April 2006 posts (with addition of March ones I didn't notice before!

April 25

Que Calor, Morena!

Isn't it hot, brown girl! This is the statement I am making here, one that I heard a lot when I was in Spain. By Mexican standards, I'm not that dark, actually, and wouldn't be called Morena here, but in Spain, I guess I was considered to be dark. Anyways, it is hot here, although today's forecast only predicts a high of of 32. That isn't bad. But most of the week is going to be above the average temperature for this time of year of around 30. Most days are supposed to be between 38 and 41. Isn't that great? Well, I have to say that although walking around in 38+ degree weather doesn't appeal to me, at least I haven't felt cold yet--except for last night. Thinking the ceiling fan and fresh air would cool things off enough that I could sleep with a thin sheet, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling cold, so I got under another blanket. Yes, I know I'm crazy. But it was only maybe about 25 out last night, so you can see how I might get chilly!

 

Anyways, I just arrived in Mexico yesterday after a long day of travelling. It kind of feels like coming home in a way. There are some new developments, such as a couple of new buildings that I noticed as well as some overpasses (the place is beginning to remind me of Houston in that regard), but everything is pretty much the same. It'll be good to catch up with folks here and find out how the last 2 years have treated them.

7:27 AM | Permalink | Travel

April 23

Two New Photo Albums

I was able to plug in a couple of albums for my readers this morning. I will add some more photos to the albums when I return to Edmonton because some of my photos ended up being quite dark, for some reason, so I'll lighten them up using my editing software at home. There were also photos I wanted to get close-ups of and crop, but I think these suffice for now.

 

A few comments now that I have pictures to explain. I didn't get any pictures of Enrique, unfortunately, so I'll have to post one of him from my personal stash of photos when I return to Edmonton. I didn't get a picture of Louise, either, who at brunch with us and ordered that very yummy looking plate of waffles. I did, however, get a picture of the awesome Lisa and the awesome guy she has been seeing, Luis. He happens to be a professor of astrophysics at Concordia University. You'd think he would be a boring, nerdy guy, but he's actually quite interesting and plays guitar pretty well and is much more well-rounded than you would think! Come to think of it, I didn't get any pictures of Vanessa, Sergiy or Valeriya either. I brought my camera all the time, fully intending to take pictures, but I forgot every time! Also, check out the entrance to China town. It looks the same as Edmonton's, pretty much, but you know it's in Montreal because you can see the street name there, René Levesque, which we definitely do not have in Edmonton.

 

As for Ottawa, I was told that there are always demonstrations outside the Chinese Embassy. I was disappointed that there was only one guy the day I was there. We so rarely get to see demonstrations in Alberta that I was hoping for something more exciting than that. There was also an interesting tent-like structure outside the Chinese Embassy. It looks like someone lives there because they had taken pains even to construct a sidewalk from cardboard. It made me sad. In any case, if anyone can confirm the name of the river that runs behind the Parliament buildings, please let me know. 3 rivers converge in Ottawa, I believe, and I, I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference...oops, wrong thought direction there! Well, the rivers are confused in my head, so some clarification would be appreciated. Oh, and if you're wondering why heads and tops of buildings are cut off in the pictures I'm in here, it's because I had to take them myself, and I just couldn't get everything in. People often tell me that they wonder why I'm not in any of the photos, and it's because often I am alone, but also it's because I generally snap things I want to paint or that I think are artistic, and if I'm in the photo, I'm standing in the way of that. But here you have proof that I was there. I should also mention the reason for the picture of that lady on the plaque. I just liked her vision of what she wanted the practice of law to be, so I was hoping the text in this picture would turn out clearly, which I can see it did. The spider picture is especially for Ruby. I remember showing her a photo of this sculpture when it was first purchased by or donated to the National Gallery, and I totally forgot the thing was there. Ruby loves spiders, so I thought she would enjoy this sculpture. Also, the biting art picture is as good as I could get it. I think the type of glass they use in the gallery is supposed to obscure photos, but I wanted to try to show the intricate work done on this piece of bark. One indigenous group in Canada has this art form where the women put a piece of bark in their mouths and then literally bite these patterns into them. I find it quite remarkable since they can't see what they're doing and go totally by their tactile abilities. There was a series of these, but obviously it wasn't worth trying to get them all since they would have been equally as blurry.

https://picasaweb.google.com/113865747642168640464/Montreal?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCL6I_4HduZ2h2wE&feat=directlink

https://picasaweb.google.com/113865747642168640464/Ottawa?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLGTxp_B-ciHOw&feat=directlink
 

5:44 AM | Permalink

April 19

Pit stop in Pittsburgh

I decided to make a pit stop in Pennsylvania before going on to Mexico. I basically called up my brother on Monday and said, hey, can I come tomorrow? What happened is that I found out my travel agent had been in the hospital for some reason, which is why she wasn't around to tell me she had booked a ticket for me to Mexico and my other destinations with the round-the-world ticket. So feeling that I was running out of time, I started checking into tickets myself online and realised that it would cost me almost no more money to stop over at my brother's on the way down to Mexico. Rather than using Montreal as my Canada base, I'm now using Pittsburgh as my North American base, which is nice because it means I get to visit my brother on my travels too.

I have to start looking into some other tickets here today and get booking some of them, but if you're wondering if I'm in some exotic place yet, I'm not--although it's much warmer here than it was in Montreal and Ottawa! The other good news is that I can get the photos off my camera at my brother's, so I should be able to put up a couple of photo albums within the next couple of days.

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="https://photos.gstatic.com/media/slideshow.swf" width="288" height="192" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&captions=1&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=https%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F113865747642168640464%2Falbumid%2F6182324705091442481%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26authkey%3DGv1sRgCJ3bnuLY4emoTg%26hl%3Den_US" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed>

 

7:41 AM | Permalink | Travel

April 17

Ottawa back to Montreal

I've finally managed some time to write here again. I'm certainly not keeping as up to date with this as I had imagined I would, but then you never really know how your time is going to go when you're travelling.

I went to Ottawa last Thursday and came back on Easter Sunday. I had a really excellent time there. My friend Dmitry lives in Ottawa with his wife Alexandra and two daughters, Mila and Roxana, who are cute as buttons. I had never met his new family before, so it was a great opportunity to get to know them. Dmitry and Alexandra's hospitality is excellent, and I really felt like I could make myself at home there.

 

While in Ottawa, I went to the Parliament buildings. Normally I'm not into seeing the big tourist attraction type things, but it's one of those things that a person should see in Ottawa. It's a very impressive structure, as well as the buildings that surround it. What I never realised was that the building was constructed in true Gothic-style architecture, which is probably my favourite architectural style. It is replete with blackening bricks and gargoyles, the latter of which you may find a couple as beavers! That was unexpected, but very cool! I also went to the National Gallery (Musée National des Beaux-Arts) where I saw some even more unexpected paintings, such as Monets, 3 van Goghs, a number of Degas, Cézannes, and a Sisley. Was I in tears? Almost. It was overwhelming to be in a room with all these impressionists' work. There were also some Andy Worhols, and I have to say that I find this kind of boring. One scultpure was a stack of wooden boxes painted the same as Brillo pad cartons from whatever decade it was, stacked 4 high and 2 wide. Yay. I think warehouses should market their stock as art and see how much money they make. The museum also had a lot of paintings, those kind of which are just a number of coloured stripes that look like some colour-blind person decided one day that (s)he too could be an artist. I used to make drawings with felt pens like that when I was bored in school using my loose-leaf, lined paper, and no one paid me one red dime for any of those, and at least my colours matched. So I've decided that I will do up a bunch of these when I get home and see how much money I can make off them. A person could whip up a number of those in a very short period of time. Oh, one cool sculpture was of a baby's head, but like giant, probably about 3X3 meters, and was really well done.

 

The other museum I went to was the Canadian War Museum, which has a really interesting exhibit on right now on propoganda. They had items from Japan, Mexico, Germany, Italy, the US, and Canada, pretty much all related to the WW1 and WW2. The exception was a couple from Spain, which were from the Spanish Civil War. It was fascinating to learn about the different types of propoganda used and how there were several ways in which it was incorporated into the every day, such as putting war-related drawings onto tea cups/pots, children's games, and matchstick books. It wasn't just all through posters and television.

 

Anyways, it was a fun trip. Dmitry made traditional Ukrainian Easter brunch on Sunday, which consisted of mashed potatoes with butter and fresh dill, smoked fish, caviar, bread, and salads of various kinds. It was quite tasty! I assume I'm on to Mexico tomorrow, but I'll have to confirm. MY travel agent wasn't very helpful, and I don't yet have a ticket. I may be back in Edmonton before you know it! I'm going to research today to find some tickets for myself and see what I can come up with. I'll let you know!

10:19 AM | Permalink | Travel

April 10

Finally a chance to write in Montreal

Well, here you find me situated in an Internet cafe where I have a bunch of time to sit and write. For those of you wondering what happened to me, I just haven't been around the Internet that much. At the last minute, I decided not to bring my laptop as I had forgotten how heavy it is to carry the darn thing, and I haven't had the chance to get to an Internet cafe very much. 

All flights to Montreal went well, and upon my arrival, Enrique took me out for a walking tour of the area in which he lives, which was super after sitting around on planes and in airports all day long. He currently lives in an area of Montreal called Outremont, home to cafes, boutiques, and a miscellany of other types of high to low-end stores. It is also home to a population of Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, and Hasidic Jews, the latter of whom, of course, are the most visibly noticeable with their black attire and wool derbies on top of yarmulkas with the long curls on either side of the face creating a dark frame. Well, the women don't look like that, but the men are quite noticeable, anyways. I hope to get a picture of some, but I feel a little nervous about takng photos of people because I don't want them to notice and get upset. 

Now I've heard many people say that Quebecers are unfriendly and that they didn't enjoy their trip to Montreal at all. I have never had that experience, and I was even treated to a free bagel in the best bagel shop in town because I was saying how good the New York ones were and that I had never tried the Montreal ones before. The guy in the shop overheard me and apparently felt he had to remedy this problem. The bagel was indeed extremely yummy: warm and chewy, the way I like them.

The following day, I managed to waste an hour trying to find an Internet cafe. I looked in the phonebook for addresses and could find none of them that were listed there. I decided to carry on with my original plan of checking out Chinatown, and sure enough, I found one within the first 5 minutes, just randomly. It never fails. Happly, this place was also a Vietnamese Restaurant where I had a soothing shrimp wonton soup with noodles. 

Since then, I've been out for more walks, hanging out with Lisa and Enrique's friends, brunching, window shopping in the underground shopping mall as well as other places, and just generally enjoying the beauty of Montreal's architecture. Last night I went out with my friend Vanessa to this place where a friend of hers was playing. He created this little performance that is set to two different silent films. The concept is basically that he has re-written the musical scores for these movies to be jazz music rather than the traditional piano pieces that were played in those days. It was pretty amazing. 

Today, Lisa and I are going to the Musée des Beaux-Arts to see an exhibit on Catherine the Great of Russia. It should be brilliant. I'll leave to Ottawa in a couple of days to visit my friend Dmitry, and then spend another day or two in Montreal before heading off to my next stop, Monterrey. 

8:56 AM | Read comments (1) | Permalink | Travel

March 29

The Transitions of My Life

When I used to volunteer with the International Centre here at the U of A, my favourite time of year was the Transitions Orientation program. It was a program designed to smoothe the transition that international students make when they come to Canada. Through that experience, I learned a lot about transitions, and I also came to realise how transitions are a huge part of all of our lives. We often use another name for it, though: change. For me, change is a dreadful word because it means that things will be different. Those of you that know me as an outgoing, adventure-seeking person should also be advised that this is not my natural proclivity. I prefer routine, and I would probably develop obsessive compulsive personality disorder if I wasn't forced into situations requiring great change in my life. God must know this, and he does it to me on purpose for whatever reason. Well who am I to question that? My mom will remember, though, that I would have schedules in my head--you think you have list-writing of tasks to complete every day as a peculiar behaviour, but mine was all in my head! Anyways, I always had my days planned out, what I was going to do at which time, and so on. If something disrupted that, it would cause great anxiety for me, and I didn't know how to deal with that. I refused to deal with it, hence my desire for more control over my life.

I have come to see that transitions are unavoidable, however unfortunate I may think it is. While some of the transitions in my life have been harder to accept than others, I know that it has also made me a different person, someone that has been able to learn a lot about herself and the world around her because of them. And let's face it, one of the greatest changes in my life was living in Mexico for a couple of years, and that is something that even goes beyond a blessing in my life. It is something that continues to bring joy to me, though I no longer live there, because of the people from Mexico that are still in my life. It's a beautiful thing.

The reason I write about transitions today is that I'm thinking a lot about them as I'm about to embark on my 4-month period of travelling. It should be a fascinating experience, fun at times, and exhausting at others. Who I will be when I return is a different story, and what will be waiting for me when I return cannot be divined. It's something I ponder a lot and wonder if anyone out there thinks about it too.

6:49 PM | Permalink