Saturday Morning Ramblings

I went out for supper with some of the teachers from the school I'll be teaching at over the next 6 weeks (potentially until the end of the school year). Most of us are international citizens, so talk touched on some of our impressions of living in the UK.

This is my first morning lie-in in over a month. To commemorate it, here are some ramblings that come to mind (some that you may have heard before):

Canada is gorgeous. It's a huge country with all sorts of geography and ecosystems. I'll give you a couple examples, JUST from the West Coast. My parents live in a semi-arid desert, a few hours away, where I went to uni, it's a temperate rainforest, and directly North from them, I've been teaching just south of the Arctic circle for 6 years. The Yukon has a Winter that lasts for 8 months of the year, lots of unexplored wilderness, and changing light conditions depending on the month. Just the Yukon Territory has double the surface area of the UK, but a population of 36 000. 24 000 of those people live in the "city" of Whitehorse (that's where I lived). So that leaves 12 000 people spread out over double the surface area of the UK.

I had a sled dog pup that I trained up to pull me on cross-country skis. A lot of the Canadian stereotypes are actually a way of life in the Yukon, unbeknownst to most Canadians themselves. It was eye opening moving up there. I was completely anti-gun before moving there, and now I OWN a gun. Just a little one :P Most people don't eat if they don't hunt. It's just crazy. A gun is seen as a regular tool, like a hammer, or a sewing machine.

I do love Canada, and there's much more of it that I'd like to explore. That being said, coming to the UK has been a whole different experience. There's a sense of depth here, and roots, that is missing in Canada. It's hard to describe exactly, and even now that I've been here for 5 months I've started taking it for granted. I was reminded of it when my aunt came to visit over Christmas Break, because she commented on it too. Maybe it's the buildings. A lot of everyday buildings and homes here are older than the Dominion of Canadian itself. It's rather awe-inspiring. Maybe it's the people. People here seem to be deeply connected to their cultural identity. They can trace their families back, sometimes on the same plot of land, for 100s of years.

Frequently, when I fill out form, "White" isn't an answer (they don't use politically correct words such as "Caucasian" here). They want to know exactly what kind of "White" I am. Well, I'm a little bit English, a little bit Scottish, I have some Welsh, my family name comes from Old French (but can't be traced back further than landing in North America, so it was probably changed, and we have no idea who these ancestors actually were), my grandma is a quarter dutch, my grandfather is allegedly a quarter American-Indian... the list goes on. For some reason "White-Canadian" isn't one of the options.

It's all just a little bit of a different point of view on your life. It makes you see yourself from a different angle, and get to know yourself on a deeper level. Going back to bed now.