Parliament Hill, as photographed by the National Post July 1st, 2012.  We're not a homogenous country, in any way, shape or form. About the only thing we're all good at is compromise, and we only do that in the same language half the time.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/01/canada-day-celebrations-attract-thousands-in-red-and-white-to-parliament-hill/

When we reached the example of Mr. Khan I was less surprised to be faced with the same conclusion. After all, if Mr. Chen and Mr. Oyari hadn’t had a chance at being considered Canadian, what chance did Mr. Khan from Pakistan; especially given the charged atmosphere surrounding terrorism and Islamophobia? Mr. Khan does things like attend Mosque, and although one daughter chooses to let her hair down, the other chooses to wear a hijab and dress conservatively. Both expect their parents to play a role in choosing who they marry. That’s right, arranged marriages, with input from a variety of parties. Guys… Mr. Khan and his family were landed immigrants, who are integrated into the local community and who carry Canadian passports as Canadian citizens. They were sworn in as Canadians two years ago. Both daughters are active in university government and local humanitarian causes. One of them is attending medical school. They’re Canadian.

By the time Mr. McToogle hit the table I was expecting to be told that he was Irish and not Canadian. Nope, not the case. Mr. McToogle could be considered Canadian. What?! What on earth is the difference between Mr. McToogle and the other three? You’ve probably figured it out by now. As someone of Irish descent, Mr. McToogle was pasty white. He could be considered Canadian because he was Caucasian. Ms. Russia and Ms. Switzerland agreed on this entirely. Ms. Dutch did as well, citing the example at home of a friend of hers who spoke Dutch and English, was a Dutch citizen, but ethnically was clearly from East India, and so not really Dutch. 

Logically, this new development made little sense to me. If Mr. McToogle came over in the last Irish potato famine, or even just because (as has happened more recently) the job opportunities for him were more abundant in Canada than in Ireland, the only significant difference between him and the others was his skin colour. That being said, if you’re correlating nationality with ethnic descent then Mr. McToogle shouldn’t count as Canadian either because he’s not descended in any way from the First Nations or the Inuit. He would be distinctly not the well known, Caucasian, pasty-white if he did.

Even the First Nations people aren't just plain old 'Canadian', they also often identify with the Nation they came from. In this case, the Haida Nation on Canada's West Coast.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=91f32c5f-4cde-4036-9cde-bbeb1b408909

This conversation and conversations like it are something I’ve been noticing since my second week here in France. A few have been mixed together here for a more expedient explanation. However, they all came to a head when earlier this week Catherine accused me of not know the history of my people over dinner. Suddenly she was talking about ravaging Africa, the slave trade, conquering the Caribbean, naval warfare, castles, the Queen of England, so on and so forth. It wasn’t until Michel asked me if I was Canadian or English that I figured out what was going on. Even though Catherine is well aware that I am Canadian, I carry Canadian documents, and that her family and I have been making jokes about bear pate since day one… she was identifying me as English, as in from the UK.

I was informed that I was not Canadian by a woman whose family immigrated to Corsica on her mother’s side from Egypt, then married a series of ‘ethnically’ French man and raised children here in mainland France. She stated this like it was fact, like this was obvious and something I should know. She didn’t mean anything bad by it, because it was normal for her. I was furious. If I’m not Canadian, then quite logically she and none of her descendants are French. Fortunately I was not stupid enough to state this explicitly, because I’m not sure Michel would have been able to save me from the nuclear fall-out that would have followed such a statement.

(… I’m not sure anyone could be saved from the full force of a Corsican temper, just for the record. It’s kind of infamous over here, and I understand why.)

In previous travels I’ve experienced racism, and I’ve seen racism and discrimination enacted on other people. Never has it bothered me so much as it is bothering me now, in Europe. In UgandaI was called ‘Muzungu’, as in the colour white. It was an identifying term that didn’t carry mal-intent with it because half the time I was the only white person for 50 square kilometers. No one used it as an insult, and I didn’t perceive it as an insult. In Uganda, people wore the colour of their skin on their sleeve for the world to see, and it was just part of daily life. The discriminations that came with it were built into society but they were done so very openly, so at least people could talk about it and deal with it. (And lets be honest, I'm so white I practically glow in the dark. I try to think of it as a great way for Search and Rescue to find me if I'm ever lost in the backcountry.) When the men I was travelling with said they were Canadian and spoke English, people accepted it no differently than they accepted that the two were Ugandan when they spoke Lugandu and said they were Ugandan. They are dual citizens, and their skin is dark. Being dark-skinned had no influence on whether or not they were considered Canadian.

By contrast, the discrimination I’m faced with here is incredibly frustrating. For example, there is an image of what a Canadian ‘should’ look like (remember Mr. McToogle? Apparently he looks Canadian). No one wants to talk about it openly, because most people pretend it doesn’t exist. Those who do talk about it state their opinion as if it’s obvious. The discrimination has subtle rules that no one seems to be able to explain with any real clarity because they shift depending on the social situation, and they have repercussions for how my nationality is perceived.

When I arrived in Montpellier I thought my greatest battle was going to be avoiding the classification of ‘Tourist’. Now that I’ve become more familiar with many of the norms here, I’m realizing that the greatest battle isn’t at all related to tourists. The greatest battle is not losing my temper when I’m confronted with groups of people who derive nationality almost entirely from an illogical set of the visible differences between themselves and someone else. This other-ing and scapegoat-ing feels rampant, and it’s frustrating and demoralizing.

Canada Day, July 1st, 2013

There are many cultural aspects of life I’ve encountered here that are different from home. Some are funny, some make perfect sense, some are a little odd, and some are just a different way of achieving the same end goal. Until I reached a point where I could articulate the difference of how nationality is perceived, I hadn’t discovered a cultural difference between France and Canada that I couldn’t conform to. I have now. I can't conform to how nationality is perceived here. France, you are welcome to continue to practice and change your norms however you wish within your borders, revel in your patriotism, and enjoy all the benefits and challenges you face; I respect your right to sovereign governance and to chose your own way of life, but I can’t do it myself. I am proud of how my nation defines nationality, and that it is not linked to this vague concept of ethnicity.

Happy Canada Day, everyone. 

Dear Holland, Please Send Windmills.

I’m starting to think we were just due for a flooding, of, you know… everywhere. France is flooding, Prague is flooding, the prairie towns of Western Canada are flooding, Holland was flooding but they've got that under control… and my hometown is under about 3 meters of rain and river water. Just incase any of you were wondering, if I happen to see a big boat full of animals Imma flip shit.

Kayaking down the street in High River

Why every Canadian should learn to canoe at a young age. See? It's a life skill.

Ok that’s not true, mostly I’m laughing because at this point - on the other side of the world from my friends and family - what am I actually able to do? I’ve tried patrolling the media sites like a coonhound on the hunt, but that’s counterproductive because you only see the worst of the flooding, over and over and over again. I’ve also tried the social media approach, only that’s also been swamped (… no pun intended) with images of what my friends are doing on the ground. Mostly at this point it seems to be pumping water out of their basements. If they still have basements. Or if all they have left is a basement. I’m cheering for all of you, and I’m sorry that this sucks so much.

Langevin Bridge. Normally there is 5-6 meters of clearance under  this bridge.

Downtown Calgary at sunset, taken by a friend of mine June 21st. When he finds his 'before' image I'll add that for comparison.

Instead of the standard pictures of destroyed homes, roofs being torn apart as they're washed into bridge struts, or our flooded Saddledome, I've tried to collect just the funny (pretty?) images here. If you're looking for destruction, go visit Google.

Catching His Wife - Photo from during the evacuation of downtown

Ingenius use of construction equipment. Front-end loaders for the win! Please note the dog included in the load.

On the bright side, we’ve discovered that we have pretty much the best Mayor ever, and that only in Canada would you end up with too many volunteers and too much donated food for emergency shelters. Citizens have been instructed to stay in their homes unless they’re already part of an aid effort, and keep water use to a minimum. For all of you at home who are twiddling your thumbs because you can’t get to the floodplain to shovel muck, your work place or school is shut down and you’ve already had your 5 minute shower, here’s a blog entry to (hopefully) brighten your cloudy day.

The most badass shot you'll ever see of Canadian politicians. Prime Minister Harper, Mayor Nenshi and  Permier Redford preparing to assess the damage via helicopter.

Citizens noticed that our Mayor had been working around the clock (literally), so they started a twitter train encouraging him to get at least a little bit of rest. Best part? It worked.

First off: Eraser shavings and pregnancy.

There are some pretty amazing conversations had in language classrooms. When your medium of communication is something that you’re learning, it’s not unusual to be reduced to charades and childlike sound effects. I will strongly argue that this is one of the most entertaining and best parts of class. Take last week, for example. We were discussing causal sentences and how they are structured. I’d been less than 100% successful, and as such had been using my eraser… lots. We came to a lull in the lesson so I asked the instructor if there was a word in French for eraser shavings. She thought for a minute, and said that no, there wasn’t really a word for them. They’re just eraser pieces.

Olivia, a very lively English lady at the end of the table added her 2 cents as well. (Please imagine this next sentence in an adorably posh British accent) “Well they’re not really shavings in the first place. Shavings are what you get from like… sharpening a pencil. You don’t shave your rubber!”

I laughed. I laughed so hard that initially I couldn’t get the words out to explain why I was laughing because there wasn’t another North American in the room. In Canada, a ‘rubber’ is slang for condom. (Sometimes it's used to refer to rubber boots, too) Only… 'rubber' is more like the slang from the last generation, that’s a term my parents use. Clearly in British english though, ‘rubber’ is their word for eraser. It just came out of left field and I hadn’t been ready for the image that popped into my head, which was of a fully inflated condom being shaved on something resembling a cheese grater. Because that’s a good idea, shaving a condom before you use it. Really augments the effectiveness of the thing.

 Once I’d managed to explain this to the class (in french, of course) they thought it was hilarious. The instructor promptly followed that up by informing us that in french, you don’t actually get pregnant. We paused… regarding her suspiciously. Isn’t that kinda what France is known for? Gourmet food culture, romance… generally there are babies involved in the latter stages of the second one, and they have to come from somewhere. I'm fairly certain the Brits were getting ready for stork jokes.

“In French, pregnancy is like love. You don’t ‘get’ love, you fall in love. You don’t ‘get’ pregnant, you fall into pregnancy.” That’s… actually a very sweet notion. She smiled and laughed, then swung us straight back into bedlam with: “Unless you shave your rubber, then it’s more like an accident. Oops! I fell in love. Oops! I fell into pregnancy!”

Oh yeah, we’re a very mature group of adults. 

It's a Dutch Thing: Dijks and Windmills

As promised, I’m back to regale you with stories about windmills! As I type this I have to direct all of you towards the new (er… to me) album by Train, California 37. I’d heard a few of the big hit tracks but didn’t realize they’d released a whole album until Sunday in the car with WDG. Figures, right? This is the part where you all realize that I live under a gigantic pop culture rock hahaha!

Moving on, Sunday was full of Windmills. We spent the morning puttering around Rotterdam, and then drove out towards Kinderdijk. Just for the record, dijks in Holland are these pretty little green hills that just sort of rise out of the otherwise flat landscape. When you learn about Holland in grade school (ok, at least in Canada) you get this image of a country living behind something resembling a large stone retaining wall.

Big dijk, courtesy of Google, that much more closely resembles what I was expecting a dijk to look like.

            There could very well be gigantic dijks like that in Holland, but the ones I saw were greener, inhabited, and notably smaller. They were abundant, and had bike paths on top to boot! Really it makes sense, if you need to have a network of raised sections all over the nation why not layout an incredibly extensive network of bike paths? The canals also varied widely in size. Some, like the ones in the farmer’s fields, were so small I could have hopped from one side to the other without a problem. This one was so big that I watched two fairly large cargo ships zip past each other in front of me, with plenty of room to spare.

The bike path on top of the dijk.

Looking along the dijk at water level. WDG was at least slightly worried I'd gotten myself stuck when I realised the leather soles of my little boots had zero traction on algae-covered rocks.

           Shortly thereafter we arrived at Kinderdijk, which translates (roughly) to ‘Children’s dijk’. As far as I could tell, Kinderdijk is a wetland nature reserve, but also a historic museum/tourist attraction. It’s mostly made up of two long canals with old windmills running down each side; the cute ones! Once we’d arrived we made the little museum center our first stop. In the museum the main attraction was an incredibly engaging video on the history of Kinderdijk, windmills, and Holland’s history in general. The film was played on six different screens, with a different stream of images and movement on each one. Viewers sat in the middle of the screens while the action happened all around you, so that you had to keep turning in order to follow it all. It was outrageously well done, and I was very impressed. They made the whole thing fun! Important information included in this short;

1.      Holland is below sea level because they have been pumping water out of the soil, and the land has settled as a result.
Check, knew that.

2.      There are windmills in Holland, and have been since basically the beginning.
Check, knew that.

3.      Kinder translates as ‘child’, and there is debate about how exactly the dijk received its name, but all the stories involve either children (surprise) or that this set of dijks were tiny compared to others.
Ok, I didn’t know that but arriving at that conclusion isn’t tough.

4.      The windmills are what pump the water out of Holland.
… oh.

            Yes, that is my terrible secret. I knew there were windmills; I didn’t know they were responsible for the water management. In all fairness, I want it noted that there are a variety of other things windmills can be used for, they’re useful contraptions. There is apparently a phrase that goes along with how much work it has taken over the years to build (drain?) Holland; ‘God made the earth, but the Dutch made Holland’. At the very least I have to agree with the sentiment of the statement, this country definitely didn’t just fall into its citizen’s lap.

Kinderdijk historic windmills, much cuter than the really tall, modern ones we have on the prairies at home.

Anyway, once I had a better grasp on the windmill situation we borrowed a pair of bicycles and began to cycle around the park section of the site. It was a very windy day, but it felt good to ride a bike again. We do a whole lot of car driving in Canada, and I have a shiny new bicycle at home waiting for me that I don’t get to use this summer because I’m in Europe. I’ve decided that riding along a bike path next to historic windmills is a completely acceptable exchange.

A little ways down the path there was a windmill open to tourists, whoo! So we locked up the bikes and in we went. There were four floors in the windmill, but the ceilings were at different heights for each floor. The ground floor had a nice high ceiling, well out of my reach even if I stood on WDG’s shoulders. The second floor had this little low ceiling, so low that you had to bend over to pass under the rafters.

Low ceilings and big rafters in the windmill on the second floor.

The narrow ladder steps used to navigate the windmills. 

           The third floor ceiling was variable, and then up on the fourth ‘floor’ is where most of the big gears and machinery are kept. You could climb up and view it through a grate at the top of the ladder steps. Just for the record the pretty, colour balanced, sharp shot of the ladder steps was definitely from WDG’s camera. My little point-and-shoot failed me on that one haha!

WDG stepping in to make sure a proper picture of the steep ladder steps made it to the internet. 

            Shortly thereafter we had pancakes for a late lunch. (Er... be careful how you pronounce 'pannenkoek', which is the Dutch word for 'pancake', should you ever be faced with such a challenge. I'll give you a hint, that last syllable is pronounced like the first half of 'cookie', and not anything else. WDG nearly choked on his tongue when he heard my attempt at the word.) Then we had to get back in the car and drive to the airport, because my flight was due to depart just before 7:00pm.
            All in all, Holland was awesome. I've come to the conclusion that of all the countries I've travelled to - including the USA and New Zealand - Holland is the first one I'd actually consider moving to if I had to leave Canada for any significant length of time. Part of it is how relaxed and friendly the people are, part of it is how much green space they've incorporated into their cities. The plant life they have is surprisingly similar to what we've got in Canada near my hometown. Call me crazy, but it felt good to step out of all of the foreign sights, sounds, and smells of the south of France and into something that was suddenly (and surprisingly) familiar.
           Thank you Holland, and here's to you! I'll be back.

Requisite picture of tourist with windmills. 

It's a Dutch Thing: Amsterdam and Bicycles

           As promised, I’m now going to spend the week gushing about Holland like a lovesick teenager. From the beginning though:

           In my last year of high school I had the opportunity to participate in an international academic competition run out of Athens, Greece. For those of you familiar with it, it was a Model UN conference. (That’s right, there are travel perks that come with being geeky like me.) Anyway, being as it was an international conference I got to meet and work with other teens from literally all over the world, and that was pretty cool. Of the people I met at the conference I’ve only really kept in contact with one, this Wonderful Dutch Gentleman currently based out of Rotterdam (henceforth referred to as WDG). The last time I was in France we meant to meet up, but things fell through at the last minute. Ah… c’est la vie. This time though everything mostly fell into place, and I caught a flight up to Rotterdam.

The Crooked Cosmetics Shop

            You can’t really visit Holland without going to Amsterdam; the city is just too infamous. So on Saturday morning we headed off to Amsterdam and spent the day walking through the city center, eating really tasty open-faced sandwiches, viewing the art of the Rijksmuseum, touring the canals on a boat and walking through the Red Light District. During all of this I learned a great deal, including things like; my Dutch pronunciation is questionable at best, you really do have to watch out for the bicycles, and there are canals in Amsterdam. (Yeah… I didn’t know there were canals in Amsterdam… wait until you realize what I didn’t know about windmills on Wednesday.)

            The bicycles were initially a huge point of fascination for me. There are separate bicycle lanes throughout the city, but you don’t have to be a bicycle to use them. For example, scooters and mopeds with blue license plates are only permitted in the bike lanes, and can’t be out in traffic on the main roads. Now don’t get me wrong, in Canada we absolutely train children to look both ways before they cross the street, and I was no exception. The catch is that we’re taught to look for cars. You’d think that checking for bicycles would be part-and-parcel of the car-check/look-both-ways thing, but it very much isn’t. Areas of the road you think of as being safe to step out into for the purpose of looking for cars aren’t safe, and therein lies the problem. I can’t tell you how many times WDG caught me before I stepped out into bike traffic. Surely we broke 50.

            Once I’d figured out that spending the day in WDG’s back pocket was my best method of survival, I was distracted by the sheer variety of bikes that people ride. Just like in Vancouver, your best choice is to find yourself an old ratty bike so that no one steals it. Barring that, you should just find yourself an odd  (but very functional) bike. Nearly every bicycle I saw had a flat on the front for carrying a basket or a milk crate. I’m pretty sure every bike had a pannier rack, and many had child seats (sometimes on the front and back). If you wanted to be really efficient about it though, you could have a bike that was a family vehicle.

This is a Bakfiets, for the efficiant Amsterdam-dweller.
http://bakfiets.nl/eng/

          In the Rijksmuseum I was treated to all sorts of beautiful works of art by all sorts of Dutch artists, including the Night Watch by Rembrandt, and several paintings of Amsterdam before trees decorated the sides of the canals.

Amsterdam: Before the Trees

Amsterdam: After the Trees

          Once we’d covered all the culture we could fit into one day, WDG asked if there was anything else I really, really wanted to see before we left. The Red Light District, of course! I don’t know anyone who majored in Criminal Sociology during their undergrad (including me) who would turn down the chance to walk through the Red Light District in person. You can’t help it! After reading so many studies on the place for research papers, how could you not be curious? Well, I have to report that there were skulls along the way, lots of pride flags and enough ‘Coffee Houses’ to numb my nose, but the street itself was actually pretty normal. The Coffee Houses are artfully graffiti-ed in every colour of the rainbow, there is a wide variety of lights, and yes, there are busty women standing in windows, but it’s not exactly a pit of sin and sexual depravity.
          The only thing that really surprised me was the type of depicted nudity. What I mean by this is that the signs advertising the various services of each shop were visually more explicit than expected, but they were also fairly small and not displayed very prominently. There were whole window displays of heavy bondage toys and tools, but the cartoon pin-up nudes, photo pin-up/BDSM nudes, etc. etc. were mostly on 8.5x11 paper by the doors of the establishments. I think what I’m trying to say is that there was actually less nudity than I was expecting?

On the way to the Red Light District

            The street itself is also not very long. It’s funny; everyone makes such a big deal about the Red Light District, but it seemed pretty normalized by its surroundings. We walked from one end to the other in less than 10 minutes, and WDG laughed when I realized that it’s called the Red Light District because there are actually red street lights to light the street… I just thought ‘red light’ was a metaphor for a traffic light, and meant something like ‘don’t go here, it’s less than safe’.

            Oh come on, it makes sense but I’ll bet half of you didn’t know about the lights either. Go on now, listen to Roxanne and giggle. I even left you a link, complete with an old, cheesy 70's music video hahaha!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9XGsp8FpOQ

Failure to Send

          I'm going to start this post with a sigh, ready?



Sigh...



          Right, now that that's out of my system I'll explain where it came from.
          Early last week I confirmed that I was taking a weekend off from immersion language-learning by going up to Holland to visit a friend. Just for the record, that idea was brilliant, and the weekend was epic. What was less than brilliant was that I pushed off writing my blog post until the very last moment. Although in my defense... if your options are packing vs. writing a blog post, I strongly suggest you choose packing. Anyway, I'm fairly certain I pasted the blog into the window, but exited the window and shut it down before clicking 'publish'.

As my apology, please accept this photo. Cutest. Windmill. EVER!

          Basically what it boils down to is that I was all excited to write you up a fun blog post on the wonders of Holland (specifically Amsterdam, bicycles, Rotterdam, police horses, and windmills) following Friday's hilarious post (which covered a stunning exchange of French, Canadian English and UK English translation on erasers and pregnancy); only Friday's post has disappeared into internet netherspace, and that's sad.
          New plan! I'm going to break Holland into two posts (Monday, Wednesday) and on Friday we'll be back to eraser shavings and pregnancy (because really, that's a story worth knowing). In theory that means this whole inconsistent posting thing will start to right itself.
          In the meantime, here's a picture of Michael the Archangel (... ok I'm fairly certain that's who the tour guide said he was) slaying a dragon, on top of an elephant's head, between two doors in Amsterdam. Amsterdam, you definitely get points for originality.

Grocery Store Canons!

In my family, we’ve kinda got this thing with roosters. I don’t know where exactly the tradition started, or what its roots are, but we’re rooster people. Roosters in the kitchen are supposed to bring good luck. Only… live roosters in the kitchen would just bring an extraordinary mess, so typically the roosters are inanimate objects that vary in size, colour and level of epic. If you’re a part of my immediate family, you’ve probably got a rooster in your kitchen.

The Initiation Rooster is the plastic rooster that I’m pretty sure my stepdad is training us kids with. The Initiation Rooster is also known as Ricardo, and is very handsome for a plastic rooster; in fact, what you’re imagining in your head now that I’ve called him a ‘plastic rooster’ is probably not doing him justice, and that’s unfortunate. He looks more like he’s carved out of wood. I digress though. Ricardo the Initiation Rooster is currently living quite happily on a sunny side-table in the kitchen at my place. He had to move in with me when my parents discovered Papa Ricardo, who is notably more magnificent than Initiation Rooster Ricardo being as he’s ceramic and beautifully painted. Well... I’ve been accepted to law school and I’ll be moving away from my hometown in the fall. The boyfriend is staying in town for other schooling, though, and I can’t leave him rooster-less, so I believe now is an appropriate time to introduce the newest rooster in the family to the world.

World, meet Besancon. Besancon, meet the world!

Besancon, the Lucky French Rooster.

Please note that he is receiving a French name because he was found in Carcassonne, France, and not anywhere in Italy or the mainland USA. He is a metal rooster (in keeping with the trend that currently no two roosters in the family are made of the same material) and his ability to pair wine and cheese is unparalleled. Besancon will be accompanying me to law school, and (hopefully) bring me luck with memorizing case studies all day and night. I’ll need it, and it’s not like I’ll have time to hang out with living, breathing things while I’m in law school, so Besancon can function as a substitute! Now… if only I could train him to wash dishes…

Somewhere, my mom just read that last paragraph to my stepdad, and he just snorted milk out of his nose.

Anyway, now that the important business is out of the way we can cover other funny things that have happened in France recently! For example, another ridiculous grocery store adventure. Because that makes sense. Having ridiculous adventures in the grocery stores of foreign countries.

So I went to the grocery store yesterday all excited to pick up some goat cheese, a baguette, and apples for my petit-repas between 5:00-6:00pm. Dinner is typically eaten after 8:00pm here and that’s a long ways from lunch, so a snack is usually in order between getting home from class and dinnertime. I was fairly focused on the food, so I tripped my way up the stone steps, unplugged my earbuds and followed the queue of people headed into the grocery store. My hands were all tangled up in the cable of my earbuds, so the middle-aged gentleman ahead of me held the gate for me. Very kind of him. I said ‘Thank you’ and smiled, because that’s what you do when someone is kind to you. We both stepped over to the fruit and veggie stands that mark the beginning of the store proper, and were headed around the stands in opposite directions when he backtracked and came around towards me. Thinking I’d dropped something, I checked the ground… nope, iPod and other affects still present… I wondered what he wanted.

He smiled very broadly and said in a very kind voice “Tu est cannes, c’est bien.” … What? I was confused. In my vocabulary ‘cannes’ just means ‘cane’, like sugar cane or a walking cane. I smiled again and thanked him, it was clearly meant to be a compliment, whatever it was. I followed my thanks up with ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un canne?’ He realized French wasn’t my first language and groped for a synonym. ‘Magnifique.’

Oh, well that’s pretty dandy. I’ll take that random compliment. Cheers to middle-aged men who hold gates open for young women, right?

Well, I got home and wordreference-ed ‘canne’. It means cane, like a walking cane, I wasn’t wrong. Still confused I asked the instructor in class today what it meant, which was well within the bounds of normal. She prefers that we ask her to clarify if we run into a sign in the street or a phrase that we don’t understand. Sure glad I asked this time. Once I’d given her the context she laughed. “Oh, Kenna c’etait ‘canon’!”

What I think of when I hear 'canon'.
Ironically, this canon is also Canadian, and is on display at Niagara Falls.

… Now I’m a canon? The instructor started to explain that canons were these big iron contraptions from the middle ages that fired canon balls, and gestured the shape of a canon in the air with her hands. The whole class was giggling, we were all starting to wonder if some middle aged man had called me curvy ironically because I’m so distinctly not curvy. No no, the connotation of ‘canon’ is that you’re hot. That you have plenty of energy, and you go off with a ‘boom’.
Yes, that is as sexual as it sounds.

Now the class is in stitches. They thought it was hilarious that I'd done the super-naive, very polite, classically Canadian stereotype and said thank you for this. Our instructor noted that typically when a random middle aged man in a grocery store says ‘hey babe, you’re a canon!’ your inner ego says ‘well of course I am, win!’ and does a bit of a happy dance. How you react publically (because this is a random person twice your age hitting on you in a grocery store) is you do something like raise your eyebrow and spit out a phrase along the lines of “…and I’m taken, thanks very much.”

Welp, that’s sure not what I did. No wonder the little old lady by the cucumbers rolled her eyes.

Bienvenue a France, la terre du romance et des canons. 

Tintin and Maribell

This week has actually been pretty awesome. I got back from Carcassonne (and recuperated) just in time for Maribell’s last week here. Maribell is definitely the loudest of the group of girls I tend to hang out with. She is this very energetic, big-hearted Texan woman, who loves to tease me about saying ‘eh’ even though she is notorious for using not only ‘y’all’, but ‘all y’all’. Sigh… Americans hahaha! That means that basically all week we’ve been sauntering around Montpellier eating sorbet and tarts alternately, and window shopping.

Maribell caught unawares in Carcassonne

Now, I bring up window shopping for the express reason of explaining this afternoon. Maribell is not only a notorious user of ‘y’all’, but also a notorious shopper. Here’s the catch, she loves shopping for you! So of course, Laura and I have ended up with some wonderful new purchases, and Maribell hadn’t spent a dime… until this afternoon.

Maribell’s favourite phrases in French include ‘En Francais, Maribell!’ (which is the most common sentence she hears in class) and ‘I’m going to reflechir’ (which is Fringlish for ‘I’m going to think about it’). For three weeks now Laura and I have heard all about ‘that pair of amazing pants’ and ‘the cutest shoes ever!’. Today, because it was Maribell’s last afternoon in Montpellier we had our revenge, and it was so, so beautiful. We took Maribell shopping, with two rules.

1.      Laura and I weren’t buying anything

2.      No ‘reflechir’

It went incredibly well. Not only did Laura and I get to enjoy the extreme satisfaction of watching our friend finally purchase things for herself that she loved and looked good in, but for once we went home with full wallets. Win!

Maribell and Laura making faces.

More academically, I am outrageously thrilled that my French has progressed in a tangible way. Guys, this is a big deal, don’t miss the next sentence. I can understand Tintin cartoons!

That’s right, you heard it here first. I can understand children’s cartoons in French. My new favourite afternoon activity is sitting on my bed with my (steadily shrinking) bag of 5-cent-candy-that-wasn’t-5-cents from Carcassonne and watching Tintin. About 4 or 5 times an episode Tintin will use an expression that I have to double-check with wordreference.com, but I’m actually catching nearly all of it, and that feels like a huge accomplishment.

Tintin and the company, and a link to Tintin et l'Ile Noire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0hSBb3P4Y8

It’s funny, because I’m finding that I’ll work on something for a few weeks and feel like I’m not improving at all. Then, out of nowhere, suddenly something will change drastically. This Tintin thing is a great example. Last week was the first time I entered the intensive set of courses, which focuses almost entirely on oral communication and comprehension. Everyday we watch a film clip of some sort (a newsreel, tourist ad, movie short, etc.) and answer a sheet of about 10 questions. All of last week and right up until yesterday this week I couldn’t keep up with the film clips to save my life. I’d get two, maybe 3 questions answered and then just drown for the rest of the sheet. Watching the clip two or three times made little difference, they just spoke way too fast.

Yesterday, we watched a clip on a man named Stephen Clarke who wrote a book on the Secret Life of Paris, which is a spoof ‘survival guide’ for British nationals seeking to understand all the funny things the French do. Not only did I catch enough of the clip to tell you that, I answered 10/13 questions after the first viewing; and I got them right. Needless to say, I was shocked. Excited, to be sure, but also shocked.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, so I asked the girls about it. Unanimously they agreed that it’s happened to them while they’ve been here, and that you can’t predict when it’s going to happen, or with what. Currently I’m hoping something brilliant is going to materialize with my ability to properly pronounce words with loads of vowels in them, because right now I do funny things with ‘oh’, ‘oooooh’ ‘uh’ and ‘ueh’.

… Ok those aren’t exactly the official phonetic alphabet, but if you’ve ever attempted to learn French (read: all Canadians until grade 6) you know exactly what I’m talking about. 

Goldfish and Castles in Carcassonne

Did you wonder whether or not Body Combat had done me in on Friday? I have to admit, between Body Combat and the comparatively early wake-up time on Saturday to get to Carcassonne for a day-trip, I was starting to wonder if I hadn’t done myself in too. Sometimes, adults need naps too. Only by naps I mean gigantic grasse-matins (sleep-ins are called ‘fat mornings’ in France) and 5 cent candy. Of course, all of this comes with a story…

Looking down the ramparts of Castle Carcassonne, the walls surround the vielle-ville.

As you have likely already deduced from the title and first paragraph, I went to Carcassonne on an excursion with the school on Saturday! I’m having a hard time deciding whether I like Nimes or Carcassonne better, so that should be your first indicator that if you get the option, Carcassonne is somewhere you should visit. It’s a walled city (like Avignon) but on a much grander scale. As in… there are two tiers to the wall that surrounds this city, and a forward ‘bulge’ that juts out from the wall so that if you do happen to have someone attacking your castle, you can sent soldiers out onto this bulge and they can get rid of that nuisance for you. 

Michelle, Maribell and Laura up on the ramparts in the very chilly wind!

We all took great joy in romping all over the ramparts, but discovered halfway through our romp – very accidently – that you had to pay for a ticket to be there. Oops? Not a problem, I somehow managed to talk us into 4 free tickets to see the ramparts because we were students! That part I didn’t mean to do, but it was excellent, and serendipitous. Convincing the ticket vendor that we were all under the age of 25 was less innocent, but I don’t know that any man alive is foolish enough to ask Maribell for her ID when she gives him the look. The ‘Oh honey I’m Texan and y’all ain’t stupid enough to ask a woman her age now are you?’ look.

It’s a real thing.

Just don't ask.

Looking out over the city of Carcassonne.

Right! The castle! So inside this very large, two-tiered, very imposing and highly effective medieval wall there’s also the castle, which is a fort inside a fort. The city held a strategic location historically, so each generation of Dames and Lords who lived there augmented the security of the walled city in a different way.

By the time the 1600’s rolled around (I think… it may have been the 1700’s… I get those two mixed up in French… often…) the city was deemed impregnable, and invading forces avoided it and the surrounding lands.

There’s also (what looks to be) a very pretty cathedral, only there was a wedding taking place so we couldn’t go in and investigate. The big amphitheatre behind the cathedral was being used as a reception area, so we couldn’t investigate that either. What we did find was something none of us expected though.

The most amazing lunch I've had in France so far, Charcuterie with Chevre (goat cheese) and grapes. Served with fresh baguette :9

Laura, Maribell, Michelle and I were strolling innocently down the cobbled rues and avenues of Carcassonne, past the shops selling entire sets of chainmail armor, postcards and epic charcuterie lunch plates when we stumbled on something amazing.

Five cent candy.

5 cent candy, in barrels. 

I was starting to think that this didn’t exist in Europe! It doesn’t really, I mean it kind of pops out at random festivals, but sweet things in France tend to come from a patisserie. (I have zero complaints about this, btw) We were all very excited, and it was an excellent treat. Unfortunately, they did not count the price of candy by the number of tiny candies that you bought, they did it by weight. Uh… that was definitely not something I’d built my bag of candy around… So, 13 Euros worth of 5 cent candy later, we stepped out of the store and resolved to savor each sugary morsel given that we had to pay so much for them. It has also made me stop and wonder... It's not often that I actually have candy like that when I'm at home, but I've been craving it since about week 2 here. Maribell and Michelle noted similar cravings, as did David - who is the other token Canadian here - from Toronto. We've come to the conclusion that it's probably linked to how much more processed sugar there is in North American food than European food. How depressing is that?

On the bright side, our mood was quickly lifted when we discovered the most amazing goldfish bowls I’ve ever seen.

Posh goldfish accommodation.

In summary; we spent all day in a castle, eating candy and watching goldfish. To help the recovery process along on Sunday, we had naps. Possibly both my nephews (under the age of 8) will require someone other than me to cover what makes being an adult so different from being a child with them.