Introducing Canada

The first text we have looked at together in my second year class is Duke Redbird's 'I am a Canadian'.
Students appreciated the balance that the poem presents, the realities that are absent in South Park episodes, and the diversity communicated by the poems east to west Canadian journey. Their assignment is to write their own poems entitled 'I am a Dane', I wrote one that is halfway between the two. They had a good laugh reading/hearing how someone from Canada is experiencing their country.

I am in Denmark for a year

  

I am in Denmark for a year

I have eaten pickled herring

I struggle to pronounce the name of the place I work

and the names of my students

I am in Denmark for a year

I have eaten a hotdog in a tubular bun

I have watched people and puppets sleep on TV,

surveillance camera footage of hallways and bathrooms

I am in Denmark for a year

I giggle when I see the word fart

a bus reads Turistfart,

Fart –the title of a book in Gus’ room

I am in Denmark for a year

I have walked the cobbled streets

Hurried my children through Pushers Street in Christiania

visited castles to exhaustion

I am in Denmark for a year

I bought my first cell-phone

Rode a 100 yr old roller coaster at Tivoli

watched a game at the national stadium

I am in Denmark for a year

I have sat through meetings not comprehending a word

Pushed grocery carts with 4 wheels that turn

got lost in conversion, kroners to dollars

I am in Denmark for a year

I will go to Legoland

 I have seen reconstructed Viking ships

learned to count to ten, been warned about going further

I am in Denmark for a year

waited impatiently to teach English and find familiarity

supported my children who are nervous and new

learned that any differences are different enough

I am in Denmark for a year

had a bowl of cookies in weird milk for desert

read about what Canadians are like

am I too polite?

I am in Denmark for a year

and wonder what will it be like

to return to my home

in

native

land

I do wonder how it will feel to return to a previous familiarity when the different of this years experience has become familiar. And then on the bus home yesterday I read:

'After you have navigated home from travels far away, there can be nothing but improvement in every aspect of your life'  (in Harper's)

Sounds good.