Haida Gwaii Brain

One of the best parts about being able to work from home is the ability to decide that I can take a break and go for a walk without worrying that someone will accuse me of abusing my prep time, I know I will come back and work later and in the end be more productive. Not to mention that often it is during such breaks that I am able to come up with good ideas and lessons start to take shape. It was on such a break last week that I realized how much I have come to view the world around me from a Haida Gwaii perspective.

One of the things we appreciate about Ringsted (where we live now) are the trails nearby that run along the creek and through wooded areas and farmers fields, it was through one of these wooded areas I was walking when I had my encounter. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, a large black form beneath a tree to my right, my brain said ‘bear’. Not until I had identified the animal as a cow did I remember where I was.

I have spent a lot of time in recent years thinking about place based education, this year I am getting a really good idea of how place has educated me. A couple of days ago a storm they are calling the St. Jude storm came through town, our reaction, ‘we get a few of these each year back home’. But this one killed about 15 people (two or three in Denmark) so maybe it was worse, but it didn’t sound worse and the house didn’t shake nearly as much as our house back home.

The other day in class we talked about the commercial seal hunt, a topic I have covered before, last time few seemed to understand why people would care about people killing seals because everyone knows that seals eat fish and are a nuisance to people who are trying to fish. This time we had a different discussion with me playing the ‘what about the local people’ role, partly to fuel discussion, partly because I remembered a students words from a classroom in Masset.

Oak tree

We had some beautiful fall days this week, the kind of days that make you find ways to take your class outside. And so it was that we walked down the road to a tree, an Oak tree that demands to be noticed. My students were instructed to speak only in English on our field trip (it is their habit to speak Danish whenever they are talking among themselves) and when we reached the tree they were to start by recording words that came to them as they looked at the tree. From there they wrote whatever they were inspired to write, for some that meant very little, not enough structure, but most made the experience clearly worthwhile. On the way back to school one student commented that it was the first time they had done anything of this sort in English class, he asked me if I had seen ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ and drew comparisons to the movie and told me that in his experience teachers didn’t like the movie because of the way Robin Williams teaches. We had a good conversation about teaching and about learning, for some the walk to the tree was the best possible way to spend the class, for others it was not structured enough, they didn’t know what I wanted.

Over the next couple of days I wondered what I would write for sharing at the beginning of next class, I looked at the tree through the bus window, I procrastinated, and then on a spare block between classes I visited Wikipedia and enlisted it’s help with my poem.

600 existing species

evergreen and deciduous

your flowers are catkins

your fruit, a nut called acorn in a cup-like structure – a cupule

Genus Quercus

Genus Cyclobalanopsis

high tannin offers you resistance

your grain marks are appealing

a keystone species in a wide range of habitats

you live in constant fear of Sudden Oak Death,

and Oak Wilt

a symbol of strength and endurance

sacred to Zeus and Thor

Oak tree I hardly knew thee

when I stood beneath your stretched out arms

and thought of you as

towering,

lonely,

dying.

I know this post is incomplete without a photo of the tree but when I bought my cellphone (my first) upon arrival here I went for the cheapest option, I should have got one with a camera.

Barcelona finale

One of the best parts about new places (about life?) is the food, if you are open to trying new foods you can learn a lot about a place and truly experience it through it’s food. When people visit us at our home they will eat deer and fish, I let place dictate what I eat and appreciation for the food of different places increases my enjoyment of places, Barcelona was no exception.

Some of the best places we visited in Barcelona were the markets, places I suspect many do the bulk of their grocery shopping as grocery stores were hard to find and quite small when we found them. My favourite parts of the markets were the fish/seafood stalls where all manner of sea dwelling creatures could be purchased for consumption. I suppose I was too distracted by all there was to look at in the markets because we took no pictures there, no kids in front of the fish table pictures.

What struck me about the fish stalls was the variety of species available for purchase. If it comes out of the water and you can eat it, it was there. At the first market there was also a stand where they deep fried sea creatures, we bought some squid and a mixed container that had a variety of batter covered fish and bits, including what I know as needle fish (very small), not the first time that a fish thought of by some as food for fish became food for me, deep fried goodness.

Beyond the fish tables were many stands selling land animals and it appears that all parts of the animal are sold and consumed. Some of the animal parts were identifiable, I can spot a liver, a kidney, a heart, a skinned head, others…. not so much. Then there are those who not only can identify but can tell the seller which one, or which part they want because they have an old family recipe that they are going to go home and make with these ingredients I can’t even identify, and I wish I was coming for dinner.

Having friends who live in the city also helped with the quest for local food. We have found it overwhelming when it comes time to pick a place to eat (beyond the bread, meat, cheese, and fruit from the backpack meals) and it was nice to have locals take us to good restaurants and order what they already know is good on the menu. Highlights for me were the beef with goat cheese tapas, the black rice that came with the paella (blackened with squid ink), the small white fish with olives and vinegar, and a variety of fish cakes all of which made we want more.

While out for dinner I mentioned how the fish stands at the market have species that are at least similar to ones we have in the waters at home but that we didn’t eat them and in some cases that I didn’t know what to do with them. Broth was the easy answer and I found myself wondering if I might try a bullhead broth when I get back, could be that everyone will be targeting them after they try my sculpin soup. One species that they were excited about were urchins, which I mentioned were eaten on Haida Gwaii too. Our friends love urchins and were very excited to hear about going kayaking and picking urchins up out of the water. As a matter of fact while we were going on about how much we loved Barcelona, our friends were asking questions about Haida Gwaii and seem to be formulating plans for a trip of their own. It was great to visit a city like Barcelona, and it was great to see that our friends who lived there were as excited about where we live as we were by their city.

FC Barcelona

The ever-present awareness that we were in the home of one of soccer’s greatest clubs was inescapable in Barcelona. Everywhere were reminders that we were in Barca territory, something that we as soccer fans appreciated. Again my North American keyboard fails me; Barca should have an accent under the ‘c’ to soften it.

Jesse had recently found an old Barca jersey at a thrift store in Ringsted and Gus had one he got from a relative as a birthday present once so they were both frequently attired in the local colours. The actual local colours are better reflected in Barca’s away jersey this year which looks a lot like a Catalan flag, Barcelona is in a region called Catalonia which is made up of parts of Northern Spain and Southern France, some within the territory are fiercely Catalonian rather than Spanish or French and the flags are hard to miss in Barcelona.

The tourist industry cashes in on Barca fever with Barca jerseys available at nearly every tourist store. Hungry for a snack? Why not grab a bag of Barca chips, or perhaps your preference is for a bag of Barca coloured popcorn. Drinking water comes from bottles and in a few restaurants we found Barca players on the label, Iniesta was in advertisements on the bank window, and tickets to games can be purchased at tourist information centers.

Sadly we were visiting during an international break so no game for us (bank account sighs with relief), but we could still go to the stadium, to the museum, and the superstore, which we did. The museum was like a really good commercial, I knew I was being manipulated but it worked. I think Gus said it best to his mom (opted out of museum and tour) ‘When we were in there I started to wonder if I liked Barcelona better than Bayern Munchen, but then I got outside and I was like, okay, Bayern’.

The first part we walked into was the story of Barcelona’s Unicef involvement, Barca was one of the clubs that did not have a sponsor (rare) until very recently when they paid Unicef to wear the name on their jersey, that is not how it usually works and it is hard to deny the power of that move. The display was all about charity work and respect and supporting others and teamwork and it made you feel warm and cozy. Unicef now finds home at the back of the jersey and the front this year has quietly changed from Qatar Foundation to Qatar Airways; slick entry into the world of sponsorship. Upstairs the emotional appeals continued with video touch screens that allowed parents and children alike to revisit great Barca moments, I watched the greats of the past while the boys watched today’s stars.

We had a good time at Camp Nou but it was a long walk back to the hotel and when we finally got back we were ready to relax and unwind while watching our favourite channel – BarcaTV.

Barcelona - Part 1

Starting work in August was not something that thrilled me, though I should say that the shorter summer felt longer due to all that we had done in the shortness of a month. I am just now returning from my first (and likely my only) fall break, from a week spent in Barcelona. I thought I would be writing while we were there but I forgot to bring the adapter and took a week break from the computer, a liberating experience and I think the best way to go under the circumstances.

We loved Barcelona!

Barcelona is a very popular tourist destination, it is easy to see why; a beautiful city on the shores of the Mediterranean Barcelona offers plenty of sites to see and plenty of beach to relax on, it’s got it all. We saw plenty of tourist attractions, magnificent churches, remains of the Roman walls, columns from the temple of Augustus (Gus’s temple), Gaudi’s park, and of course Camp Nou home to one of football’s most celebrated clubs.

One can visit the beach in October anywhere there is a beach but the beach in Barcelona was still summer hot. We swam in the sea, played soccer, buried our children, worked on our tans, and fended off constant offers from entrepreneurs selling everything from temporary tattoos, to coconut, to beer, to massages.

Our second visit to the beach was on a beautiful day that had perhaps left the water too warm; there were a number of jellyfish swimming about too. They were small and few given the size of the sea so I went in for a dip, I had finally convinced Jesse that the jellyfish were too small and too few to worry about when I felt the first jolt on my arm, followed closely by a second. My first and second jellyfish stings were not the most pleasant seaside experience but I am thankful the fish were small as I assume the larger ones pack a bigger punch. Jesse offered to pee on me but I opted to ride it out and watched the hives swell and then shrink leaving only the faintest of reminders.

Part of what made this trip so great was meeting and re-connecting with an old friend. Leanne’s friend from Toronto lives in Barcelona with his partner and their 3.5-month-old. They assured us that the jellyfish are not a daily issue and they also let us in on some things we would never have known. The guy selling coconut for example is incomprehensible to Spanish and Catalan speakers as well, not just to us foreigners; his sales pitch became an often-revisited joke throughout the trip. We also learned through our friends that the Russian sounding voices on the beach were probably Russian voices as the economic crisis in Spain has led to an increase of Russians in the area because buying a house in Spain at a certain price comes with Spanish citizenship.

Sadly this year of vacationing in places the likes of Barcelona is going to leave us with nothing in the bank so we will have to keep saving for that seaside villa.

CBC

Just to be clear I would not characterize myself as homesick, we are having a great time seeing new things, enjoying new experiences, blah, blah, blah. Yes a poem I wrote for class and posted awhile ago made it sound as though I was homesick, but I really am happy to be here and don’t want to leave yet. Still….

I do miss the familiar sound of CBC radio in the house and so last week we brought the laptop into the kitchen and prepared dinner with some old friends. It was nice to hear Jian Gomeshi’s voice in our house once again, and though the Doors’ John Densmore would not be a first choice as guest to visit our kitchen I couldn’t have been more pleased when who should drop in next but Margaret Atwood. The volume was too low, we had to be careful not to trip on the chord, but sounds from home transformed the kitchen, and suddenly it was home. Though we don’t always gather together in the kitchen to prepare the evening meal we did that night, all of us happy to gather round the 'radio' basking in the glow of Margaret’s voice. 

Canadian Dialogues

A recent assignment has my students writing scripted dialogues that share their perceptions of Canada, mostly they are having fun with stereotypes, so did I. Apparently it is common for Danes to be confused with other nations, including the Netherlands, and I tried to portray a stereotypical Canadian barroom chat. It was fun to listen to Danish students read the roles of the two Canadian guys, lots of laughs.

Two Canadians are sitting at the bar; on television is a hockey game featuring Denmark and Norway.

Guy #1: Hey, what teams are playing?

Guy #2: Two European teams.

#1: I thought Europe was like one country now.

#2: Nah, they just use the same money or something.

Bartender: Not Denmark though, theirs is different.

#1: So they aren’t part of Europe?

BT: No, they are part of the EU, but they kept their currency.

#2: Too good to change their money eh, with their wooden shoes and shit.

BT: I think that’s Holland.

#1: So what teams are playing?

BT: Denmark and Norway.

#1: Which one is the red team?

BT: That’s Denmark.

#2: They suck.

BT: I guess hockey just isn’t their game.

#2: Well if hockey isn’t their game they really suck.

#1: They play soccer or something?

BT: Soccer and handball, I think badminton is popular too.

#2: The Dutch suck.

BT: They aren’t Dutch, they’re Danes.

#1: My buddy has a Great Dane, serious leg humper.

#2: So if they aren’t Dutch and they don’t wear wooden shoes what do they do?

BT: They were Vikings.

#2: That’s cool.

#1: I would’ve thought Vikings would be good at hockey.

BT: Hans Christian Anderson’s Danish.

#1: I like Danishes.

#2: Who does he play for?

BT: He’s not a hockey player, he wrote fairy tales.

#2: If he doesn’t play hockey he’s a fairy all right.

#1: What did he write?

BT: The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea.

#2: Speakin’ of which, I gotta pee, eh. Give me another Canadian will ya?

BT: You wanna try a Carlsberg? It’s a Danish beer ya know.

#2: Is that right? I had one of them once when they ran out of Canadian, and it wasn’t half bad. Guess them Dutch ain’t so bad after all.