Fast Food Trays

As I struggle to understand Thomas Aquinas - I'm convinced he would be a shark of a criminal defense attorney today. How can you read this guy and NOT have 'reasonable doubt'???? I swear he made up words just to be confusing. Anyway, I wanted to ramble on something even less profound than whether or not the soul is 'subsistent'. That subject of even less profundity than usual is: the fast food tray.

Question: What do you do with your fast food tray and garbage when you're done eating in a restaurant?

Well, I hear you - how silly! But I will contend there's a major cultural difference here. Now, I'm not always sure if it's a difference between American and Canadian cultures and/or between East and West coast culture, but here it is: Most people around here get up and leave all their garbage and trays on the table, bypassing the garbage can. I remember when living in the Philadelphia area that it was expected - via 'unwritten rule' - that if the garbage cans said 'Thank You' that meant you were expected to throw out the garbage and stack your tray. Doesn't that make sense - shouldn't you throw it away?

There's is where (as I contemplate writing a paper about free will in philosophy) I just can't control myself. I can't give in: I throw my stuff away - it's just too ingrained in me. Hmmm....maybe I should go back to Aquinas and see what he thinks about trash.

Colombian Food!

I turn again to food that I miss. Now for Colombia! Yes, all you North Americans! COLOMBIA with two letter O's! It's amazing how often that's misspelled even in the most reputable of newspapters. When it's the country: Colombia. When it's the province: British Columbia. OK?

Anyhoo... my yummy misses from the corner of South America.

1)Ajiaco is a chicken stew. It's served with capers, heavy cream and avocado. The best ajiaco is a matter of taste. Everybody had their own recipe and argued over what the best was. I loved being judge for any contest! Here's a picture:


2) Arroz con pollo ('chicken with rice') I had a lady clean my apartment every week or so and she would make this for me. I loved just eating it out of the pot when I got home. A simple rice dish - the rice was tinged with a bit of ketchup while cooking. I would pour hot sauce ('aji') over it.

3) The lady who cleaned also made empanadas. A sort of meat and rice pie. I loved dousing those in aji too!

4) Hot chocolate with a mild, young cheese was served regularly for breakfast. I loved this - miss it more than you can imagine!

I guess I didn't have the links like the Philly one, so I'm thinking of some places in Bogota that I especially miss, too:

- I loved the hamburgers at El Corral. They actually had green tomatoes on them and then you could order anything else you would want. I loved getting mine with guacamole on it!

- I really miss the mall called Bulevar Niza - a short walk from my apartment! I called the third floor 'my office' as a joke - I almost always went there in the afternoons and often had supper at one of the many restaurants there. I had many a 'supernacho' platter with Ruth at Todo Taco. Sometimes we would eat at Crepes and Waffles! I remember a great ice cream place too - Benny's (I think it was called). There was a theater (movies were english with spanish subtitles!) and afterwards, we could check out books and have a cappicino at OMA libros!

Weather

One thing I will never get used to on the West Coast is how people perceive the weather. We have had a stinkin' hot summer, followed by a (pretty much) too warm fall and people love it??? Well, the people on the news here talk about how "gorgeous" each day is. That's easy for them to say as they work in central air conditioned buildings.

Honestly, we can have a stretch of months of hot, sunny days and things could be dying all around us. Forests bursting in flames, etc. And people walk around saying how "gorgeous" it is. Then we have ONE day (yes, count 'em, ONE) day of rain and everyone seems to be borderline suicidal.

On the other hand, one of my secret ways of tormenting west coasters -note: In order to survive happily in another culture - one must discover at least one way to annoy the people of that culture without totally becoming their enemy. It's a subtle little survival trick - is to walk around on a grey, rainy day with a cheerful expression and talk about how lovely the weather is. That's just fun!

On the other hand, talking about the weather here is not 'small talk' like it is in most other places....

Anyways...

Canadians speak English (and French, but not here in BC). Many Americans think, as I did in my early years in Pennsylvania, that Canadians actually speak the same language then....

I learned in a childhood visit to Sudbury, Ontario (most BC'ers shudder when I say the name of that city. My response always is: "Hey! Alex Trebek came from Sudbury!" ) My aunt married a retired nickel miner (How Sudbury is THAT!?!) We went up sometime in my childhood to visit them in his home town. Side note: Even MORE Canadian, they were snow birds, living in Florida half the year! I realized very quickly that "Eh?" was like the Canadian equivalent of "Aloha", which means all sorts of things.

One time my uncle was struggling to fix some mechanical monster of a thing - maybe it was a log-splitter, I kind of forget - when he told me to go across the street while he tested it. Puzzled a bit, I complied and watched as he rip-roared this thing to life in his garage. Over that loud roar, I vividly remember his broad smile and his shouting of "EH!?!" right before the thing blew up in a billow of smoke. (No injuries, other than pride..)

Another time we were at the little car race track, you know, where you actually drive the things? Whatever you call it... I went to the snack bar and in typical Philly-ish English asked for a "soda". The guy said they didn't have soda - I was stunned and asked what he had : "pop" and I had another lesson in Canadian English. Although, to be fair, most of the US calls it "pop", too. Except for the Southern US, where everything is "coke". *sigh*

Canadian English fascinates me. I even found a Canadian Spelling Dictionary on the web! Fascinating reading, btw!

Other subtle difference include: "Anyways" - I say 'anyway' - How about you? Or, in BC at least, the kids say "pencil crayons" instead of "coloured pencils" (please note the Canadian spelling in the last one!!) It took me a few years to realize that 'pencil crayon' is the English speaking way of saying the French side of the box!

My mother-in-law says 'serviettes' instead of napkins. She's unsuccessfully tried to convert me to saying that. I'm proud to say my kids are hanging in there with 'napkins'!! I have nothing against Canadian English - I just can't stand 'serviettes' for some reason.

Oh, wait, I can't stand the way 'pasta', 'drama' and 'Mazda' are pronounced. Canadians tend to say the first 'a' as a strong short 'a' sound. In the states, the first 'a' is pronounced as a 'schwa' sound. Don't know what a 'schwa' is? Check your local dictionary!! It is for this reason that I will never own a 'Mazda' in Canada. I like Hondas better, anyways.... Oops...

History - A New 'Hobby'

"Perserverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages."

~ General George Washington



I've just finished reading 1776 and it got me to thinking about how moving to Canada has really made me more interested in history. I think what really got me started was when I had to take two courses in order to get my permanent teaching certificate here in BC. The two courses were basic, 100 level courses in Candian geography and in Canadian history. Now, there were other teachers in the courses who were from other provinces here in Canada and they were bored out of their gourds because they had heard most of this stuff before. Me, I loved it. I didn't know any of this stuff and I really enjoyed learning about the history of Canada. I especially was interested in how Canadian and American history intertwine with each other. You can't really have one without the other and, you really couldn't ask for better neighbors. (Despite that softwood thing. For the record, though, cough up the money US - you owe Canada a bundle.....but I digress)

I really enjoyed reading A Short History Of Canada by Desmond Morton. Then I couldn't resist Canadian History for Dummies by Will Ferguson. I loved that the US tried to invade Canada at least 4 times in the early years. Lincoln actually contemplated fighting the Civil War on two fronts - and Canada's birth year, 1867 is not coincidentally located closely to the end of the Civil War....

Which makes me think of 1776, which prompted a question from my wife: "What's that about?"
I looked at her blankly: "Well, 1776...." I'm thinking it should be obvious. She basically replied with "Fine, don't tell me then..." I did very nicely explain the significance of the year.

Now, 1776 was not a year of triumph. It was a year of hardship and defeat for the American forces. It's amazing (and this is what intrigues me most about reading history) how just a little more effort from one of the sides in a different direction could have changed the course of history. How close the battle was. As an American, I tend to associate 1776 with the year (singular) of the Revolutionary War, but it was just the beginning. The Treaty of Paris ending the war was signed in 1783 - a little more than 6 years later.

That quote above is significant, McCullough indicates, because that was kind of George Washington's theme throughout the war:

"Again and again, in letters to Congress and to his officers, and in his general orders, he had called for perserverance - for 'perserverance and spirit,' for 'patience and perserverance' for 'unremitting courage and perserverance.' " (p. 293)

I have read elsewhere, perhaps in McCullough's book, John Adams, that somewhere along the way Washington realized he did not actually have to win battles to win the war. He had to keep fighting until they couldn't afford to fight any more. He knew that eventually, the British had to realize it wasn't worth it. So perhaps it was perserverance, and not brilliance strategies that one this war. There's a lesson in there somewhere...

Bogota Memories

I wanted to write a bit about my time in Colombia (BTW - Colombia, the country, is spelled with two o's). I have tried to include a picture taken by my pitiful webcam of a poster that I have now in my computer room. It is my favorite poster from Colombia - we have quite a few - because, possibly it is the most abstract. Which, in some ways, is the best way to remember Colombia. A beautiful country, sometimes difficult to understand. Definitely hard to live in, but you'll never want to leave once you've been there a while.

I arrived Good Friday in 1989 and just about everything was closed. I had to prepare hurriedly for class on Monday. I was basically given a stack of teacher manuals and told good luck by a very tired looking mother who was filling in for the last few months and was glad her time in the 3/4 split class was over. I got to work to begin my first full-time teaching experience in the garage of the house that the school had rented.

Now for those of you who don't know Colombian history, I was living in Colombia at the time of Pablo Escobar. He was in control of the infamous Medellin drug cartel. He was a nasty, vicious sort of man to his enemies. A loving, caring leader to those who had earned his favor.

By the fall of 1989, when I returned, visa hurriedly worked out, to teach a grade 2/3 class, Escobar had begun his campaign of terror that would ultimatel lead to his dramatic and televised shooting on a rooftop by police. Escobar was randomly bombing anything, banks, food stores, etc. to protest and try to stop the extraditionof drug dealers to the US. For more details of these times, please see the bibliography below.

One time, I had just returned from a grocery shopping expedition at Carulla (grocery store) next to Bulevar Niza (mall that I lived close to) when I felt a shudder go through my apartment. I looked out my window and saw smoke rising from the direction of Bulevar Niza. My good friend (now my wife), Ruth was still there, I thought. I called her apartment and she was there - I sighed in relief. It turns out the car bomb went off in front of the Carulla, but didn't level it. One of the families at my school was actually there when it happened. The father was getting a haircut close to the grocery store and he ran out to try to get into the store after the bomb went off. The police hit him with batons to keep him from entering.

His wife and daughter were in the store. The girl must have been around 5 or 6 at the time. When the bomb went off, the mother and daughter flew away from each other. The mother looked frantically for the daughter and found her, miraculously, sitting on top of a pile of rubble that fell from the ceiling! Needless to say the family came out of it physically undamaged. The news that night said that only 8 or so people were killed but the father later told me that he saw a lot of bodies being quickly hidden by the police. The news was toned down publicly so as not to cause panic.

So you must think it was awful to work there. No, it was tense, yes, but I loved my time there. Perhaps it was because that is exactly where God wanted me at the time. How could I not feel secure in God's hands?

I loved Bogota! I love that it is the land of 'eternal spring'. It is quite situated at quite a high altitude, 8,600 feet or so. There are no extremes in climate there. It is either raining or it isn't. I can't recall talking or hearing much about the weather there, because it would be the most boring topic. Cool in the morning, warming up during the day. The sun setting at 6:30 and rising 12 hours later. Only a few minutes variance during the year.

I loved walking to Bulevar Niza. I often joked that the third floor of that mall was my 'office' to my students. The third floor had all the restaurants and the movie theater... I would vary where I would eat each night. I was single, the US dollar was strong and it was actually cheaper and easier to eat out. I pretty much would only prepare lunch and breakfast at my apartment.

I loved being able to see the Andes mountains around me. I loved that they were green and filled with trees all the way up. We had a fantastic principal, Stan Yohe, who would take the teachers on tours around Bogota and to towns just a short ride away for the weekends. Stan was a historian at heart and would be forever telling us stories about what happened here and there. We really didn't need any other guide!

And the food! My mouth waters thinking of ajiaco, - a kind of chicken stew, of arroz con pollo, of empanadas. I grew to love the traditional breakfast of hot chocolate with a young, runny kind of cheese - I think it was called campesino. I loved grabbing a bus like we grab taxis in North America. You would just wave it down and tell it to stop where ever you needed it to. I learned the buses fairly quickly, once I got my own apartment and actually preferred them over a taxi. They were not only cheaper, but it was easier for me to 'blend' in on a bus - I didn't have to talk so much...

Colombia still is a violent place, gripped in an unending civil war, but I know what the place is really like. I have seen the Colombian heart and I miss it. The violence is not what Colombia actually is - I would hope that others would discover that, too!

Bibliography:

Bowden, Mark. Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, c2001.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. News of a Kidnapping. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, c1997.

On Culture

I have been fascinated with the idea of culture ever since I set foot on Colombian soil. I have continued to explore cultural differences since then. There is not only cultural differences between countries, but between regions of a country, between religious denomination, even between family units, if you want to go that far.

I think it was Aristotle who insisted that we define terms before talking about anything. Indeed, he insisted that most arguments are mostly about definitions of terms.

So a definition of culture would be a good place to begin:

"Culture is an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of any given society. Culture refers to the total way of life of particular groups of people. It includes everything a group of people thinks, says, does, and makes."
(from Living in Colombia by Hutchinson, et al.)

This is my first introduction to culture, through the concept of culture shock that was carefully outlined in the above mentioned book. By experiencing culture shock personally, I learned a lot about what defined my culture and made the culture I was currently living in different, even 'strange' at times.

What are the stages of culture shock?

1. The Honeymoon period ~ Just what it says - nothing is wrong with this culture and everything is right and beautifully different!!
2. Flight, Dependency or Fight ~ None of these strategies are healthy and a healthy mind moves beyond this stage. Flight is retreating into a cocoon and avoiding all outside influences, i.e. creating a North American oasis of your home. Dependency is the other extreme = "going native". Fight is insisting on how 'wrong' the culture is and how 'right' your way of behavior is.
3. The Road to Recovery ~ This shows that you are on your way to being a healthy part of the culture. You are more open to cultural differences, you participate more, you may even joke about your cultural faux pas.
4. Cultural Adjustment ~ You now accept the host culture as a different way of living. You are able to live in it and appreciate the differences without being totally immersed and lost in them.

What is fascinating about this is that everyone goes through culture shock at different rates, depending on your length of stay. It actually takes longer to go through if you are moving to a country for the long-term (10 years) than if you are planning on being there for just 6 months of a year. Another thing that is interesting is that re-entry culture shock (returning to your home culture) can actually be a harder adjustment than the initial culture shock.

Now, for me it has been a difficult adjustment to life here in Canada, or should I say, Western Canada - for the culture of East vs. West I feel has made it more difficult for me. For example, when I have visited my sister-in-law in Winnipeg, I felt that the culture there was more like the culture I grew up in near Philadephia than here in Abbotsford. Winnipeg is definitely more of an urban culture. Abbotsford, technically, is a city, but not a city like I have ever experienced before in any place I have lived before.

Bibliography:

Hutchinson, William R. et al. Living in Colombia: A Guide for Foreigners. (Yarmouth, Maine: Interalculture Press, Inc.) 1987.

Living in Canada - An American Perspective

Since I have traveled a bit, I have become fascinated by how different cultures work. I enjoy reading about cultures and I have become more interested in history over the years.

The running joke is that Canadians are just 'misplaced' Americans or that they are just an offshoot of the US, embracing the same culture. I would argue that they are a unique culture, and that this culture that is now in place is very needed in this world that can be dominated by images, ideas, etc. from the US. Canada is in a unique position to be a 'check and balance' to the US. Hopefully, Canada will begin to embrace that concept of being a Berean-like thinker to the US. There are some hopeful signs in the latest Canadian government, led by Stephen Harper.

Anyway, what are the key ideas that float around that make up the Canadian identity. I have found that a lot of it boils down to this quote:

"A Canadian is someone who is always asking, 'What is a Canadian?'"...(will add info about where I got quote when I find it...)

The Canadian identity seems to be wrapped up in the idea of questioning, probing, wondering. Sometimes this does look a bit neurotic, but it really isn't. Canadian culture is more open to other ideas and cultures. They don't usually just 'settle' for an answer...they want reasons.

Being outside of the US for so long, I have noticed that Americans (including me) have a tendency to be more sure. Don't bother me with more questions, I've already figured it out. President Bush's idea of "with us or against us" is, to me, something that is taking the American mindset to the extreme. (Don't get me wrong, either, I love my home country, but all cultures have their failings.)

I am fascinated by the interplay between the two countries over time. How Canada's very existence is due to the USA. How the idea that "Canadians are Americans that rejected the Revolution." (Nothrup Frye said that) is true. I think it is fascinating how the birth year of Canada, 1867, is right on the heels of the end of the US Civil War (1865).

I am fascinated by Prime Minister's and Presidents and how they get along. There's LBJ grabbing Pearson by the collar and telling him to 'stop pissing on my carpet!' (PM Pearson was not a big fan of the Vietnam War and actually talked out loud about it). There's Trudeau's famous 'sleeping elephant' reference.


Essential reading for Americans in Canada:

Coupland, Douglas Souvenir of Canada (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre) 2002

Ferguson, Will Canadian History for Dummies (Toronto: CDG Books Canada) 2000

Ferguson, Will Why I Hate Canadians (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre) 1997

Ferguson, Will & Ian Ferguson How To Be A Canadian (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre) 2001


Essential TV viewing for Americans in Canada:

CBC

Spend a week or a month, if you dare, and watch CBC. If you do, let me know...you should be rewarded, or something...

In my opinion, the best, funniest and most informative show about Canada is The Rick Mercer Report

And a word to my Canadian friends: Yes, Rick did "Talking to Americans". Yes, it was funny. However, Rick's moved on. So should you. End of comment :-)



Essential website for all Americans to have under "Favorites" while living in Canada (believe me, you'll need it!):

THE Canadian Spelling Dictionary!!

It wouldn't hurt to get the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, either!!