After dragging myself out of bed following a late night in Prague, we made our way to the train station, by which point I was incredibly thirsty. I stopped into a sketch grocery store that devoted about 80% of their shelf space to liquor and cigarettes. (They sell liquor absolutely everywhere; news stands, McDonald's, etc. and people smoke all the time; in restaurants, trains, church... it is very hard not to slap people in the face.) With a few shady characters roaming around the store, I bought some bananas, an apple, carrots, bread, iced tea and a huge bottle of water. Came to a grand total of 66 Koruny (about $3.50 Canadian). I thought it was a pretty good deal. Plus the water was probably the best water I have tasted in my life. See, they carbonate everything here in Europe, even their water, so when I took the first drink of cold water and realized that is WASN'T the gassy crap, I almost cried with joy. Meanwhile, Meghan wussed out and got a Happy Meal at McDonald's.
We made it to Vienna and immediately got lost once we stepped off the tram. While Meghan ate at McDonald's (yes, for the second time in one day), I trudged around in the snow, trying to find our hostel. Eventually, after tracking down streets with no names and getting confused by streets with the same damn name, we found our hostel by about 19:00. This hostel was decent, but the bathrooms were a huge pain in the ass. They had both an automatic light sensor and an automatic shower faucet. What this meant was that once in the shower, one has to push the faucet every 20 seconds to keep the water running. Meanwhile, the lights go off in the room every minute or so, so you have to open the shower door, wave your hand around in the dark until the sensor turned the light back on, get back in the shower, and push the faucet again. Showers therefore take about 3 hours.
Other than being the country that spawned such notables as Mozart, Freud, Hitler and Swartzenagger, Austria boasts tons of national history, as indicated by the number of museums in Vienna: about 3.2 million by my count. We toured around Vienna and decided to check out four of the museums, the largest and most interesting of which was the Natural History Museum, which had thousands of pieces of rock and thousands of stuffed birds and fish and animals. It was pretty intense before it got boring. We also continued our search for ethnic food by getting Chinese for lunch.
When we stepped off the subway in downtown Vienna, we were stopped to help a Japanese girl who looked lost and was looking for some monument or something. Although I obviously had no idea what we were looking for and didn't speak her language, for some reason I figured I could help her out. Then some Austrian lady stopped and asked if we need help. So out came HER reading glasses, and the four of us were standing there, staring at a Japanese map, while I tried to explain to the Japanese girl what some lady was telling me in German. God knows if she ever found what she was looking for.
The next day we took the plunge into the Eastern European states of the former Soviet Republic. I can imagine you may be wondering "I wonder if you can tell the difference between Eastern and Western Europe." Oh yes. You can tell. While we had seen some sketch areas in the Czech republic and in Austria, the journey from Vienna to Budapest was like a trip back in time, a trip from a modern, clean city to a... old,dirty city. Buildings became increasingly shabby and our surrounding were likened to something out of a seventies-era James Bond movie (minus the lair). More than a few times Meghan was prompted to tell me that we weren't in Kansas anymore. I've never been to Kansas, but we sure as hell weren't in downtown Charlottetown anymore either.
And so, of course the first thing we decided to do in this former Soviet Republic was to stand around outside in our bathing suits in 0 degree weather. Yes, with nothing better to do, we checked out the famous thermal baths, and they were awesome, though very very crowded. It took me a while to get oriented in the thermal bath complex, mistakenly walking into a few rooms full of naked men before finding where I was supposed to be. Once we got outside though, the baths were phenomenal. It was basically a hot tub as big as a swimming pool, naturally heated by underwater springs. There were old men were playing chess with other men stood around and watched with eager anticipation, most only able to communicate through the game, as everyone here is from any number of different countries. There were a few couples macking out in the pool (as they do everywhere in Europe), but overall, it was a good relaxing afternoon, and a fitting rest period for what is more or less halfway through the European adventure.
Now comes the fun part of our Hungarian advernture. We had planned on sticking in Budapest for the day and then catching the overnight train to Belgrade, Serbia. And so, after dinner we headed back to the train station and waited three hours for our train. Finally, when we got on our train at 23:25, we settled in for the 7-hour journey to Belgrade... except that about 45 minutes later we were told that we weren't going to Belgrade. I don't know who screwed up, but our train was apparently going to Hatvan, a small town about 80km outside of Budapest. I awoke at 1:20 on the train with Meghan and I the only people left on the train as cleaners were going through the car, which seemed to be parked in the middle of nowhere.
We got off the train and walked through the tunnel into the station and discovered that it was completely empty. Well, realtively so. It was an old Soviet-era stone building, with the door wide open, broken and barred windows and garbage all over the place. When I went to blow my nose, there was no toilet paper in the bathrooms, but there WAS a homeless man sleeping on the toilet that I scared the hell out of when he woke up as I walked into the bathroom. We got to hang out in Hatvan until 3:05, when we got to catch a train to go BACK to Budapest, which I was real thrilled about. Once there, were would wait until 13:15 to catch the next train to Belgrade. When we got back to Budapest, it was 4:00, and I slumped down on a bench, tired, cold, and totally not looking forward to sitting there for the next 9 hours waiting for the next train. To hell with this, said Meghan, and went across the street to rent a room at a hotel. I have never checked into a hotel at 4:00 before, and I'll have to hand it to her. I did not have that much initiative by that point. A bed has never felt that good.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Dresden and Prague
Towards the end of the Second World War, when the Allies were looking to bomb the hell out of any remaining Nazi strongholds, they decided to fire-bomb Dresden, a German centre of military industry. Not a very proud moment for the RAF and the USAF. This attack, with arguable logistical purposes, killed roughly 30,000 civilians and destroyed most of the city. Keeping the good times rolling, once the war was over, Dresden was taken over by the USSR a half-century or so of Soviet rule.
And this is where we ended up after riding the aimless train away from Berlin, thanks to my stupid mistake. As we were headed for Prague (just a couple hours south of Dresden) we rolled with it and hung out in Dresden, ate the atypical German breakfast of bread, random meat, Nutella, and some dumb cereal, (reminiscent of the two weeks of World Youth Day 2005 in Germany), did some laundry (the first time I had had clean clothes since London), and hopped on another train headed for the Czech Republic.
We found our hostel, Sir Toby's, by 17:00 in Prague after jumping on the tram and, as usual, walking around for a bit. Sir Toby's is in an incredible old building with a huge kitchen and great dorm rooms, with a pub, common area and chapel in the basement. It was, by far, the best hostel we stayed at throughout our travels. Though it may have been a bit of an exaggeration, I later wrote in the guest book that if I had nothing better to do, I could live there for the rest of my life. Meghan and I hung out in the pub the first night and played Scrabble (I won all three games, if you count the first two, which she quit because I was doing too well). Eventually the basement pub filled, and by the end of the night we were into some deep convos with a bunch of Canadians and some Americans who liked to pretend they were Canadian (so they would get treated better in Europe). And then there was some Brazilian dude, but he didn't say much.
After a lot of snoring from our roommate, and apparently some sleep talking about the Canadian Dollar exchange rate from me, we got up the next morning and took off on the tram to tour Prague. We took a bunch of pictures, ate at Subway (again), and then headed up the hill to see the castle and cathedral. When we reached the top the view was incredible. My first reaction was "Wow!" (Meghan's was "Holy shit!"). The trek up the 287 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the cathedral tower was incredible too. I was all like "Yeah, no big deal" but even after walking around with a back-pack for 2 weeks, that climb was rough. But again, the view was unreal.
After buying my new favorite t-shirt ("Prague: Czech it out"), we headed back for another night at the pub.
We had intended on going out on the town in Prague, but by 3:00am we were still all in the basement (six Canadians, six Americans, five Brits and a Mexican... I don't know where the Brazilian dude was) telling stupid stories and making fun of each other's countries. After sampling the local beer once or twice, and a traditional Czech shot a few times ...and then the local beer a few more times, I was sufficiently uncoordinated. I remember sitting at the computer completely no longer able to type any word in the English language properly.
t
Needless to say, the 10:00 check-out time came and went the next morning without myself or Meghan noticing. Eventually we got it together headed for the train station, on our way to Vienna. Ibuprofen is your friend.
And this is where we ended up after riding the aimless train away from Berlin, thanks to my stupid mistake. As we were headed for Prague (just a couple hours south of Dresden) we rolled with it and hung out in Dresden, ate the atypical German breakfast of bread, random meat, Nutella, and some dumb cereal, (reminiscent of the two weeks of World Youth Day 2005 in Germany), did some laundry (the first time I had had clean clothes since London), and hopped on another train headed for the Czech Republic.
We found our hostel, Sir Toby's, by 17:00 in Prague after jumping on the tram and, as usual, walking around for a bit. Sir Toby's is in an incredible old building with a huge kitchen and great dorm rooms, with a pub, common area and chapel in the basement. It was, by far, the best hostel we stayed at throughout our travels. Though it may have been a bit of an exaggeration, I later wrote in the guest book that if I had nothing better to do, I could live there for the rest of my life. Meghan and I hung out in the pub the first night and played Scrabble (I won all three games, if you count the first two, which she quit because I was doing too well). Eventually the basement pub filled, and by the end of the night we were into some deep convos with a bunch of Canadians and some Americans who liked to pretend they were Canadian (so they would get treated better in Europe). And then there was some Brazilian dude, but he didn't say much.
After a lot of snoring from our roommate, and apparently some sleep talking about the Canadian Dollar exchange rate from me, we got up the next morning and took off on the tram to tour Prague. We took a bunch of pictures, ate at Subway (again), and then headed up the hill to see the castle and cathedral. When we reached the top the view was incredible. My first reaction was "Wow!" (Meghan's was "Holy shit!"). The trek up the 287 steps of the spiral staircase to the top of the cathedral tower was incredible too. I was all like "Yeah, no big deal" but even after walking around with a back-pack for 2 weeks, that climb was rough. But again, the view was unreal.
After buying my new favorite t-shirt ("Prague: Czech it out"), we headed back for another night at the pub.
We had intended on going out on the town in Prague, but by 3:00am we were still all in the basement (six Canadians, six Americans, five Brits and a Mexican... I don't know where the Brazilian dude was) telling stupid stories and making fun of each other's countries. After sampling the local beer once or twice, and a traditional Czech shot a few times ...and then the local beer a few more times, I was sufficiently uncoordinated. I remember sitting at the computer completely no longer able to type any word in the English language properly.
t
Needless to say, the 10:00 check-out time came and went the next morning without myself or Meghan noticing. Eventually we got it together headed for the train station, on our way to Vienna. Ibuprofen is your friend.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Belgium, Netherlands, and Scandinavia
One may be interested to know how Bruges came to be included in our travel plans. After spending a day and a night there, I'm still not really sure. And as I am many tourists think when they visit PEI in the winter, I am inclined to ponder: "Who the hell would want to live in Bruges." Not only that, how could 120,000 people simultaneously think: "HEY! You know where I wanna live?! BRUGES! Yeah! In the middle of BELGIUM! Yesssss!"
Don't get me wrong, Bruges is a nice little town with tons of old buildings and quaint little cobblestoned streets (just like every other town and city on the continent) It received its charter as a city on my birthday (July 27th) in 1128 and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 (probably because of the aforementioned cobblestone streets and the like).
Quickly becoming our number one activity, we spent the afternoon and evening walking around Bruges, checking out the town and settling for some local cuisine at Pizza Hut. When we got back to the hostel, I destroyed Meghan at Scrabble twice (which would become an on-going theme) and we headed off to bed. On the way out of Bruges the next morning we stopped for some traditional Belgian waffles. Meghan has not shut up about them since.
Amsterdam wasn't too far of a trek from Bruges, but by the time we arrived at our out-of-the-way hostel it was 16:00 and getting dark in the already dreary city. (We were sharing our room with three Spaniards and a Dutchman, half of whom liked to stay up late and take noisy showers, and the other half of whom liked getting up insanely early. It was wonderful.) The hostel was a brand-new hostel with all the amenities of a hotel, a welcome change from some of the dingier accomodations that we had seen.
Ok, so I know that there is a lot of near-hysteria in the mind of any young traveller on their way to Amsterdam. It is almost like a popularly conceived anticipation, which the city works hard to propogate. In my mind, Amsterdam was ok to visit, and even on that note I was a bit tedious about the child-like fervour that it seems to work some travellers into. Aside from the beautiful canals it is a city trying in every which way to be shocking. I don't know if people like it like that, or if it is just an exagerated sense of Western 'LOOK AT ME!' culture. Either way, after spending the night and much of the next day walking around the crowded streets filled with smoke and red lights, I had had enough. Next country.
Well, I guess it was good that I was ready for a change of pace, as the next leg of our journey brought us the Malmo, Sweden. Malmo was nice, but getting there required a train journey back to Brussels, through the night to Hamburg, onto another train to Copenhagnen, then to Malmo. The trip took, by my watch, just under 19 hours. And if you're keeping track, that is 5 countries in one day. Hostels were pretty expensive in Malmo, so we splurged and rented a hotel room for the night. After 19 hours on trains, we napped away much of the next 24, with the bitter cold not being condusive to exploring the city streets. We took some time to walk around Malmo the next day and then hopped back on the train for Copenhagen.
By this point we had not washed clothes since London, had been through seven countries in as many days, and had logged more hours on trains then I cared to count. Weary as I was, we walked around Copenhagen in search of a laundromet for about an hour, realized that none of them were open on Sunday, and with that, I returned to the hostel and collapsed on my bed for a few hours, exhausted and dirty. Meghan tried to pry me from bed to visit a museum, but I would have none of it. By the time she returned, I had effectively re-charged my batteries and we headed out for some local cuisine. This time at the Hard Rock Café.
We once again walked through the streets of Copenhagen the next day to the train station and headed back towards Hamburg with the destination of Berlin. Unfortunately, as we arrived in Berlin that evening, I missed the right stop, figuring we could get off at the next station, closer to our hostel. The 'nest' Berlin station never came, and instead, the train went for another two hours. Southbound on a German train in the middle of the night, no known destination. Fun times.
Don't get me wrong, Bruges is a nice little town with tons of old buildings and quaint little cobblestoned streets (just like every other town and city on the continent) It received its charter as a city on my birthday (July 27th) in 1128 and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 (probably because of the aforementioned cobblestone streets and the like).
Quickly becoming our number one activity, we spent the afternoon and evening walking around Bruges, checking out the town and settling for some local cuisine at Pizza Hut. When we got back to the hostel, I destroyed Meghan at Scrabble twice (which would become an on-going theme) and we headed off to bed. On the way out of Bruges the next morning we stopped for some traditional Belgian waffles. Meghan has not shut up about them since.
Amsterdam wasn't too far of a trek from Bruges, but by the time we arrived at our out-of-the-way hostel it was 16:00 and getting dark in the already dreary city. (We were sharing our room with three Spaniards and a Dutchman, half of whom liked to stay up late and take noisy showers, and the other half of whom liked getting up insanely early. It was wonderful.) The hostel was a brand-new hostel with all the amenities of a hotel, a welcome change from some of the dingier accomodations that we had seen.
Ok, so I know that there is a lot of near-hysteria in the mind of any young traveller on their way to Amsterdam. It is almost like a popularly conceived anticipation, which the city works hard to propogate. In my mind, Amsterdam was ok to visit, and even on that note I was a bit tedious about the child-like fervour that it seems to work some travellers into. Aside from the beautiful canals it is a city trying in every which way to be shocking. I don't know if people like it like that, or if it is just an exagerated sense of Western 'LOOK AT ME!' culture. Either way, after spending the night and much of the next day walking around the crowded streets filled with smoke and red lights, I had had enough. Next country.
Well, I guess it was good that I was ready for a change of pace, as the next leg of our journey brought us the Malmo, Sweden. Malmo was nice, but getting there required a train journey back to Brussels, through the night to Hamburg, onto another train to Copenhagnen, then to Malmo. The trip took, by my watch, just under 19 hours. And if you're keeping track, that is 5 countries in one day. Hostels were pretty expensive in Malmo, so we splurged and rented a hotel room for the night. After 19 hours on trains, we napped away much of the next 24, with the bitter cold not being condusive to exploring the city streets. We took some time to walk around Malmo the next day and then hopped back on the train for Copenhagen.
By this point we had not washed clothes since London, had been through seven countries in as many days, and had logged more hours on trains then I cared to count. Weary as I was, we walked around Copenhagen in search of a laundromet for about an hour, realized that none of them were open on Sunday, and with that, I returned to the hostel and collapsed on my bed for a few hours, exhausted and dirty. Meghan tried to pry me from bed to visit a museum, but I would have none of it. By the time she returned, I had effectively re-charged my batteries and we headed out for some local cuisine. This time at the Hard Rock Café.
We once again walked through the streets of Copenhagen the next day to the train station and headed back towards Hamburg with the destination of Berlin. Unfortunately, as we arrived in Berlin that evening, I missed the right stop, figuring we could get off at the next station, closer to our hostel. The 'nest' Berlin station never came, and instead, the train went for another two hours. Southbound on a German train in the middle of the night, no known destination. Fun times.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: Britain and France
"That will cost about £300."
I stared at her, incredulous.
"Each?" I asked.
"Each."
"Um, we're going to go think about it." I smiled.
Bullshit we were going to go think about it.
We were standing in the middle of London Waterloo train station, trying to get from London to Paris on Eurostar that afternoon. For anyone not up on currency exchanges, £300 is about $617 Canadian.
"So, what do we do now?" asked Meghan, looking at me with eyes of a child looking to a teacher or parent to answer all their questions about the complexities and mysteries of life.
"How the eff should I know?" I thought.
"We´ll figure it out." I said.
And we did. By noon we were Dover-bound, where we would catch a ferry to Calais, and with with luck, catch the last train out of Calais to Lille, and then on to Paris. It was a hectic day, but the beaches of Dover seemed to calm Meghan down quite a bit, and a drink and a good book on the hour and a half crossing to France had a similar effect on me.
Even though we nearly missed the last train of the night in Calais and had to sit around in the train station in Lille for a couple hours, traveling went pretty wel. Pretty well, that is until we started looking for our hostel. See, European cities have this fun little habit of not putting up street signs at each corner, and so a visitor gets to guess which street he or she is on. To make matters worse, the directions that I had were very basic, telling me that the hostel was on a street just off 'Clichy'. And so, in search of the this elusive 'Clichy' we emerged from the 'Place de Clichy' subway station, which, as it turns out, comes out on the intersection of the 'Rue de Clichy', 'Avenue de Clichy', with 'Boulevard de Clichy' interseting about 100m up the street. Further up 'Rue de Clichy' is a side street called 'Passage de Clichy' and further still is the 'Quai de Clichy'. Over the next hour or so my map and I had a few choice words until I threw it away in disgust. Just then a friendly French couple stopped and tried to help. The guy, who had seen the Canadian flags on our backpacks, told us that he had spent some time in Canada (well, just Toronto) and figured he'd give us a hand. He pointed us down one of the Clichys that we had already walked down twice, and by 0:30, we were in our room at the El Dorado Hotel.
Other than being a complete bitch to find, El Dorado was an amazing bohemian four-story hostel on a pituresque Parisien side street, with a colourful victorian staircase, incredible rooms, and the best showers ever. Within a few minutes of arriving, we had already decided to extend our stay by a night.
The next morning (Tuesday), after sleeping a little late, we did the typical tour of Paris, taking in l'Arc de Triumph, and Notre Dame Cathedral in the morning. In the afternoon we discovered that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays (which I was real thrilled about) and then, of course, we went to take the requisite look at the Eiffel Tower. Once again, jumping from sight to sight almost seemed like we were cheating the city's history and culture, but I slept off the guilt with an evening nap, and then, paying homage to Parisien culture, we had dinner at an unreal restaurant. It was, and remains, one of the best meals I have ever had. With a price to match.
The next day we hopped on a train to Belgium, and as I turned on my camera to check out my pictures form the last few stops, I found out that they were all deleted by a memory card error. Yay! And that pretty much set my mood for that day.
I stared at her, incredulous.
"Each?" I asked.
"Each."
"Um, we're going to go think about it." I smiled.
Bullshit we were going to go think about it.
We were standing in the middle of London Waterloo train station, trying to get from London to Paris on Eurostar that afternoon. For anyone not up on currency exchanges, £300 is about $617 Canadian.
"So, what do we do now?" asked Meghan, looking at me with eyes of a child looking to a teacher or parent to answer all their questions about the complexities and mysteries of life.
"How the eff should I know?" I thought.
"We´ll figure it out." I said.
And we did. By noon we were Dover-bound, where we would catch a ferry to Calais, and with with luck, catch the last train out of Calais to Lille, and then on to Paris. It was a hectic day, but the beaches of Dover seemed to calm Meghan down quite a bit, and a drink and a good book on the hour and a half crossing to France had a similar effect on me.
Even though we nearly missed the last train of the night in Calais and had to sit around in the train station in Lille for a couple hours, traveling went pretty wel. Pretty well, that is until we started looking for our hostel. See, European cities have this fun little habit of not putting up street signs at each corner, and so a visitor gets to guess which street he or she is on. To make matters worse, the directions that I had were very basic, telling me that the hostel was on a street just off 'Clichy'. And so, in search of the this elusive 'Clichy' we emerged from the 'Place de Clichy' subway station, which, as it turns out, comes out on the intersection of the 'Rue de Clichy', 'Avenue de Clichy', with 'Boulevard de Clichy' interseting about 100m up the street. Further up 'Rue de Clichy' is a side street called 'Passage de Clichy' and further still is the 'Quai de Clichy'. Over the next hour or so my map and I had a few choice words until I threw it away in disgust. Just then a friendly French couple stopped and tried to help. The guy, who had seen the Canadian flags on our backpacks, told us that he had spent some time in Canada (well, just Toronto) and figured he'd give us a hand. He pointed us down one of the Clichys that we had already walked down twice, and by 0:30, we were in our room at the El Dorado Hotel.
Other than being a complete bitch to find, El Dorado was an amazing bohemian four-story hostel on a pituresque Parisien side street, with a colourful victorian staircase, incredible rooms, and the best showers ever. Within a few minutes of arriving, we had already decided to extend our stay by a night.
The next morning (Tuesday), after sleeping a little late, we did the typical tour of Paris, taking in l'Arc de Triumph, and Notre Dame Cathedral in the morning. In the afternoon we discovered that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays (which I was real thrilled about) and then, of course, we went to take the requisite look at the Eiffel Tower. Once again, jumping from sight to sight almost seemed like we were cheating the city's history and culture, but I slept off the guilt with an evening nap, and then, paying homage to Parisien culture, we had dinner at an unreal restaurant. It was, and remains, one of the best meals I have ever had. With a price to match.
The next day we hopped on a train to Belgium, and as I turned on my camera to check out my pictures form the last few stops, I found out that they were all deleted by a memory card error. Yay! And that pretty much set my mood for that day.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: London
The trip from Stansted Airport to London was our first introduction to subways in Europe, and it took a little getting used to the set-up of the infamous London Metro. By the time we reached the tube stop closest to out hostel, it was coming on to 19:00. We emerged from the empty station into darkness, and as we got our bearings on our surroundings, it quickly became apparent that we were in the ghetto. Run down houses lined the streets and graffiti decorated the walls of the buildings and abandoned rail cars around us. As we walked down the streets, passing a few shady characters, fireworks exploded in the above and around us, giving the search for the hostel an added sense of urgency.
We walked around for about half an hour, getting lost down dead-ends and on streets I would have rather not travelled. By the end of it, Meghan was none too pleased with being out in a random ghetto of London in the middle of the night. We finally found the 'Bridge Park Hotel', which, as it turned out, was only slightly better than being stuck on an unknown street in a foreign country. Joseph, the Middle Eastern clerk took our info and led us upstairs and through a maze of hallways, passing a few characters that sported the same greasy mullets and strange odours of the randoms on the street. When we arrived at our room, it had none of the amenities that we had been promised, and the window over-looked a garage and an alley, with fireworks popping like gunfire in the background. All she could do was laugh, but by this point Meghan was about ready to ditch the whole European trip thing, and check-in to the nearest hotel for the month. Because we had booked two nights at the Bridge Park Hotel, we left the room (making sure to lock it) and went to search the internet to see if we could or should switch hostels for the next night. As we were sitting there a man off the street ran into the lobby and asked Joseph to call the police. A man was being beaten by some teens outside. We decided against staying a second night.
Like a Hebrew fleeing Egypt or a soldier on the last chopper out of Saigon, we fled the London ghetto the next morning, getting lost a few more times before finding the tube station. Our new home for the night would be Piccadilly Backpackers, which was in downtown London; a few minutes walk from Trafalgar Square. It was an incredible sunny autumn Sunday that greeted us as we emerged from the Piccadilly Circus metro station.
The old stately buildings of downtown London were a welcome change from the crumbling outskirts. As would become common practice on this trip, we walked around and looked at stuff all day, starting with Trafalgar Square, and down the mall to Buckingham Palace and the adjacent park, before heading towards the Thames and Westminster Abby, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. After some fish and chips at a local pub, we toured the National Art Gallery. One pattern that began to emerge here was our tendency to only skim the surface of each country by checking out the biggest tourist traps in each country and skimming the surface of culture (leading me to dub the trip as 'Half-Assed and Clueless') but hey, we only have a month. Give us a break. Satisfied that we had seen enough of the city, Meghan gave the now oft-repeated command "Next country!" and so, the next morning, we set off for France.
We walked around for about half an hour, getting lost down dead-ends and on streets I would have rather not travelled. By the end of it, Meghan was none too pleased with being out in a random ghetto of London in the middle of the night. We finally found the 'Bridge Park Hotel', which, as it turned out, was only slightly better than being stuck on an unknown street in a foreign country. Joseph, the Middle Eastern clerk took our info and led us upstairs and through a maze of hallways, passing a few characters that sported the same greasy mullets and strange odours of the randoms on the street. When we arrived at our room, it had none of the amenities that we had been promised, and the window over-looked a garage and an alley, with fireworks popping like gunfire in the background. All she could do was laugh, but by this point Meghan was about ready to ditch the whole European trip thing, and check-in to the nearest hotel for the month. Because we had booked two nights at the Bridge Park Hotel, we left the room (making sure to lock it) and went to search the internet to see if we could or should switch hostels for the next night. As we were sitting there a man off the street ran into the lobby and asked Joseph to call the police. A man was being beaten by some teens outside. We decided against staying a second night.
Like a Hebrew fleeing Egypt or a soldier on the last chopper out of Saigon, we fled the London ghetto the next morning, getting lost a few more times before finding the tube station. Our new home for the night would be Piccadilly Backpackers, which was in downtown London; a few minutes walk from Trafalgar Square. It was an incredible sunny autumn Sunday that greeted us as we emerged from the Piccadilly Circus metro station.
The old stately buildings of downtown London were a welcome change from the crumbling outskirts. As would become common practice on this trip, we walked around and looked at stuff all day, starting with Trafalgar Square, and down the mall to Buckingham Palace and the adjacent park, before heading towards the Thames and Westminster Abby, the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye. After some fish and chips at a local pub, we toured the National Art Gallery. One pattern that began to emerge here was our tendency to only skim the surface of each country by checking out the biggest tourist traps in each country and skimming the surface of culture (leading me to dub the trip as 'Half-Assed and Clueless') but hey, we only have a month. Give us a break. Satisfied that we had seen enough of the city, Meghan gave the now oft-repeated command "Next country!" and so, the next morning, we set off for France.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Half-Assed and Clueless - Eurotrip 2007: The Beginning... and the Republic of Ireland
I awoke suddenly to an alarm at 4:30am and thrashed around in the dark to silence the beeping. I had been sleeping on a large air mattress between Tory and Winston, two friendly dogs belonging to my sister and her roommate. They stirred slightly, but as I forced myself out of the warm bed, they snuggled back down for a few more hours of sleep. It was Wednesday, October 31st, what was the first day of my trip to Europe. In an hour Meghan, my traveling partner, would pick me up and we would head to Halifax to catch our plane to Washington D.C. with the eventual destination of Dublin, Republic of Ireland. My sister Sheri made me some tea as I showered and bid farewell to me as Meghan pulled up the driveway. The two things going through my mind as I trudged towards the car was "Holy shit it is cold," and "What the hell am I getting myself into?"
Meghan Price is 23-years-old, like me, and works as a nurse in Miramichi, New Brunswick. We met about nine years ago at a conference our parents were attending and have kept in touch off and on ever since. After being frustrated by several plans falling through and by several potential travel partners changing plans, I asked her half joking on MSN one day if she wanted to go to Europe. She immediately thoguht it was a great idea, set about getting leave from work, and so, here we were, at about 5:00 on a cold Halloween morning, driving off to Hali and beyonjd in her beloved Tiburon.
After the usual procedures at Stanfield International and after various jokes about what we should have dressed up as for Halloween (ex. terrorist, tourist), we arrived in Washington D.C. at about 11:30 and headed into the city to see what we could see. Playing the role of tourists well, we walked along Pennsylvania Avenue and saw all the requisite buildings and sights that are comprised in a visit to D.C., Capitol Hill, the Canadian Embassy, George's House, etc. After an eight hour lay-over we boarded an Aer Lingus flight at 20:00 and were off to Dublin. Undersatndably, we were both very tired by this point, but the six and a half hour yielded little rest for either of us. Between the dumb shows on TV and the screaming baby we didn't get much sleep through the night, and so by the time we landed in Ireland, I was pretty damn tired.
We arrived in Dublin at 7:00 Thursday morning and hopped on a bus to head downtown. Under the shroud of over-tiredness I felt a pang of excitement that we were well on our way. Of course we were by now over 24 hours into our trip, and any feelings of excitement were soon over-taken by the severe desire for sleep. We arrived at our hostel at 9:00 so that they could tell us that we would have to wait until 13:00 for our room. Yay. We then made the first mistake of our trip, and ate breakfast at Burger King. They've concocted some kind of sausage burger sandwich, and it is absolutely disgusting. I was, however, satisfied that I was able to exit the restaurant without throwing up, and so off we went to see where our titred feet could carry us before 13:00. The one thing I could see about Dublin right away was that it was exactly what I expected. The row-housing, the multiple pubs, the Irish-looking people. Anyone who has traveled Europe will also tell you of the near overwhelming age of the buildings and communities in comparison to those in North America, and as we wandered around the soaring spires of churches and old castle walls, my interest was at least half peaked.
Once we got back to the hostel, our room was finally ready and we almost immdiately fell asleep for at least six hours. At 20:30 we again made our way into the downtown core and roamed the crowded streets, stopping at a restaurant and a pub.There was a huge mix of people of all languages, whjich surprised me, as I figuring Dublin to be more homogenous, like PEI. As it turns out, Ireland has exploded economically (in a good way) over the past few years, and as a result, the immigrant population has sky-rocketed. Though enthralled by the atmosphere of the streets and the diversity of people crowding them, there was much sleep to catch on, so after a meal and the requisite pint of Guinness, we headed back for our hostel where I snored the night away.
Coming from rural New Brunswick, far away from a metropolitan centre of any kind, Meghan was a bit overwhelmed by the size and intensity of Dublin. That, along with the draw of Blarney Castle and its famous stone prompted us to leave Dublin on Friday and to head for Cork. We caught the free breakfast at the hostel and then walked along the Leffey River through Dublin to the train station (just adjacent to the 250-year old, 64-acre Guinness Brewery). We got our Eurail Passes validated, picked up a couple post cards, and got on the train... just in time to see the last seat taken. We had the pleasure of sitting on the floor beside the bathroom, between a baby carriage and some garbage for much of the three-hour journey, but once an entire troupe of girls and their over-enthusiatic mothers (living vicariously through their daughters) got off to compete in a dance competition, we found ourselves sharing an entire car between ourselves and a young mother with her toddler. She was very kind and candid and through our conversation, gave us a bunch of tips on what to see and what to avoid in Ireland and London, and told us several stories about her life living in the area.
Cork, on the south shore of the island, is the second largest city in Ireland, and yes, was where Peter Petrelli was found in a freight container in the first episode of 'Heroes' this season. Cork was another beautiful town with tons of old buildings, blah blah blah, and such. Hoping to have the same luck with dinner as we had had the night before, we walked around looking for a restaurant, but after along fruitless search, Meghan ended up eating at McDonald's as I sat there watching, wishing I could find decent bowl of soup somewhere. (As an extended note, Meghan is absolutely obsessed with McDonald's and will sometimes go on little rants on the merits of chicken burgers vs. double cheese burgers. - ex. "Sometimes when I can't decide, I just get both." - Myself, on the other hand, not being keen on fast food to begin with and having just read a book on the industry, am about ready to give up processed food for good). When we got back to the hostel, Meghan took off for bed, and I sat downstairs in the bar, worked through our itinerary and travel plans for the next few days, and tried some 'Murphy's' (the local equivalent to Guinness). It was very good.
The next morning (Saturday), we headed off to Blarney Castle (a 600 year old fortification in Cork County), walked around the castle grounds, which were super cool, and kissed the Blarney Stone, which was super disgusting. (I was impressed that I didn't catch any major diseases, although it is possible that it is just dormant.) We stopped into a pub in Blarney before hopping on the bus back into town, and I finally got my bowl of soup. (Along with another pint of Murphy's).
We caught the bus back to Cork with a bunch of 30-something rowdy women celebrating a stagette or something, and then took another bus to the Cork Airport for our RyanAir flight to London. After another few hours of sitting around and waiting, we boarded the no-frills flight and bore the wrath of flying on the cheap for the next couple hours. The lethary of jet lag was still bearing down on us as we arrived in London that evening, but we felt ready for anything. Little did we know what awaited us in London at the now-legendary Bridge Park Hotel.
Meghan Price is 23-years-old, like me, and works as a nurse in Miramichi, New Brunswick. We met about nine years ago at a conference our parents were attending and have kept in touch off and on ever since. After being frustrated by several plans falling through and by several potential travel partners changing plans, I asked her half joking on MSN one day if she wanted to go to Europe. She immediately thoguht it was a great idea, set about getting leave from work, and so, here we were, at about 5:00 on a cold Halloween morning, driving off to Hali and beyonjd in her beloved Tiburon.
After the usual procedures at Stanfield International and after various jokes about what we should have dressed up as for Halloween (ex. terrorist, tourist), we arrived in Washington D.C. at about 11:30 and headed into the city to see what we could see. Playing the role of tourists well, we walked along Pennsylvania Avenue and saw all the requisite buildings and sights that are comprised in a visit to D.C., Capitol Hill, the Canadian Embassy, George's House, etc. After an eight hour lay-over we boarded an Aer Lingus flight at 20:00 and were off to Dublin. Undersatndably, we were both very tired by this point, but the six and a half hour yielded little rest for either of us. Between the dumb shows on TV and the screaming baby we didn't get much sleep through the night, and so by the time we landed in Ireland, I was pretty damn tired.
We arrived in Dublin at 7:00 Thursday morning and hopped on a bus to head downtown. Under the shroud of over-tiredness I felt a pang of excitement that we were well on our way. Of course we were by now over 24 hours into our trip, and any feelings of excitement were soon over-taken by the severe desire for sleep. We arrived at our hostel at 9:00 so that they could tell us that we would have to wait until 13:00 for our room. Yay. We then made the first mistake of our trip, and ate breakfast at Burger King. They've concocted some kind of sausage burger sandwich, and it is absolutely disgusting. I was, however, satisfied that I was able to exit the restaurant without throwing up, and so off we went to see where our titred feet could carry us before 13:00. The one thing I could see about Dublin right away was that it was exactly what I expected. The row-housing, the multiple pubs, the Irish-looking people. Anyone who has traveled Europe will also tell you of the near overwhelming age of the buildings and communities in comparison to those in North America, and as we wandered around the soaring spires of churches and old castle walls, my interest was at least half peaked.
Once we got back to the hostel, our room was finally ready and we almost immdiately fell asleep for at least six hours. At 20:30 we again made our way into the downtown core and roamed the crowded streets, stopping at a restaurant and a pub.There was a huge mix of people of all languages, whjich surprised me, as I figuring Dublin to be more homogenous, like PEI. As it turns out, Ireland has exploded economically (in a good way) over the past few years, and as a result, the immigrant population has sky-rocketed. Though enthralled by the atmosphere of the streets and the diversity of people crowding them, there was much sleep to catch on, so after a meal and the requisite pint of Guinness, we headed back for our hostel where I snored the night away.
Coming from rural New Brunswick, far away from a metropolitan centre of any kind, Meghan was a bit overwhelmed by the size and intensity of Dublin. That, along with the draw of Blarney Castle and its famous stone prompted us to leave Dublin on Friday and to head for Cork. We caught the free breakfast at the hostel and then walked along the Leffey River through Dublin to the train station (just adjacent to the 250-year old, 64-acre Guinness Brewery). We got our Eurail Passes validated, picked up a couple post cards, and got on the train... just in time to see the last seat taken. We had the pleasure of sitting on the floor beside the bathroom, between a baby carriage and some garbage for much of the three-hour journey, but once an entire troupe of girls and their over-enthusiatic mothers (living vicariously through their daughters) got off to compete in a dance competition, we found ourselves sharing an entire car between ourselves and a young mother with her toddler. She was very kind and candid and through our conversation, gave us a bunch of tips on what to see and what to avoid in Ireland and London, and told us several stories about her life living in the area.
Cork, on the south shore of the island, is the second largest city in Ireland, and yes, was where Peter Petrelli was found in a freight container in the first episode of 'Heroes' this season. Cork was another beautiful town with tons of old buildings, blah blah blah, and such. Hoping to have the same luck with dinner as we had had the night before, we walked around looking for a restaurant, but after along fruitless search, Meghan ended up eating at McDonald's as I sat there watching, wishing I could find decent bowl of soup somewhere. (As an extended note, Meghan is absolutely obsessed with McDonald's and will sometimes go on little rants on the merits of chicken burgers vs. double cheese burgers. - ex. "Sometimes when I can't decide, I just get both." - Myself, on the other hand, not being keen on fast food to begin with and having just read a book on the industry, am about ready to give up processed food for good). When we got back to the hostel, Meghan took off for bed, and I sat downstairs in the bar, worked through our itinerary and travel plans for the next few days, and tried some 'Murphy's' (the local equivalent to Guinness). It was very good.
The next morning (Saturday), we headed off to Blarney Castle (a 600 year old fortification in Cork County), walked around the castle grounds, which were super cool, and kissed the Blarney Stone, which was super disgusting. (I was impressed that I didn't catch any major diseases, although it is possible that it is just dormant.) We stopped into a pub in Blarney before hopping on the bus back into town, and I finally got my bowl of soup. (Along with another pint of Murphy's).
We caught the bus back to Cork with a bunch of 30-something rowdy women celebrating a stagette or something, and then took another bus to the Cork Airport for our RyanAir flight to London. After another few hours of sitting around and waiting, we boarded the no-frills flight and bore the wrath of flying on the cheap for the next couple hours. The lethary of jet lag was still bearing down on us as we arrived in London that evening, but we felt ready for anything. Little did we know what awaited us in London at the now-legendary Bridge Park Hotel.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Patty and Eugene Do UPEI: Episode 6
Coming on the end of the school year, St. Patrick's Day hits UPEI, and it's time to party. Patty finally convinces Eugene to accompany him to The Wave, UPEI's campus pub to celebrate, but not before Eugene gets a few pointers from Derek on how to be a smooth operator.
After appearing in four videos about UPEI and six episodes of this, their very own mini-series, 'Patty and Eugene Do UPEI - Episode 6: The Hair Flip' is the final installment of the adventures of Patty and Eugene. Eugene insists that he will keep in touch with all of the loyal fans of this series. Patty says he doesn't really give a $#&!, and that he is going to The Wave to get "blitzed, and [he doesn't] care that he and Eugene aren't roommates anymore and [he is] glad that they aren't and life will be so much easier without a caring friend looking out for [him]."
After appearing in four videos about UPEI and six episodes of this, their very own mini-series, 'Patty and Eugene Do UPEI - Episode 6: The Hair Flip' is the final installment of the adventures of Patty and Eugene. Eugene insists that he will keep in touch with all of the loyal fans of this series. Patty says he doesn't really give a $#&!, and that he is going to The Wave to get "blitzed, and [he doesn't] care that he and Eugene aren't roommates anymore and [he is] glad that they aren't and life will be so much easier without a caring friend looking out for [him]."
Monday, August 27, 2007
A High School Graduate - Five Years Later
June 24th, 2002
Greetings fellow Graduates. Finally, after twelve years of countless tests, projects, and exams, after a lot of bus rides and way too many Monday mornings, we are done. After tonight, no one can force you to write about aerobic respiration, or to tell them where Yugoslavia is, ever again. Our compulsory education is over, and while this is exciting, we must also remember that these are our last moments together as a class. Though you will see many of your friends and classmates over the next couple of years, it is unlikely that we will ever completely assemble as a class again. All of you in front of me here, will, after tonight, take different paths and follow different dreams. As we move on and, consequently grow apart, we will no longer be together at, nor connected by, the physical building of Bluefield. However, we will always have our experiences from our time at the Blue, both good and bad, all have which have hopefully made us better people and stronger individuals. My three years at Bluefield, and I'm sure many of you can say the same, were among the best three years of my life. Every day was an adventure, and meeting each one of you was an honour.
As relieved as we are to be free, our freedom from scholarly responsibilities will come at the cost of having to leave behind the best High School on Prince Edward Island. I'm sure many of you won't see a problem with having to leave behind the overcrowded cafeteria or the smell of manure in the morning, but Bluefield for us was not only a school, but also a community. A community where we worked and laughed and studied and played much of the past three years away. From this point on we will move onto new communities, as we move out into the world and find our own places in it. Whether that place be at university or college, in law offices or in hospitals. Maybe at a farm, or in a bank or at a church, maybe at Burger King, or, God forbid, maybe back in Mr. Cameron's good old Math 621, once again learning the intricacies of trig and logs and sigma notation. Wherever you find yourself, we all have the common education of Bluefield, where, if nothing else, we have learned to work hard, and to have fun.
Many of us have also experienced loss and pain along with our great memories. Many students lost parents or guardians, relatives and friends while at Bluefield, and we as a class lost a great classmate and friend who would've been sitting with us here tonight, but, I am sure, is watching from above. I think the community at Bluefield, the friends who were beside us through both highs and lows and everything in between, were always there for us when we needed it. High Scholl presents many obstacles for students, and the people of Bluefield, especially this class, helped make transitions at least a little easier. Twenty years from now, it won't be the falls we remember, but the friends around us that picked us back up.
Graduates, look around you. This will probably be your last chance to ever see all these brilliant faces in one place again. Chances are you have gotten to know most of these students around you over the past few years. In three short years, these strangers have become teammates, allies, and friends. Whether you played on a team, went on a trip, or whether you just attended some classes or parties with them, all have become familiar faces and the memory of these people will be with you for years to come.
Behind your brilliantly smiling faces of course, there are our families. We owe a huge mount of gratitude to our parents and guardians, whom we didn't, and don't always listen to, agree with, or obey, yet whom we have always respected. They were there on the first day we went out the door with our new Ninja Turtle or Barbie lunch boxes, and stand behind us still, relentlessly pushing, but always offering support. Brothers and sisters were there too. Whether scribbling on our homework, stealing our clothes, or just beating us up, they supported us in their own little way.
Also, to our teachers, who provided direction and guidance, or at least comic relief, throughout our High School lives. Thank you for a world of knowledge, even if we choose not to use it. Mr. Coady, even though you explained it very well, I'm still under the impression that when using the Chain Rule and Power Rule, that they are the... SAME. And I'm sorry Ms. Gillan, but most of us will not remember what the mercantile objective of the Hudson's Bay Company was, nor recall, Mrs. MacDonald, the symbolic and complex differences between Greek and Elizabethan theatre. But I will always remember some of our discussions, about everything from weather to the playoffs, from politics to who was getting kicked off Survivor next. Hopefully the educational tools you have armed us with will stay with us and propel us to new heights, but if not, we have awesome memories, and your guidance and insight was appreciated.
...And stay in your seats until I'm done.
Graduates, through our interactions and experiences together at Bluefield, we have been forever shaped into the individuals we are now. We leave behind out High School tonight with not only enlightened minds, but also with incredible memories. Mostly good, memories made with friends and classmates, and all looked upon with some nostalgia, and with some relief, but also with the hope that someday, we will see each one of our classmates again. Tonight the separation is real. For the first time I'm beginning to realize that these certificates mean that next Fall, the big yellow bus won't be waiting for me at the end of my driveway. Tonight we leave it all behind: The fantastic yellow lockers and the greasy pizza. The Blue Cross Relay and Oktoberfest. The excitement of the Electric Circus dance and the glamour of the Christmas dance. Our contaminated water and explosive sewer system. Chicken Match and ball hockey playoffs. Cramming for exams and playing cards in the cafeteria. Field parties and the now illegal Bluefield Midnight Movies. Band trips, rugby victories, field hockey champions. Soccer with Mr. Steele, Des's riveting lectures on isotopes, Mrs. Blanchard's analogies, Ms. Gillan's debates, and Mrs. MacArthur's proud tradition of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' every semester since 1978.
And of course, tonight we leave behind the proud, the strong, and the mighty, Bobcats.
Before we do leave tonight, I want to share some insight and thoughts for our future. First of all:
You only live once. So live each day of your life with nothing undone, nothing unsaid, and leave no regrets.
Gandhi once said: "There is more to life than increasing its speed." So take time to stop and reflect, or just to have a good time.
I'm not sure exactly what he meant by it, but in his eternal wisdom, Des Murphy was once quoted as saying: "Life is a series of polymers," and that "We're all heterogeneous mixtures."
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Nelson Mandela. Always remember to never give up, to never give in, and that it's better to lose than know that you never tried at all.
And finally, on the path of life, "Always keep your crayons sharpened, your sticky tape untangled, and always put the caps back on your markers." - Mr. Dress-Up
Tonight fellow Graduates, Class of 2002, we leave Bluefield tonight to pursue higher learning, and to join other schools and companies and institutions. But no matter where we go, I, for one, will always be proud to be a Bobcat.
After tonight, we will move on ahead, expanding our horizons. Sadly, some of us will lose touch, but best friends are forever. And though I may never see you again, everyday, when I look back at my three years at Bluefield, I will remember something about you. A smile, a joke, your friendship, and you will always be there: in my mind, and in my heart, back at the Blue.
Cheers Bluefield.
Thank You.
Greetings fellow Graduates. Finally, after twelve years of countless tests, projects, and exams, after a lot of bus rides and way too many Monday mornings, we are done. After tonight, no one can force you to write about aerobic respiration, or to tell them where Yugoslavia is, ever again. Our compulsory education is over, and while this is exciting, we must also remember that these are our last moments together as a class. Though you will see many of your friends and classmates over the next couple of years, it is unlikely that we will ever completely assemble as a class again. All of you in front of me here, will, after tonight, take different paths and follow different dreams. As we move on and, consequently grow apart, we will no longer be together at, nor connected by, the physical building of Bluefield. However, we will always have our experiences from our time at the Blue, both good and bad, all have which have hopefully made us better people and stronger individuals. My three years at Bluefield, and I'm sure many of you can say the same, were among the best three years of my life. Every day was an adventure, and meeting each one of you was an honour.
As relieved as we are to be free, our freedom from scholarly responsibilities will come at the cost of having to leave behind the best High School on Prince Edward Island. I'm sure many of you won't see a problem with having to leave behind the overcrowded cafeteria or the smell of manure in the morning, but Bluefield for us was not only a school, but also a community. A community where we worked and laughed and studied and played much of the past three years away. From this point on we will move onto new communities, as we move out into the world and find our own places in it. Whether that place be at university or college, in law offices or in hospitals. Maybe at a farm, or in a bank or at a church, maybe at Burger King, or, God forbid, maybe back in Mr. Cameron's good old Math 621, once again learning the intricacies of trig and logs and sigma notation. Wherever you find yourself, we all have the common education of Bluefield, where, if nothing else, we have learned to work hard, and to have fun.
Many of us have also experienced loss and pain along with our great memories. Many students lost parents or guardians, relatives and friends while at Bluefield, and we as a class lost a great classmate and friend who would've been sitting with us here tonight, but, I am sure, is watching from above. I think the community at Bluefield, the friends who were beside us through both highs and lows and everything in between, were always there for us when we needed it. High Scholl presents many obstacles for students, and the people of Bluefield, especially this class, helped make transitions at least a little easier. Twenty years from now, it won't be the falls we remember, but the friends around us that picked us back up.
Graduates, look around you. This will probably be your last chance to ever see all these brilliant faces in one place again. Chances are you have gotten to know most of these students around you over the past few years. In three short years, these strangers have become teammates, allies, and friends. Whether you played on a team, went on a trip, or whether you just attended some classes or parties with them, all have become familiar faces and the memory of these people will be with you for years to come.
Behind your brilliantly smiling faces of course, there are our families. We owe a huge mount of gratitude to our parents and guardians, whom we didn't, and don't always listen to, agree with, or obey, yet whom we have always respected. They were there on the first day we went out the door with our new Ninja Turtle or Barbie lunch boxes, and stand behind us still, relentlessly pushing, but always offering support. Brothers and sisters were there too. Whether scribbling on our homework, stealing our clothes, or just beating us up, they supported us in their own little way.
Also, to our teachers, who provided direction and guidance, or at least comic relief, throughout our High School lives. Thank you for a world of knowledge, even if we choose not to use it. Mr. Coady, even though you explained it very well, I'm still under the impression that when using the Chain Rule and Power Rule, that they are the... SAME. And I'm sorry Ms. Gillan, but most of us will not remember what the mercantile objective of the Hudson's Bay Company was, nor recall, Mrs. MacDonald, the symbolic and complex differences between Greek and Elizabethan theatre. But I will always remember some of our discussions, about everything from weather to the playoffs, from politics to who was getting kicked off Survivor next. Hopefully the educational tools you have armed us with will stay with us and propel us to new heights, but if not, we have awesome memories, and your guidance and insight was appreciated.
...And stay in your seats until I'm done.
Graduates, through our interactions and experiences together at Bluefield, we have been forever shaped into the individuals we are now. We leave behind out High School tonight with not only enlightened minds, but also with incredible memories. Mostly good, memories made with friends and classmates, and all looked upon with some nostalgia, and with some relief, but also with the hope that someday, we will see each one of our classmates again. Tonight the separation is real. For the first time I'm beginning to realize that these certificates mean that next Fall, the big yellow bus won't be waiting for me at the end of my driveway. Tonight we leave it all behind: The fantastic yellow lockers and the greasy pizza. The Blue Cross Relay and Oktoberfest. The excitement of the Electric Circus dance and the glamour of the Christmas dance. Our contaminated water and explosive sewer system. Chicken Match and ball hockey playoffs. Cramming for exams and playing cards in the cafeteria. Field parties and the now illegal Bluefield Midnight Movies. Band trips, rugby victories, field hockey champions. Soccer with Mr. Steele, Des's riveting lectures on isotopes, Mrs. Blanchard's analogies, Ms. Gillan's debates, and Mrs. MacArthur's proud tradition of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' every semester since 1978.
And of course, tonight we leave behind the proud, the strong, and the mighty, Bobcats.
Before we do leave tonight, I want to share some insight and thoughts for our future. First of all:
You only live once. So live each day of your life with nothing undone, nothing unsaid, and leave no regrets.
Gandhi once said: "There is more to life than increasing its speed." So take time to stop and reflect, or just to have a good time.
I'm not sure exactly what he meant by it, but in his eternal wisdom, Des Murphy was once quoted as saying: "Life is a series of polymers," and that "We're all heterogeneous mixtures."
"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." - Nelson Mandela. Always remember to never give up, to never give in, and that it's better to lose than know that you never tried at all.
And finally, on the path of life, "Always keep your crayons sharpened, your sticky tape untangled, and always put the caps back on your markers." - Mr. Dress-Up
Tonight fellow Graduates, Class of 2002, we leave Bluefield tonight to pursue higher learning, and to join other schools and companies and institutions. But no matter where we go, I, for one, will always be proud to be a Bobcat.
After tonight, we will move on ahead, expanding our horizons. Sadly, some of us will lose touch, but best friends are forever. And though I may never see you again, everyday, when I look back at my three years at Bluefield, I will remember something about you. A smile, a joke, your friendship, and you will always be there: in my mind, and in my heart, back at the Blue.
Cheers Bluefield.
Thank You.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Seven
Day Seven was intended to be spent in the mountains, but as a result of our premature descent, there was little else to do than prepare for the next day. On Day Eight, we were to embark to cities and villages all across the Dominican Republic to spend a week and a half with Dominican families and communities. After a group exercise we all went off to do our own thing, write in journals, sit around in the sun, pack, play cards, etc.
Five of us, however, drove to the Canadian Embassy in Santo Domingo, so we could cast our vote for the upcoming PEI Provincial Election. Now anyone who knows what a geek I am would somewhat understand how pumped I would be to go to a Canadian Embassy in a foreign country. I didn't even care that it was a small-ish building, an English/French bilingual service sign, a Canadian flag, a recruiting poster for the RCMP; I was home.
To back up a little, our ride into the city was quite different from any other previous. Usually as a group we would travel in a 15-passenger, air-conditioned van, but today, we had a 4-passenger truck, meaning 2 of us travelled in the back of the truck. The heat and sun are the first obvious differences to riding outside a vehicle in the Dominican, as are the whistles, waves, and above all, the lingering stares from the thousands of people we passed. After one week in this foreign country some of the different or once shocking things were already fading into the background: the sight and smell of pollution, the scores of street vendors at every intersection, horses in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic, live chickens on the backs of mopeds and motor cycles. But I continued to be constantly reminded of cultural cleavages that existed both between social classes, and between this country and our own. As we headed back to the centre we stopped at a gas station; arguably THE symbol of Western power, and while walking through the air-conditioned, security-protected store therein, I could see in the distance the shacks and sheds of a poor barrio crowded on the side of a mountain. No better analogy could illustrate the the contrast between the first and third world than in this physical proximity between wealth and poverty.
That night we were asked to think about the trip thus far and to write down a few things that we were touched by thus far. I'm not usually big on soul-searching exercises, but as I sat down to think up some acceptable answers, it was evident that we had seen a lot more positive initiatives than I had anticipated. Micro-credits helping out the empoverished in poor barrios, youth teaching their peers about HIV/AIDS, the building of schools in the batays, community re-investment by the coffee assocation, the youth street home getting kids off the street and on their feet. As we were given our marching orders for the next and told about where we would be living for the next ten days in various locations around the country, it honestly seemed like we had been there for far longer and learned far more than I had expected to over the course of the entire experience. I don't remember what time I got to bed that night, but I know that by the end of the next day, culture shock had me in bed by 9:00pm. Stay tuned.
Five of us, however, drove to the Canadian Embassy in Santo Domingo, so we could cast our vote for the upcoming PEI Provincial Election. Now anyone who knows what a geek I am would somewhat understand how pumped I would be to go to a Canadian Embassy in a foreign country. I didn't even care that it was a small-ish building, an English/French bilingual service sign, a Canadian flag, a recruiting poster for the RCMP; I was home.
To back up a little, our ride into the city was quite different from any other previous. Usually as a group we would travel in a 15-passenger, air-conditioned van, but today, we had a 4-passenger truck, meaning 2 of us travelled in the back of the truck. The heat and sun are the first obvious differences to riding outside a vehicle in the Dominican, as are the whistles, waves, and above all, the lingering stares from the thousands of people we passed. After one week in this foreign country some of the different or once shocking things were already fading into the background: the sight and smell of pollution, the scores of street vendors at every intersection, horses in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic, live chickens on the backs of mopeds and motor cycles. But I continued to be constantly reminded of cultural cleavages that existed both between social classes, and between this country and our own. As we headed back to the centre we stopped at a gas station; arguably THE symbol of Western power, and while walking through the air-conditioned, security-protected store therein, I could see in the distance the shacks and sheds of a poor barrio crowded on the side of a mountain. No better analogy could illustrate the the contrast between the first and third world than in this physical proximity between wealth and poverty.
That night we were asked to think about the trip thus far and to write down a few things that we were touched by thus far. I'm not usually big on soul-searching exercises, but as I sat down to think up some acceptable answers, it was evident that we had seen a lot more positive initiatives than I had anticipated. Micro-credits helping out the empoverished in poor barrios, youth teaching their peers about HIV/AIDS, the building of schools in the batays, community re-investment by the coffee assocation, the youth street home getting kids off the street and on their feet. As we were given our marching orders for the next and told about where we would be living for the next ten days in various locations around the country, it honestly seemed like we had been there for far longer and learned far more than I had expected to over the course of the entire experience. I don't remember what time I got to bed that night, but I know that by the end of the next day, culture shock had me in bed by 9:00pm. Stay tuned.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Six
While most of our days had begun by traveling into Santo Domingo and surrounding areas, today we started our morning by heading into the mountains to the North-West of San Cristobal, to the community of Los Cacaos. There we were to meet with people from La Esperanza, a coffee-growers' association, and be billeted with a local family for the night, before trekking up a mountain trail near the village. In two days we would be placed with families in different communities across the country for a week and a half, and this one-night billet would be a chance for all of us to get our feet wet in Dominican culture.
The journey up the mountain was a couple hours long, up a windy road around steep curves, often feet from the edge of plunging cliffs. As we moved further into the mountains, the vista over-looking the surrounding valleys became more and more magnificent, with greenery flowing out into the distance, back dropped by the staggered peaks of mountains on the horizon.
I was astounded by the infrastructure in this incredibly remote area of the country, the roads were well-maintained, and an intricate system of rock and mortar ditches winded along with the road, while stone retaining walls held back erosion. Periodically we would pass groups of men working on the ditches and walls, collecting stones, building new sections, and repairing damage. It was evident that this was an on-going project, and that there was a constant and concerted effort to maintain this path into the wilderness in the best possible condition. And for good reason too. In 1979, Hurricane David, a Category 5 hurricane, ripped through the Dominican Republic, wreaking havoc and killing close to 2000 people. In this region, where coffee is the main industry, communities were devastated. This road was rendered impassable by the torrential rains that accompanied the storm and by thousands of felled trees, cutting off Los Cacaos from the world. A group of citizens from the community were forced to make the same trek we were now, on foot, to reach civilization and to get aid air-lifted into the village. Re-building efforts took an understandably long time, but for the coffee industry, recovery would take years.
This is where La Esperenza comes in. A group of young people gathered together shortly after the disaster, trying to pool together the resources to develop a coffee collective in the Los Cacaos area. Through the years, while facing the challenges of building a sustainable business model and sporadic lulls in the coffee market, the association developed their product, accreditation, and processing facility to the point that today there are nearly 900 members of the collective.
Aside from fostering an evolving operation, the association has begun to put resources towards supporting the community. Scholarships established by the group allow for capable students to attain post-secondary education, whether in the Dominican Republic or abroad in Cuba or Costa Rica. The hope is that these students will someday return to carry on growth and help re-vitalize their small and remote community. As the collective recognizes how taxing the cultivation of coffee and other agricultural processes can have on the environment, they are working to diversify the industrial base of the economy, and putting research and resources towards ecological preservation and tourism. From a progressive business perspective, their goals are to promote the Fair Trade brand, and to begin exporting more of their product.
As we ended our meeting with the management group of La Esperanza, I was stunned. Coming from PEI, where we are constantly wringing our hands worrying about the sustainability of communities and watching youth fly off out West or to the States to find new jobs; it was incredible to see a small community in the middle of the mountains of a developing country creating solutions to their own problems. This wasn't a rich business venture propped up by government; it was a small community effort, for the people and by the people, quite literally built out of the ashes, from the ground up. I lauded the group who presented to us about their company, some of them who had been there from the beginning, telling them that their passion and awareness was encouraging, and that I wished the people back home were as proactive and passionate about their communities as the people of Los Cacaos obviously were. The La Esperenza experience in Los Cacaos is a prime example of a small community creating and filling a need. It was certainly light years away from Polar Foods anyway.
After some more rice and beans, we toured the coffee processing facility where the beans were dried, roasted, separated, and packaged. In a room just off the main road through the village, women were seated at tables sorting through the beans, separating the 'good', basically beans with no blemishes or discolouration, from the 'bad' beans (those possessing the aforementioned defects). Seemed simple enough: sit around and sort beans. Wicked. So we sat down to try it out, and other than turning to the woman next to me to confirm if a bean was good or bad every 26 seconds, it was about as exciting as my days packing diagnostic kits at Diagnostic Chemicals. We sat there for about half an hour, and between the 8 of us, logged about a quarter crate, thus about a quarter box for a collective 2 hours. The women, we were told, could fill a crate in about the same amount of time. Of course instead of wandering in and messing around with a pile of beans for half an hour, most of them work 8 or 9 hour days, some of them doing the same thing everyday for the better part of the past few decades.
Our trip into the mountains was cut short at that point. The son of one of the Administrators had been in a motorcycle accident early that afternoon, and as we were sorting beans, the news arrived that he had since died from his injuries. The townspeople were obviously upset as we thanked our hosts and offered our condolences and piled in the van for a long and silent trip back down to San Cristobal. It was an abrupt and disappointing end to our excursion into the mountains, but it was clear that this community, so accustomed to coming together to face adversity, would be totally focused on embracing the family and friends of the young man, and they sure as hell didn't need a bunch of Canadian on-lookers wandering and gawking around.
Instead, some cheer-up ice cream and a trip to the call centre to call home marked the end of our day.
The journey up the mountain was a couple hours long, up a windy road around steep curves, often feet from the edge of plunging cliffs. As we moved further into the mountains, the vista over-looking the surrounding valleys became more and more magnificent, with greenery flowing out into the distance, back dropped by the staggered peaks of mountains on the horizon.
I was astounded by the infrastructure in this incredibly remote area of the country, the roads were well-maintained, and an intricate system of rock and mortar ditches winded along with the road, while stone retaining walls held back erosion. Periodically we would pass groups of men working on the ditches and walls, collecting stones, building new sections, and repairing damage. It was evident that this was an on-going project, and that there was a constant and concerted effort to maintain this path into the wilderness in the best possible condition. And for good reason too. In 1979, Hurricane David, a Category 5 hurricane, ripped through the Dominican Republic, wreaking havoc and killing close to 2000 people. In this region, where coffee is the main industry, communities were devastated. This road was rendered impassable by the torrential rains that accompanied the storm and by thousands of felled trees, cutting off Los Cacaos from the world. A group of citizens from the community were forced to make the same trek we were now, on foot, to reach civilization and to get aid air-lifted into the village. Re-building efforts took an understandably long time, but for the coffee industry, recovery would take years.
This is where La Esperenza comes in. A group of young people gathered together shortly after the disaster, trying to pool together the resources to develop a coffee collective in the Los Cacaos area. Through the years, while facing the challenges of building a sustainable business model and sporadic lulls in the coffee market, the association developed their product, accreditation, and processing facility to the point that today there are nearly 900 members of the collective.
Aside from fostering an evolving operation, the association has begun to put resources towards supporting the community. Scholarships established by the group allow for capable students to attain post-secondary education, whether in the Dominican Republic or abroad in Cuba or Costa Rica. The hope is that these students will someday return to carry on growth and help re-vitalize their small and remote community. As the collective recognizes how taxing the cultivation of coffee and other agricultural processes can have on the environment, they are working to diversify the industrial base of the economy, and putting research and resources towards ecological preservation and tourism. From a progressive business perspective, their goals are to promote the Fair Trade brand, and to begin exporting more of their product.
As we ended our meeting with the management group of La Esperanza, I was stunned. Coming from PEI, where we are constantly wringing our hands worrying about the sustainability of communities and watching youth fly off out West or to the States to find new jobs; it was incredible to see a small community in the middle of the mountains of a developing country creating solutions to their own problems. This wasn't a rich business venture propped up by government; it was a small community effort, for the people and by the people, quite literally built out of the ashes, from the ground up. I lauded the group who presented to us about their company, some of them who had been there from the beginning, telling them that their passion and awareness was encouraging, and that I wished the people back home were as proactive and passionate about their communities as the people of Los Cacaos obviously were. The La Esperenza experience in Los Cacaos is a prime example of a small community creating and filling a need. It was certainly light years away from Polar Foods anyway.
After some more rice and beans, we toured the coffee processing facility where the beans were dried, roasted, separated, and packaged. In a room just off the main road through the village, women were seated at tables sorting through the beans, separating the 'good', basically beans with no blemishes or discolouration, from the 'bad' beans (those possessing the aforementioned defects). Seemed simple enough: sit around and sort beans. Wicked. So we sat down to try it out, and other than turning to the woman next to me to confirm if a bean was good or bad every 26 seconds, it was about as exciting as my days packing diagnostic kits at Diagnostic Chemicals. We sat there for about half an hour, and between the 8 of us, logged about a quarter crate, thus about a quarter box for a collective 2 hours. The women, we were told, could fill a crate in about the same amount of time. Of course instead of wandering in and messing around with a pile of beans for half an hour, most of them work 8 or 9 hour days, some of them doing the same thing everyday for the better part of the past few decades.
Our trip into the mountains was cut short at that point. The son of one of the Administrators had been in a motorcycle accident early that afternoon, and as we were sorting beans, the news arrived that he had since died from his injuries. The townspeople were obviously upset as we thanked our hosts and offered our condolences and piled in the van for a long and silent trip back down to San Cristobal. It was an abrupt and disappointing end to our excursion into the mountains, but it was clear that this community, so accustomed to coming together to face adversity, would be totally focused on embracing the family and friends of the young man, and they sure as hell didn't need a bunch of Canadian on-lookers wandering and gawking around.
Instead, some cheer-up ice cream and a trip to the call centre to call home marked the end of our day.
Patty and Eugene Do UPEI: Episode 5
After nearly six weeks of no Patty & Eugene to entertain you, the newest installment of everyone's favorite campus duo is back. Episode 5: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun comes in at a whopping 15 minutes of pure Patty and Eugene entertainment.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Five
The wake-up call came 5:30am on Day Five, sparing me the joy of being awoken by the melody of the barking and crowing from the neighborhood animals. After a carb-orific breakfast of bread and cream of wheat (which I loved, but several others definitely did not), we were off to Santo Domingo for Sunday morning Mass. While one would expect a two and a half hour church service (with a pause of about 45 minutes to allow for the Baptism of about 70 parishioners) in a foreign language to be incredibly boring, the phenomenal music ministry made it seem like a concert, party, and celebration all at once. (And it certainly wasn't the longest Mass I've sat through, at World Youth Day in Germany in 2005 Mass was in German, and then had to be translated into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.)
One may also expect that in a country where poverty is rampant, that our group would be the best dressed of the bunch in the church. Not so. All of the parishioners were dressed to the nines, hair done, dresses, shirt and ties, sometimes full suits (which seemed a bit much on a hot Sunday morning). Meanwhile the tired looking 13 Canadians were sweating profusely, hair looking about as good as you'd expect after several days without proper care, and were sporting whatever wrinkled garb remained clean from our luggage. My bright green John Deere t-shirt, grey manpris, and hiking boots didn't quite cut it.
Afterwards, we gathered with the youth from the parish, ate some bananas (they're big on bananas down there), and ran through some random Ice Breakers and then showed us around their community. Seeing as this was our first opportunity to interact with some Dominicans that were our age, we were pretty much instant BFFs. As we made our way around the community, you would've seen us all laughing at each other and ourselves as we attempted to break down the language barriers. We hugged and waved bye as if we had known them for years instead of the better part of an hour, and jumped in the van, chewing on our new addiction; sugar cane.
On the way to the Casa de la Juventud (Youth Program for the Arch-Diocese), and in between us laughing our asses off while relating stories of home and doing impressions from Anchorman and MadTV, Cathy told us about the subway that they were building through the centre of Santo Domingo. As we drove, gaping holes were visible right through the centre of Av. Maximo Gomez, a major north-south thoroughfare of the city. Cathy related how many different contractors had been awarded tenders to build the metro, each allotted a couple hundred meters of the project. Without a whole lot of imagination, one could easily imagine the inconsistencies and costs that this could present to the project. Further to this, no compensation was afforded to the businesses along this main artery of the city to offset the consequences of the dwindling traffic as a result of the construction. Bankruptcies and closures were now commonplace along Maximo Gomez, adding to the mounting opposition to the costly project. In a country where we had seen crippling poverty and social services in dire need of attention, it seems the government may be in need of a priority shift. That, of course, will at least in part be up to the electorate in next year's Presidential election, for which there are already billboards erected everywhere across the country.
After a tour of the Casa de la Juventud, which is the centre for administration and planning of Youth programming, we moved on to Yo También, a home for street kids. This home was run by volunteers of the Arch-Diocese Youth Ministry, and provides shelter for boys of all ages, as well as an opportunity for education and training before they adulthood. Coming from a family that used to take care of Foster children, I could only imagine the backgrounds each child came from as we went around the circle and introduced ourselves. Several were scarcely 10, but the age many of them wore in their attitude and posture was much more advanced than that. After introductions and explanations about how the home operated, we ate together in the dining room. Having seen the basketball court outside, Kurtiss scarfed down his rice and beans and hurriedly pumped up the basketball that he had brought for the kids there. The deadened eyes that had been bored throughout the introductions suddenly came alive with excitement as we took to the court in the blistering sun for some 4-on-4. Now being 6'2", I am doomed for the rest of my life to be asked whether I play basketball, and when I answer no, "Well why not? You're so tall!" Well, I don't play basketball because I suck. Yeah, I ran around the court and tried to make a couple plays, but after a few laughing fits at my expense, I retired to the shade. Kurt, however, being the borderline pro that he is, played until he had schooled every opponent and his clothes were soaked with sweat.
We gathered once again as a group to hear more about how the home operated and what type of schedules the boys abided by. The most effective feature, in my mind, was the fact that the directors of the home themselves were in their twenties and thirties, and therefore young enough to relate to the youth and to be considered somewhat "cool" in their eyes. Despite the tough facade and the joking back and forth, one director told us that their primary modus operandi was love. A boy named Johnny pulled out a guitar and played a few of his own songs. He was unreal, and each time a song ended, the room erupted into raucous applause. That being the Dominican contribution to the gathering, Kelsey stepped it up with tap-dancing, of all things. While I rolled my eyes, half of the young boys stared intently at her tap shoes, wondering where the noise was coming from, while the other half stared at Kelsey's hair, wondering if it was going to jump off her head and attack someone (This is kind of an inside joke, but you'd probably understand if you have ever seen her hair. For those of you who have not, imagine a lion's mane. Then multiply it by 12 and tangle it all together in a disorganized heap. That would be Kelsey's hair. On a good day.)
After we all got up and made an attempt at step dance, we had the opportunity to talk with the kids and take some time to get to know them. Kurtiss took to the basketball court again, Kady and Amy played guitar and sang with Johnny, and a few boys dragged Kelsey over to teach her how to 'really' dance. Everyone from the group has their own story of that afternoon, but we all really enjoyed the chance to actually spend some time with them, rather than just sitting around in a circle and boring them to death.
When we left, some people exchanged gifts, a young boy named Samuel taught me a new handshake, and Kurt posed for a pic with the guys on the basketball court. And as the van pulled away amid cheers of "Gringo!" and "Marry me!" (I think that was directed at the girls), we were all smiling ridiculously wide, goofy smiles.
We spent the balance of the afternoon along the Malecon Libre (basically a boardwalk or promenade) in Santo Domingo. Being a Sunday, families were out and a mini relay of some sort was being run along the Autopista 30 de Mayo. The City has a habit of naming streets after important dates and after prominent foreigners. In fact, the 30 de Mayo used to be a part of George Washington Avenue (There are also streets named for John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Jonas Salk, etc.), but was renamed after the brutal dictator Rafael LeĂłnidas Trujillo was gunned down along that stretch of highway in 1961.
Now a haven for tourists and dotted with hotels, bars, and shops, we were given a couple hours to see the sights and to relax. Kurtiss, Debbie, and I found the nearest bar, a few Presidente beers, and spent the time chatting, laughing, and watching the world pass us by. The perfect ending to what had been, by far, our best day to date in the Dominican Republic.
One may also expect that in a country where poverty is rampant, that our group would be the best dressed of the bunch in the church. Not so. All of the parishioners were dressed to the nines, hair done, dresses, shirt and ties, sometimes full suits (which seemed a bit much on a hot Sunday morning). Meanwhile the tired looking 13 Canadians were sweating profusely, hair looking about as good as you'd expect after several days without proper care, and were sporting whatever wrinkled garb remained clean from our luggage. My bright green John Deere t-shirt, grey manpris, and hiking boots didn't quite cut it.
Afterwards, we gathered with the youth from the parish, ate some bananas (they're big on bananas down there), and ran through some random Ice Breakers and then showed us around their community. Seeing as this was our first opportunity to interact with some Dominicans that were our age, we were pretty much instant BFFs. As we made our way around the community, you would've seen us all laughing at each other and ourselves as we attempted to break down the language barriers. We hugged and waved bye as if we had known them for years instead of the better part of an hour, and jumped in the van, chewing on our new addiction; sugar cane.
On the way to the Casa de la Juventud (Youth Program for the Arch-Diocese), and in between us laughing our asses off while relating stories of home and doing impressions from Anchorman and MadTV, Cathy told us about the subway that they were building through the centre of Santo Domingo. As we drove, gaping holes were visible right through the centre of Av. Maximo Gomez, a major north-south thoroughfare of the city. Cathy related how many different contractors had been awarded tenders to build the metro, each allotted a couple hundred meters of the project. Without a whole lot of imagination, one could easily imagine the inconsistencies and costs that this could present to the project. Further to this, no compensation was afforded to the businesses along this main artery of the city to offset the consequences of the dwindling traffic as a result of the construction. Bankruptcies and closures were now commonplace along Maximo Gomez, adding to the mounting opposition to the costly project. In a country where we had seen crippling poverty and social services in dire need of attention, it seems the government may be in need of a priority shift. That, of course, will at least in part be up to the electorate in next year's Presidential election, for which there are already billboards erected everywhere across the country.
After a tour of the Casa de la Juventud, which is the centre for administration and planning of Youth programming, we moved on to Yo También, a home for street kids. This home was run by volunteers of the Arch-Diocese Youth Ministry, and provides shelter for boys of all ages, as well as an opportunity for education and training before they adulthood. Coming from a family that used to take care of Foster children, I could only imagine the backgrounds each child came from as we went around the circle and introduced ourselves. Several were scarcely 10, but the age many of them wore in their attitude and posture was much more advanced than that. After introductions and explanations about how the home operated, we ate together in the dining room. Having seen the basketball court outside, Kurtiss scarfed down his rice and beans and hurriedly pumped up the basketball that he had brought for the kids there. The deadened eyes that had been bored throughout the introductions suddenly came alive with excitement as we took to the court in the blistering sun for some 4-on-4. Now being 6'2", I am doomed for the rest of my life to be asked whether I play basketball, and when I answer no, "Well why not? You're so tall!" Well, I don't play basketball because I suck. Yeah, I ran around the court and tried to make a couple plays, but after a few laughing fits at my expense, I retired to the shade. Kurt, however, being the borderline pro that he is, played until he had schooled every opponent and his clothes were soaked with sweat.
We gathered once again as a group to hear more about how the home operated and what type of schedules the boys abided by. The most effective feature, in my mind, was the fact that the directors of the home themselves were in their twenties and thirties, and therefore young enough to relate to the youth and to be considered somewhat "cool" in their eyes. Despite the tough facade and the joking back and forth, one director told us that their primary modus operandi was love. A boy named Johnny pulled out a guitar and played a few of his own songs. He was unreal, and each time a song ended, the room erupted into raucous applause. That being the Dominican contribution to the gathering, Kelsey stepped it up with tap-dancing, of all things. While I rolled my eyes, half of the young boys stared intently at her tap shoes, wondering where the noise was coming from, while the other half stared at Kelsey's hair, wondering if it was going to jump off her head and attack someone (This is kind of an inside joke, but you'd probably understand if you have ever seen her hair. For those of you who have not, imagine a lion's mane. Then multiply it by 12 and tangle it all together in a disorganized heap. That would be Kelsey's hair. On a good day.)
After we all got up and made an attempt at step dance, we had the opportunity to talk with the kids and take some time to get to know them. Kurtiss took to the basketball court again, Kady and Amy played guitar and sang with Johnny, and a few boys dragged Kelsey over to teach her how to 'really' dance. Everyone from the group has their own story of that afternoon, but we all really enjoyed the chance to actually spend some time with them, rather than just sitting around in a circle and boring them to death.
When we left, some people exchanged gifts, a young boy named Samuel taught me a new handshake, and Kurt posed for a pic with the guys on the basketball court. And as the van pulled away amid cheers of "Gringo!" and "Marry me!" (I think that was directed at the girls), we were all smiling ridiculously wide, goofy smiles.
We spent the balance of the afternoon along the Malecon Libre (basically a boardwalk or promenade) in Santo Domingo. Being a Sunday, families were out and a mini relay of some sort was being run along the Autopista 30 de Mayo. The City has a habit of naming streets after important dates and after prominent foreigners. In fact, the 30 de Mayo used to be a part of George Washington Avenue (There are also streets named for John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Jonas Salk, etc.), but was renamed after the brutal dictator Rafael LeĂłnidas Trujillo was gunned down along that stretch of highway in 1961.
Now a haven for tourists and dotted with hotels, bars, and shops, we were given a couple hours to see the sights and to relax. Kurtiss, Debbie, and I found the nearest bar, a few Presidente beers, and spent the time chatting, laughing, and watching the world pass us by. The perfect ending to what had been, by far, our best day to date in the Dominican Republic.
Monday, June 11, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Four
I wasn't exactly sure what to expect in visiting a Dominican Hospital, my limited visual indications of what to expect being from movies or TV shows. I was pleasantly surprised to find the facility that we toured on Day Four, The Robert Reid Cabral Children's Hospital; to be quite modern, and while Debbie (she's a nurse) had a few questions and concerns, for the most part, it was clean, well maintained and well staffed. As it turns out, the First Lady of the Dominican Republic had thus taken a special interest in that particular hospital after a tour of her own, and money had been earmarked to ensure that it was re-fitted and renovated properly to respond to current needs and specifications.
We toured several areas of the hospital, seeing children of all ages in all stages of treatment, from newborns to adolescent youth and everything in between. As one would expect, there were several kids bawling their eyes out as they were injected with needles or intravenous, others quietly slept in hospital beds or played busily with toys while hooked up to dialysis machines or respirators. Every child, whether crying, snoozing, babbling, etc. was accompanied by their parent, usually their mother, and each of them wore on their face and in their eyes the concern on their mind and the hope in their heart.
It was honestly difficult for me to walk through each room and see the children sitting with their parents, each struck by some disease or affliction, without averting my eyes and hurrying my pace out of the room. After four days in the DR, I was struggling with the feeling that these people saw me as nothing more than a tourist, someone coming to simply consume their poverty and pain, only to fly off back to my home of comfort after a brief stay. There is no comfort in admitting your own child into a hospital, though these families were lucky to be able to do so. And as heart wrenching as it was to watch children in pain while their parents looked on, there was little consolation in knowing that in leaving the hospital many of these children would return to the impoverished streets and communities that we had already seen. My glances into their eyes, as a result, remained brief and sheepish.
The highlight of our visit to this hospital for me was in touring the feeding area where newborns were being fed by their mothers. A new mother was bursting with pride as we entered, showing off her three-day old daughter, already sporting a full head of jet-black hair. When she told me how old her child was, I exclaimed to the rest of the group that she was precisely the same age as Madelyn Elizabeth, Jason and Steph's daughter, who had been born with hours of our departure from Canada.
As we moved back toward the entrance, we were shown the newly renovated kitchen that rivaled any in size or caliber that I have ever seen in Canada. It was a final example of progress being made, but also that great change could be initiated simply through a single act of political will. At the same time, while the children at this hospital received excellent care and benefited from the use of state-of-the-art equipment, if work was just beginning at this central hospital, it also suggested that there is more work to be done. This was in the centre of Santo Domingo, and while this hospital served a large area, this is a country of nearly 9 million residents, with many spread out in rural and remote areas.
The importance of this one hospital is reflected in the fact that while one entire floor is currently under renovation, the remainder of the hospital remains in operation, as there is simply no other facility capable of taking on its day-to-day operations. The progress being made was encouraging, but there were many indications that we would see in our own communities, that many Dominicans aren't able to seek proper medical attention, allowing for the worsening of what would otherwise be easily curable afflictions.
After briefly visiting a public session on HIV and AIDS put on by a NGO that works to support Dominican-Haitian women, we headed back towards the Santo Domingo Airport, near Boca Chica, where, off the main highway, we drove slowly down a dusty and bumpy trail between fields of sugar cane for what seemed like forever until we arrived at a collection of houses, clustered in what was, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. This community was built around the sugar cane fields, and the poverty we witnessed in this 'batey' was beyond anything I have ever witnessed or would care to witness again. As we walked among decrepit houses, a curious group of barefoot children followed our group from building to building, gnawing hungrily on mangoes from the trees above. Our host pointed out the single-rooms in which entire families lived, the pair of out-houses that serviced the entire community, the small pipe that served as running water for everyone who lived there. An elderly man on a wheel chair peered at us suspiciously before struggling to get back in his shack, out of sight. Another man in his fifties returning from the fields stopped and talked to us for awhile, telling us that someone had been burning the fields and destroying the crops. Apparently not fazed by the development, he smiled a toothless grin and nonchalantly swung the machete in his hand as he walked to his hut.
The workers in the sugar cane fields do not own their own land, and so, as is wont to happen in any like situation, they are at the mercy of the companies that employ them and to the markets that determine prices of the cane they produce. The result is extreme poverty, leaving the people to work on developing gardens and maintaining livestock, although at some points in the year, there is nothing to eat but the sugar cane from the fields or the mangoes that fall from the trees when they are in season. Obviously struck by the extreme conditions we were witnessing, a member of our group was prompted to ask our host: "What brings you joy?" The young woman named Natasha who had been escorting us from house to house and to the community's place of worship where we now sat, smiled her beautiful smile and told us that watching her children grow and having hope for their future brought her joy. I have never been as humbled as I was in that one moment.
Here too however, amidst the poorest of poor, there are signs of progress. A school that boasts attendance of over a hundred children of all ages stands at the edge of the community. The walls inside are lined with what you would see in any classroom, the alphabet, a map, a flag, and the names of each student. The teacher told us briefly about the instruction of the youth and of how they could move on to High School at communities further down the road. As Natasha had expressed, it seemed there was indeed hope for her five children and the others in the community to begin the process of ending the cycle of poverty in their community.
As we headed back to our van, the group gathered for a picture with our host and with the children of the community. I snapped the picture and then showed the image on the digital display to the children. As they realized what I was showing them, they were absolutely thrilled, flocking around me, nearly knocking me off my feet and tearing the camera from my hands as they pointed to themselves in the picture. It was almost a relief to be able to make them giggle and just be children in a place that seemed so forbidding. Children lose their innocence young here, and are often sent to the field before they ever get the chance to finish school. The path out of poverty for these communities will be a long-term battle, and the burdens and obstacles facing these children seem huge, almost insurmountable, but in that moment, they were just children.
We toured several areas of the hospital, seeing children of all ages in all stages of treatment, from newborns to adolescent youth and everything in between. As one would expect, there were several kids bawling their eyes out as they were injected with needles or intravenous, others quietly slept in hospital beds or played busily with toys while hooked up to dialysis machines or respirators. Every child, whether crying, snoozing, babbling, etc. was accompanied by their parent, usually their mother, and each of them wore on their face and in their eyes the concern on their mind and the hope in their heart.
It was honestly difficult for me to walk through each room and see the children sitting with their parents, each struck by some disease or affliction, without averting my eyes and hurrying my pace out of the room. After four days in the DR, I was struggling with the feeling that these people saw me as nothing more than a tourist, someone coming to simply consume their poverty and pain, only to fly off back to my home of comfort after a brief stay. There is no comfort in admitting your own child into a hospital, though these families were lucky to be able to do so. And as heart wrenching as it was to watch children in pain while their parents looked on, there was little consolation in knowing that in leaving the hospital many of these children would return to the impoverished streets and communities that we had already seen. My glances into their eyes, as a result, remained brief and sheepish.
The highlight of our visit to this hospital for me was in touring the feeding area where newborns were being fed by their mothers. A new mother was bursting with pride as we entered, showing off her three-day old daughter, already sporting a full head of jet-black hair. When she told me how old her child was, I exclaimed to the rest of the group that she was precisely the same age as Madelyn Elizabeth, Jason and Steph's daughter, who had been born with hours of our departure from Canada.
As we moved back toward the entrance, we were shown the newly renovated kitchen that rivaled any in size or caliber that I have ever seen in Canada. It was a final example of progress being made, but also that great change could be initiated simply through a single act of political will. At the same time, while the children at this hospital received excellent care and benefited from the use of state-of-the-art equipment, if work was just beginning at this central hospital, it also suggested that there is more work to be done. This was in the centre of Santo Domingo, and while this hospital served a large area, this is a country of nearly 9 million residents, with many spread out in rural and remote areas.
The importance of this one hospital is reflected in the fact that while one entire floor is currently under renovation, the remainder of the hospital remains in operation, as there is simply no other facility capable of taking on its day-to-day operations. The progress being made was encouraging, but there were many indications that we would see in our own communities, that many Dominicans aren't able to seek proper medical attention, allowing for the worsening of what would otherwise be easily curable afflictions.
After briefly visiting a public session on HIV and AIDS put on by a NGO that works to support Dominican-Haitian women, we headed back towards the Santo Domingo Airport, near Boca Chica, where, off the main highway, we drove slowly down a dusty and bumpy trail between fields of sugar cane for what seemed like forever until we arrived at a collection of houses, clustered in what was, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. This community was built around the sugar cane fields, and the poverty we witnessed in this 'batey' was beyond anything I have ever witnessed or would care to witness again. As we walked among decrepit houses, a curious group of barefoot children followed our group from building to building, gnawing hungrily on mangoes from the trees above. Our host pointed out the single-rooms in which entire families lived, the pair of out-houses that serviced the entire community, the small pipe that served as running water for everyone who lived there. An elderly man on a wheel chair peered at us suspiciously before struggling to get back in his shack, out of sight. Another man in his fifties returning from the fields stopped and talked to us for awhile, telling us that someone had been burning the fields and destroying the crops. Apparently not fazed by the development, he smiled a toothless grin and nonchalantly swung the machete in his hand as he walked to his hut.
The workers in the sugar cane fields do not own their own land, and so, as is wont to happen in any like situation, they are at the mercy of the companies that employ them and to the markets that determine prices of the cane they produce. The result is extreme poverty, leaving the people to work on developing gardens and maintaining livestock, although at some points in the year, there is nothing to eat but the sugar cane from the fields or the mangoes that fall from the trees when they are in season. Obviously struck by the extreme conditions we were witnessing, a member of our group was prompted to ask our host: "What brings you joy?" The young woman named Natasha who had been escorting us from house to house and to the community's place of worship where we now sat, smiled her beautiful smile and told us that watching her children grow and having hope for their future brought her joy. I have never been as humbled as I was in that one moment.
Here too however, amidst the poorest of poor, there are signs of progress. A school that boasts attendance of over a hundred children of all ages stands at the edge of the community. The walls inside are lined with what you would see in any classroom, the alphabet, a map, a flag, and the names of each student. The teacher told us briefly about the instruction of the youth and of how they could move on to High School at communities further down the road. As Natasha had expressed, it seemed there was indeed hope for her five children and the others in the community to begin the process of ending the cycle of poverty in their community.
As we headed back to our van, the group gathered for a picture with our host and with the children of the community. I snapped the picture and then showed the image on the digital display to the children. As they realized what I was showing them, they were absolutely thrilled, flocking around me, nearly knocking me off my feet and tearing the camera from my hands as they pointed to themselves in the picture. It was almost a relief to be able to make them giggle and just be children in a place that seemed so forbidding. Children lose their innocence young here, and are often sent to the field before they ever get the chance to finish school. The path out of poverty for these communities will be a long-term battle, and the burdens and obstacles facing these children seem huge, almost insurmountable, but in that moment, they were just children.
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Three
It seems that after three days events and routines that once seemed mundane become habitual. This rule was no different during our stay in the Dominican; crazy traffic jams, annoyingly loud roosters, stares from randoms on the street were now as normal and commonplace as red soil is to Islanders. Even the habits of the group, Kelsey's near-narcoleptic sleeping tendencies, Kurt's t-shirt/do-rag, Debbie's frequent bathroom breaks, became, while perhaps not normal, at least familiar tendencies.
After breakfast at the Centre, we headed back into Santo Domingo for the day. We began the morning at INTEC, a University within the Capital, for a discussion on Gender Issues. The talk covered areas of concern for Dominicans, most specifically within poorer communities of the country where sexual and physical abuse are rampant problems, exacerbated by high levels of HIV and AIDS. Worse, in the minds of many, this domestic abuse is considered the business of the household and of no one else. The abuse endured by many people within the country is absolutely atrocious, and stories were related to us about spouses who had their hands cut off, acid thrown in their faces, or whom were murdered, often for little or no reason. While the two hours spent on this topic were certainly enlightening to the plight facing the country in terms of domestic violence, it was difficult for me to remain focused on the issues at hand. When any type of domestic abuse comes up in discussion it often turns into a generalizing and man-bashing fiesta, which in my opinion is totally counter-productive. Violence is a societal problem and thus requires a society-wide solution. It is crucial that everyone be included in working against cultural and political beliefs that allow for it to continue. This will not be accomplished so long as narrow opinions and ideologies continue to characterize and generalize all men as the source of the problem. As soon as discussions attempt to make me feel ashamed for being a man, my interest checks out.
Following a short tour of the INTEC Gender Studies Department, we traveled to the Botanical Gardens, where lunch and a tour allowed us to re-charge and to take some time among the trees and ponds to process some of what we had heard and seen over the past couple days. Indeed, after several tours and sessions, it was beginning to seem that a myriad of insurmountable obstacles faced this developing country. Every facet of society that we had seen contained a plethora of issues and problems, and solutions seemed few and far between. Our visit that afternoon would be the first ray of hope that we would see in the work of Dominicans to build a better society.
In a poor barrio outside of the city, we rolled through dusty and dry streets, lined with poorly constructed houses, with mangy dogs on their last leg staggering around, and infants happily playing wearing nothing but a smile. We were headed for a school in this community where students had organized and coordinated a day-long session on AIDS and HIV for their peers and classmates. When we arrived, we sat down across from the room from them and introduced ourselves before they began to barrage us with questions. While the laughter and joy of these children was exhilarating enough in this, our first direct contact as a group with Dominicans, there were also two very important undercurrents to remember. First of all, these were kids teaching other kids about the hazards of unprotected sex in a country over-run by sexually transmitted diseases. As many are aware, it is both incredibly daunting and empowering for youth to take on such a task and succeed. The fact that youth had taken such a strong interest in this issue and recognized it as important enough to devote time and effort to was commendable. Second, while the community surrounding this building was falling apart in many ways, this school was well established. As we would see over the coming weeks, schools are one institution that even the smallest of the small and poorest of the poor communities contained. It seems somewhat cliché to mention the ancient adage 'scientia est potentia' (knowledge is power), but in the development of this country and in the throwing off of the chains of poverty, I see little that is more important than this advancement of education.
It was a brief and exhilarating encounter, but within those 30 minutes spent at the school, coupled with the work of the micro-credit NGO the day before, I began to see the parts of the puzzle coming together, the first signs of stepping-stones out of the mire of poverty and injustice.
We made it back to the Centre considerably early, and used the additional time to decompress with a game of Frisbee down at the community baseball field. While some of the children who flocked to us as we began to play had a bit of a rough time throwing the Frisbee for the first time, and others seemed hell-bent on beating the sense out of each other for a turn with it, the smiles on their faces seemed to indicate it was all a welcome escape from everyday monotony. When we left the field to return for supper, we got some pics with the incredibly cute kids and told them in our broken Spanish that it was great to meet them. Except that little punk that stole my Frisbee.
After breakfast at the Centre, we headed back into Santo Domingo for the day. We began the morning at INTEC, a University within the Capital, for a discussion on Gender Issues. The talk covered areas of concern for Dominicans, most specifically within poorer communities of the country where sexual and physical abuse are rampant problems, exacerbated by high levels of HIV and AIDS. Worse, in the minds of many, this domestic abuse is considered the business of the household and of no one else. The abuse endured by many people within the country is absolutely atrocious, and stories were related to us about spouses who had their hands cut off, acid thrown in their faces, or whom were murdered, often for little or no reason. While the two hours spent on this topic were certainly enlightening to the plight facing the country in terms of domestic violence, it was difficult for me to remain focused on the issues at hand. When any type of domestic abuse comes up in discussion it often turns into a generalizing and man-bashing fiesta, which in my opinion is totally counter-productive. Violence is a societal problem and thus requires a society-wide solution. It is crucial that everyone be included in working against cultural and political beliefs that allow for it to continue. This will not be accomplished so long as narrow opinions and ideologies continue to characterize and generalize all men as the source of the problem. As soon as discussions attempt to make me feel ashamed for being a man, my interest checks out.
Following a short tour of the INTEC Gender Studies Department, we traveled to the Botanical Gardens, where lunch and a tour allowed us to re-charge and to take some time among the trees and ponds to process some of what we had heard and seen over the past couple days. Indeed, after several tours and sessions, it was beginning to seem that a myriad of insurmountable obstacles faced this developing country. Every facet of society that we had seen contained a plethora of issues and problems, and solutions seemed few and far between. Our visit that afternoon would be the first ray of hope that we would see in the work of Dominicans to build a better society.
In a poor barrio outside of the city, we rolled through dusty and dry streets, lined with poorly constructed houses, with mangy dogs on their last leg staggering around, and infants happily playing wearing nothing but a smile. We were headed for a school in this community where students had organized and coordinated a day-long session on AIDS and HIV for their peers and classmates. When we arrived, we sat down across from the room from them and introduced ourselves before they began to barrage us with questions. While the laughter and joy of these children was exhilarating enough in this, our first direct contact as a group with Dominicans, there were also two very important undercurrents to remember. First of all, these were kids teaching other kids about the hazards of unprotected sex in a country over-run by sexually transmitted diseases. As many are aware, it is both incredibly daunting and empowering for youth to take on such a task and succeed. The fact that youth had taken such a strong interest in this issue and recognized it as important enough to devote time and effort to was commendable. Second, while the community surrounding this building was falling apart in many ways, this school was well established. As we would see over the coming weeks, schools are one institution that even the smallest of the small and poorest of the poor communities contained. It seems somewhat cliché to mention the ancient adage 'scientia est potentia' (knowledge is power), but in the development of this country and in the throwing off of the chains of poverty, I see little that is more important than this advancement of education.
It was a brief and exhilarating encounter, but within those 30 minutes spent at the school, coupled with the work of the micro-credit NGO the day before, I began to see the parts of the puzzle coming together, the first signs of stepping-stones out of the mire of poverty and injustice.
We made it back to the Centre considerably early, and used the additional time to decompress with a game of Frisbee down at the community baseball field. While some of the children who flocked to us as we began to play had a bit of a rough time throwing the Frisbee for the first time, and others seemed hell-bent on beating the sense out of each other for a turn with it, the smiles on their faces seemed to indicate it was all a welcome escape from everyday monotony. When we left the field to return for supper, we got some pics with the incredibly cute kids and told them in our broken Spanish that it was great to meet them. Except that little punk that stole my Frisbee.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day Two
Awoken by a melody of crowing roosters, barking dogs, and passing street venders blaring their horns, I dragged myself out of my bunk, checked the floor for bugs before stepping down, and had my first of many cold showers.
One cultural nuance left me a bit amiss my whole time in the hot southern country, and that was everyone's tendency to always pants. On PEI, at the first sight of spring (any day after February that is above 3 degrees), people are done with pants until the cold winds of November. I therefore expected Dominicans, who endure temperatures in excess of 40 and 50 degrees to opt for shorts (or 'short pants', as my father calls them.) Instead, shorts are frowned upon, even strictly prohibited in many areas. Not wanting to die in the heat, Kurtiss and I, the only two guys on the trip, opted instead for 'manpris'. Laugh if you will, but would far rather be called metrosexual (as I was many times) then to slowly roast in jeans.
After a hearty Dominican breakfast, we headed off to Santo Domingo for the day, about 45 minutes to an hour from our Centre, depending on traffic. I need not repeat the state of traffic as covered in my initial post, but our first foray into morning traffic gave us a whole new respect for the car horn. Our first couple experiences of crossing multiple lines of on-coming traffic made for a few nervous passengers and generated a fair number of yelps, mostly out of Christine.
Our day consisted of touring some areas of the city where more wealthy residents lived, impressive houses that rival anything here on the Island, several guarded by an assortment of attack dogs and men carrying massive shot guns. This was starkly contrasted by the heaps of houses crowded onto the hillsides that we would visit later that afternoon.
In the late a.m. we had a walking tour of the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo. The Zone is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, and for good reason. As the landing point of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492, and established in 1496, it is the oldest European city in the Americas. It is also heavily steeped in history, starting from the Spanish conquering and decimation of the aboriginal population, the enslavement of Africans, and the military involvement of several conquering nations, from Spain to France, Britain, to the United States.
Our afternoon included visiting an NGO that works with poorer entrepreneurs and small business owners, primarily women, in helping them get back on their feet by means of low interest loans, educational seminars, and support. After speaking with some workers within this organization, we went for a tour of a poor barrio (community) to visit some of the entrepreneurs they had aided. This walk-through was our first immersion into the poverty on the streets. It was tempting to focus on the children who were incredibly cute and very excited at the novelty of having white people in their community, but there was a lot more to mentally process in this single experience.
The houses were built on a steep incline, sometimes a 45-degree angle, and were of simple construction; mostly cinder blocks and corrugated metal roofs. The narrow streets and stairways were filled with people, and though there was a lot of garbage, filth, and poverty surrounding us, another presence was clearly evident, and that was the sheer vibrancy of this community. Though they had very little, the people we visited were fiercely proud of their accomplishments and their homes. It was slightly humbling; these weren't people that wanted us to come build their houses, indeed, they had built their own houses and businesses from the ground up, brick-by-brick, wall-by-wall. They wanted only to share their story of successes, the pride in their families, and their hopes for the future. It was also light years away from our Island home, only about 6 hours away as the jumbo jet flies, where people were no doubt going about their lives a usual in our suburban, fenced-in lives of isolationist luxury. On the way back to the Centre I realized that in this, my first day in the DR, I had discovered many of the things I expected: poverty and an extreme shortage of what we would call essential services, but also something I did not expect, an aspect of society within that poor barrio that I envied: true community.
It had been an exhausting and ridiculously hot day. By 10:00pm I was snoring loudly from my bunk, much to the chagrin of Kurtiss, my roommate.
One cultural nuance left me a bit amiss my whole time in the hot southern country, and that was everyone's tendency to always pants. On PEI, at the first sight of spring (any day after February that is above 3 degrees), people are done with pants until the cold winds of November. I therefore expected Dominicans, who endure temperatures in excess of 40 and 50 degrees to opt for shorts (or 'short pants', as my father calls them.) Instead, shorts are frowned upon, even strictly prohibited in many areas. Not wanting to die in the heat, Kurtiss and I, the only two guys on the trip, opted instead for 'manpris'. Laugh if you will, but would far rather be called metrosexual (as I was many times) then to slowly roast in jeans.
After a hearty Dominican breakfast, we headed off to Santo Domingo for the day, about 45 minutes to an hour from our Centre, depending on traffic. I need not repeat the state of traffic as covered in my initial post, but our first foray into morning traffic gave us a whole new respect for the car horn. Our first couple experiences of crossing multiple lines of on-coming traffic made for a few nervous passengers and generated a fair number of yelps, mostly out of Christine.
Our day consisted of touring some areas of the city where more wealthy residents lived, impressive houses that rival anything here on the Island, several guarded by an assortment of attack dogs and men carrying massive shot guns. This was starkly contrasted by the heaps of houses crowded onto the hillsides that we would visit later that afternoon.
In the late a.m. we had a walking tour of the Colonial Zone of Santo Domingo. The Zone is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site, and for good reason. As the landing point of Christopher Columbus in the New World in 1492, and established in 1496, it is the oldest European city in the Americas. It is also heavily steeped in history, starting from the Spanish conquering and decimation of the aboriginal population, the enslavement of Africans, and the military involvement of several conquering nations, from Spain to France, Britain, to the United States.
Our afternoon included visiting an NGO that works with poorer entrepreneurs and small business owners, primarily women, in helping them get back on their feet by means of low interest loans, educational seminars, and support. After speaking with some workers within this organization, we went for a tour of a poor barrio (community) to visit some of the entrepreneurs they had aided. This walk-through was our first immersion into the poverty on the streets. It was tempting to focus on the children who were incredibly cute and very excited at the novelty of having white people in their community, but there was a lot more to mentally process in this single experience.
The houses were built on a steep incline, sometimes a 45-degree angle, and were of simple construction; mostly cinder blocks and corrugated metal roofs. The narrow streets and stairways were filled with people, and though there was a lot of garbage, filth, and poverty surrounding us, another presence was clearly evident, and that was the sheer vibrancy of this community. Though they had very little, the people we visited were fiercely proud of their accomplishments and their homes. It was slightly humbling; these weren't people that wanted us to come build their houses, indeed, they had built their own houses and businesses from the ground up, brick-by-brick, wall-by-wall. They wanted only to share their story of successes, the pride in their families, and their hopes for the future. It was also light years away from our Island home, only about 6 hours away as the jumbo jet flies, where people were no doubt going about their lives a usual in our suburban, fenced-in lives of isolationist luxury. On the way back to the Centre I realized that in this, my first day in the DR, I had discovered many of the things I expected: poverty and an extreme shortage of what we would call essential services, but also something I did not expect, an aspect of society within that poor barrio that I envied: true community.
It had been an exhausting and ridiculously hot day. By 10:00pm I was snoring loudly from my bunk, much to the chagrin of Kurtiss, my roommate.
Friday, June 08, 2007
The Dominican Republic Faith and Justice Experience 2007: Day One
With the Provincial Leaders' Debate that I helped coordinate at UPEI over with at about 9:00pm on Tuesday May 15th, I headed home to pack and prepare for our three-week trip to the Dominican. It was a rather daunting task, but with an incredibly busy week under my belt, I was more concerned that I was about to embark on a 15-hour journey to San Cristobel, Dominican Republic, having only had about 6 hours of sleep in the previous three days.
Leading up to this experience, I was not sure what to tell people, and was reluctant to call this trip a 'mission,' because everyone I met expected us to be building houses or churches or schools or to be working somewhere for the duration of our stay. Instead, our group would be attending info sessions, visiting NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), and living with Dominican families for a portion of our stay. Frankly, I was not entirely sure that this was the most fulfilling way to spend three-weeks in a third world country, but as I came to know, and hopefully as you will understand through this series of blog entries, our trip was one wherein we learned that the Dominican people are not in need of our pity and charity. Nor do they need me to go down and build houses; they can build houses much better than I will ever be able to. As we were told many times, the challenge is to understand what the obstacles are for individuals in impoverished countries; to hear their stories and as Westerners, to work in whatever capacity we are able to ensure that the injustices of our own culture, in our own communities and around the world are not propagated in the future.
So with these and more questions in mind, I packed my clothes, along with some toys and gifts for the people I would meet, while my roomies cooked me my final Canadian dinner for 21 days. Shortly before midnight Gillis picked me up and we headed to the Charlottetown Diocesan Centre, from where our group assembled, some friends came to say goodbye, and we departed via van for Halifax Airport. After 15 hours of travel, we had been through three provinces, three airports, and three countries, and were on our way through Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic (also the landing site of Christopher Columbus and the oldest Eurpoean settlement in the Americas) on our way to San Cristobel.
The traffic in the DR is almost beyond explanation. In a city of about 2.2 million people, I would guess that maybe 3 of them have read the actual traffic laws of the city. Rush hour consists of thousands of cars weaving in and out of lines at high speed with inches to spare, and with apparently no notice whatsoever of the lines on the road, nor of the hundreds of motorbikes, mopeds and scooters that zip in between the already volatile lines of cars. Being from PEI, where honking your horn is either used to greet someone on the street or as the equivalent of telling someone off, the constant symphony of blasting horns was a bit over-whelming. Several times I caught myself looking to see the honker, fully expecting someone I knew or someone waving at us. After awhile the honking would meld into the other thousands of sounds in this incredibly loud country. One will also notice once they leave the Santo Domingo airport that many vans and trucks have bars mounter on the front and rear of the vehicle. After scoffing at these seemingly unnecessary accessories, after being hit or hitting other vehicles on three separate occasions within our first week we soon discovered that their are two types of vehicles in the Dominican; those that have these bars, and those that are severely dented or missing parts.
Seatbelts are, however, little more than an accesory in these vehicles. In a country where a full Public Car (Dominican version of the Taxi) is anywhere between 5 and 10 people, motor bikes often have 4+ passengers, and the beds of trucks are additional passenger space, seatbelts are few and far between. Our group was driven around in a very nice air-conditioned van by an unreal driver/body guard names Anez. Within my individual community, however, I had little choice but to abide by the 'When in Rome...' adage, as my choices consisted of accepting a certain degree of risk, or being left wherever I was, alone in a city I didn't fully understand, and in a country where my 6'2" frame and freakishly pale white skin made me stand out like a Conservative in the new PEI Legislature, thus attracting the stares of pretty much everyone I came with a half mile of.
By 9:30pm on May 16th, I was exhausted, and as I laid in bed trying to overcome the heat, I thought of how different a world I was in than the one I had left only that morning. Somewhere between imagining how I could single-handedly fix a broken world and going over Spanish phrases in my head, I drifted off to sleep. And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.
Leading up to this experience, I was not sure what to tell people, and was reluctant to call this trip a 'mission,' because everyone I met expected us to be building houses or churches or schools or to be working somewhere for the duration of our stay. Instead, our group would be attending info sessions, visiting NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), and living with Dominican families for a portion of our stay. Frankly, I was not entirely sure that this was the most fulfilling way to spend three-weeks in a third world country, but as I came to know, and hopefully as you will understand through this series of blog entries, our trip was one wherein we learned that the Dominican people are not in need of our pity and charity. Nor do they need me to go down and build houses; they can build houses much better than I will ever be able to. As we were told many times, the challenge is to understand what the obstacles are for individuals in impoverished countries; to hear their stories and as Westerners, to work in whatever capacity we are able to ensure that the injustices of our own culture, in our own communities and around the world are not propagated in the future.
So with these and more questions in mind, I packed my clothes, along with some toys and gifts for the people I would meet, while my roomies cooked me my final Canadian dinner for 21 days. Shortly before midnight Gillis picked me up and we headed to the Charlottetown Diocesan Centre, from where our group assembled, some friends came to say goodbye, and we departed via van for Halifax Airport. After 15 hours of travel, we had been through three provinces, three airports, and three countries, and were on our way through Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic (also the landing site of Christopher Columbus and the oldest Eurpoean settlement in the Americas) on our way to San Cristobel.
The traffic in the DR is almost beyond explanation. In a city of about 2.2 million people, I would guess that maybe 3 of them have read the actual traffic laws of the city. Rush hour consists of thousands of cars weaving in and out of lines at high speed with inches to spare, and with apparently no notice whatsoever of the lines on the road, nor of the hundreds of motorbikes, mopeds and scooters that zip in between the already volatile lines of cars. Being from PEI, where honking your horn is either used to greet someone on the street or as the equivalent of telling someone off, the constant symphony of blasting horns was a bit over-whelming. Several times I caught myself looking to see the honker, fully expecting someone I knew or someone waving at us. After awhile the honking would meld into the other thousands of sounds in this incredibly loud country. One will also notice once they leave the Santo Domingo airport that many vans and trucks have bars mounter on the front and rear of the vehicle. After scoffing at these seemingly unnecessary accessories, after being hit or hitting other vehicles on three separate occasions within our first week we soon discovered that their are two types of vehicles in the Dominican; those that have these bars, and those that are severely dented or missing parts.
Seatbelts are, however, little more than an accesory in these vehicles. In a country where a full Public Car (Dominican version of the Taxi) is anywhere between 5 and 10 people, motor bikes often have 4+ passengers, and the beds of trucks are additional passenger space, seatbelts are few and far between. Our group was driven around in a very nice air-conditioned van by an unreal driver/body guard names Anez. Within my individual community, however, I had little choice but to abide by the 'When in Rome...' adage, as my choices consisted of accepting a certain degree of risk, or being left wherever I was, alone in a city I didn't fully understand, and in a country where my 6'2" frame and freakishly pale white skin made me stand out like a Conservative in the new PEI Legislature, thus attracting the stares of pretty much everyone I came with a half mile of.
By 9:30pm on May 16th, I was exhausted, and as I laid in bed trying to overcome the heat, I thought of how different a world I was in than the one I had left only that morning. Somewhere between imagining how I could single-handedly fix a broken world and going over Spanish phrases in my head, I drifted off to sleep. And there was evening, and there was morning. The first day.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
...And now for something completely different: The Rants of a University Student (#45)
So, along with the usual questions (“Ryan, could you shut up please?” “Can you get down from there please?” and “Holy frig, you’re a little full of yourself aren’t you?”) about 407,036 people have randomly accosted me around campus to ask me where the the rant has been for the past couple weeks. Well, the rant writing was pretty slow for while there because New Year’s resolution season hit our house pretty hard this year. For awhile there, instead of a bunch of crank-ass alcoholics crawling out of bed at the crack of noon, everyone was bounding out the door at 5:00am, munching on brussel sprouts, and working out at the gym for 7 or 8 hours a day. It was as if we were all hopped up on endorphins and happy pills. It was disgusting. To make a long story short, I was too much of a happy person to come up with enough stuff that was pissing me off to write a whole rant. (Causing some of my friends to encourage me to start writing a new article: ‘…And now for something completely different: Positive Observations from Ryan Gallant.’ Riiight.) Of course the whole little New Year’s happiness nonsense crashed pretty hard after three or four weeks, as mid-terms screwed up schedules and sleep patterns, February blahs killed our joie de vie, and everyone just decided that staying in bed was a whole lot funner than freezing your face off in minus 348 billion degree weather.
Which brings me to another question. If it is -47 degrees out with the wind-chill, who the hell cares what the “real” temperature is? Like if my skin is going to freeze in two and a half minutes, then that is the damn temperature. And who are we measuring the non-wind-chill temp for anyway? Are there people out there somewhere in vacuum-sealed bubbles? Are there scientists conducting temperature-sensitive experiments in the snow banks? This is about as stupid as the time students complained that the high pressure sodium yellow lights on campus didn’t give off enough light and some engineer told us that they were fine. “Oh yeah, they give off plenty of light. It’s just not visible to the human eye.” Oh good. Idiot. On another random note, it’s a good thing cars are just spontaneously bursting into flame in our parking lots too. I mean it’s been at least 2 months since we’ve had a decent fire on campus anyway. I guess we were due.
Uh oh. Irving got into some trouble with IRAC (Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission) last month. As per provincial regulation, corporations can own no more than 3000 acres on PEI and IRAC suspects that Irving may have exceeded the limit. They were ordered to submit all documentation by the middle of this month OR ELSE face a fine of up to $10,000. Well shit. Oh all bow to the awesome power of the IRAC. I can just see the Irving Execs pacing around the office wringing their hands in fear. Ten grand. Imagine. I’m sure they’ll have to dip into the Irving Emergency Fund to pay that one down.
Oh, and don’t believe a word of Kristi Kelly’s article in the Cadre. Where in the World is Kristi Kelly? I’ll tell you where the hell she is. She’s about 15 feet away from me in the next office chatting away on her ever-present cell phone. I can hear her giggling from here. Every week I see the same damn articles. She’s in Budapest, she’s in Kuala Lumpur, she’s in Tuktoyaktuk. Bullshit. She’s been here all along. It’s all a little part of her house of lies. Kristi, come clean about your whereabouts. Your lies are weakening the integrity of The Cadre.
The Guardian asked a couple weeks ago if readers thought drivers on PEI are getting the message about drunk driving. What the hell do you think? I’ll give you three guesses, the first two don’t count. What kind of message are we supposed to be getting? A few weeks ago John Alvin Gallant was sentenced to 18 months house arrest for driving drunk and killing Charlie Campbell of Souris. Eighteen damn months to sit around home. Wonderful. Does this not sound ridiculous to anyone else? Is this how we strike fear into the assholes who decide they can down a case of beer and then drive around? Of course the Judge tried to justify the sentence by saying that John Alvin’s family would be worse off without him at home. Yeah no shit. I’ll bet Charlie’s family has a bit more to deal with than that. And the Judge figured he should be let off easy because “he feels sorry”? Who gives a shit? He’s responsible for someone’s death, and he’s part of a larger trend of people driving drunk and more and more Islanders getting killed every year as a result. The Provincial Courts have to grow some balls and get their shit together. Enough of this bleeding heart bullshit.
On a brighter note, it appears as though old Saddam won’t be making his big comeback in the next Iraqi election. Of course, as I’ve said before, I think his political career took a pretty big dive when they found him in a hole under a Styrofoam brick. Like, I mean, your army deserts you, and they don’t even give you a real damn brick to hide under? As one of my great professors would say, stick a fork in him; he’s done. Seriously though, if I was Hussein, (which for the record, I am glad I am not), I would’ve just faked a cough or something. I mean it worked for Augusto Pinochet. He was on trial for hundreds of atrocities committed during his reign in Chile, and he got sick, so they let him go home. So while Pinochet died peacefully at home in December at the ripe old age of 91, they took Hussein out for a good old-fashioned necktie social. Tough break Saddamy.
Have a good one!
Which brings me to another question. If it is -47 degrees out with the wind-chill, who the hell cares what the “real” temperature is? Like if my skin is going to freeze in two and a half minutes, then that is the damn temperature. And who are we measuring the non-wind-chill temp for anyway? Are there people out there somewhere in vacuum-sealed bubbles? Are there scientists conducting temperature-sensitive experiments in the snow banks? This is about as stupid as the time students complained that the high pressure sodium yellow lights on campus didn’t give off enough light and some engineer told us that they were fine. “Oh yeah, they give off plenty of light. It’s just not visible to the human eye.” Oh good. Idiot. On another random note, it’s a good thing cars are just spontaneously bursting into flame in our parking lots too. I mean it’s been at least 2 months since we’ve had a decent fire on campus anyway. I guess we were due.
Uh oh. Irving got into some trouble with IRAC (Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission) last month. As per provincial regulation, corporations can own no more than 3000 acres on PEI and IRAC suspects that Irving may have exceeded the limit. They were ordered to submit all documentation by the middle of this month OR ELSE face a fine of up to $10,000. Well shit. Oh all bow to the awesome power of the IRAC. I can just see the Irving Execs pacing around the office wringing their hands in fear. Ten grand. Imagine. I’m sure they’ll have to dip into the Irving Emergency Fund to pay that one down.
Oh, and don’t believe a word of Kristi Kelly’s article in the Cadre. Where in the World is Kristi Kelly? I’ll tell you where the hell she is. She’s about 15 feet away from me in the next office chatting away on her ever-present cell phone. I can hear her giggling from here. Every week I see the same damn articles. She’s in Budapest, she’s in Kuala Lumpur, she’s in Tuktoyaktuk. Bullshit. She’s been here all along. It’s all a little part of her house of lies. Kristi, come clean about your whereabouts. Your lies are weakening the integrity of The Cadre.
The Guardian asked a couple weeks ago if readers thought drivers on PEI are getting the message about drunk driving. What the hell do you think? I’ll give you three guesses, the first two don’t count. What kind of message are we supposed to be getting? A few weeks ago John Alvin Gallant was sentenced to 18 months house arrest for driving drunk and killing Charlie Campbell of Souris. Eighteen damn months to sit around home. Wonderful. Does this not sound ridiculous to anyone else? Is this how we strike fear into the assholes who decide they can down a case of beer and then drive around? Of course the Judge tried to justify the sentence by saying that John Alvin’s family would be worse off without him at home. Yeah no shit. I’ll bet Charlie’s family has a bit more to deal with than that. And the Judge figured he should be let off easy because “he feels sorry”? Who gives a shit? He’s responsible for someone’s death, and he’s part of a larger trend of people driving drunk and more and more Islanders getting killed every year as a result. The Provincial Courts have to grow some balls and get their shit together. Enough of this bleeding heart bullshit.
On a brighter note, it appears as though old Saddam won’t be making his big comeback in the next Iraqi election. Of course, as I’ve said before, I think his political career took a pretty big dive when they found him in a hole under a Styrofoam brick. Like, I mean, your army deserts you, and they don’t even give you a real damn brick to hide under? As one of my great professors would say, stick a fork in him; he’s done. Seriously though, if I was Hussein, (which for the record, I am glad I am not), I would’ve just faked a cough or something. I mean it worked for Augusto Pinochet. He was on trial for hundreds of atrocities committed during his reign in Chile, and he got sick, so they let him go home. So while Pinochet died peacefully at home in December at the ripe old age of 91, they took Hussein out for a good old-fashioned necktie social. Tough break Saddamy.
Have a good one!
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Episode 4: Boys Will Be Boys
Eugene starts to work up the courage to talk to his secret crush as Patty grows more and more frustrated with that "guy from the library.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Patty and Eugene Do UPEI: Episode 3
Patty gets a little edgy after flushing his pills, so he and Eugene head to the gym to burn off some extra energy.
What's that? You didn't subscribe to the podcast yet? What's wrong with you?!? Click on the link at pattyandeugene.com or search "Patty and Eugene" in the iTunes Music Store to subscribe.
What's that? You didn't subscribe to the podcast yet? What's wrong with you?!? Click on the link at pattyandeugene.com or search "Patty and Eugene" in the iTunes Music Store to subscribe.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Patty and Eugene Do UPEI: Episode 2
In this, the second episode of Patty and Eugene Do UPEI, Eugene wakes up after a visit from the hair fairy, Patty give a tour of the washroom, and the boys pay a visit to the library.
When you subscribe through iTunes, you'll also receive occasional extra clips of Patty and Eugene not posted on any other site. Sounds like it kicks ass? It does.
Visit pattyandeugene.com to subscribe to the video podcast.
When you subscribe through iTunes, you'll also receive occasional extra clips of Patty and Eugene not posted on any other site. Sounds like it kicks ass? It does.
Visit pattyandeugene.com to subscribe to the video podcast.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Patty and Eugene Do UPEI
Here's the first episode Patty and Eugene Do UPEI. You can check it out on YouTube or Google Video. If you click on the link to subscribe to the show through iTunes, not only will you have the show delivered to you every week, but you'll also get the first and second episodes today!
When you subscribe through iTunes, you'll also receive occasional extra clips of Patty and Eugene not posted on any other site. Sounds like it kicks ass? It does.
Visit pattyandeugene.com to subscribe to the video podcast.
When you subscribe through iTunes, you'll also receive occasional extra clips of Patty and Eugene not posted on any other site. Sounds like it kicks ass? It does.
Visit pattyandeugene.com to subscribe to the video podcast.
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