Not really back. It's just a post.

Don't get your hopes up, I refuse to commit to regular blogging. Life gets too crazy. But I wanted to update family on our trip to Utah and I think this is the best way.

Friday, May 19, my two weeks of holidays began. Dan picked me up from work and we were on our way to the border. We stayed in Great Falls, Montana that night at a Super 8, poorly chosen by me. Note to self: no more Super 8s in the future. On Saturday we drove, drove, drove all the way to Provo. The goal was to drive to Moab that day but there was no way, we were too tired and it would've involved looking for a campsite in the dark, which would have been a very bad idea. So we stayed in Provo, traveling down memory lane on BYU campus and grocery shopping for our week of camping.

On Sunday we got up early to make 11:00 church in Moab - but the parking lot was empty. Yep, Stake Conference! I feel like that's not the first time that's happened in my life. So our week of frolicking in the Utah National Parks began.

We spent three days in Moab area, taking in the sites at Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. This area was one of Dan's favourite places to holiday before yours truly entered the picture, and we had a really great time checking out some of his favourite hang out spots. We camped along Colorado River in a sweet canyon in a Bureau of Land Management campground. It was primitive, but it was also only $7.50 a night! And when we got hot we cleaned up in a natural spring. Fantastic! The weather was perfect - not too hot or cold and lots of sun. Canyonlands was a bit freaky - 800 ft drops into the canyon everywhere and no guardrails.  We did see the Google car with it's funky 360 cameras at the Grand View Point, so we need to check Google maps in a few months to see if we made it onto street view.

We stayed closer to Moab on our third day, spending some time on Slickrock, a popular mountain bike area. We vowed to bring our bikes back next time we come. We also vowed to get in shape so we could ride our bikes next time we come. (Side note: They have really stellar road bike paths in and around Moab too, definitely want to try those out.)

Arches National Park

 

 Canyonlands National Park

 

 

On Wednesday we packed up camp and drove to Bryce Canyon National Park. We took the scenic route and crossed Capitol Reef National Park and Grand Staircase -Escalante National Monument. At one point we were driving on a ridge with steep cliffs on either side - totally crazy! In Bryce Canyon we hiked into the Queen's Garden, and then continued on to Zion National Park. We were there for two nights and one full day of fun hiking the Narrows and exploring the park.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Zion National Park

On Friday we were tired from all that driving and hiking, so rather than go back into the park we just decided to head to Salt Lake City for 1.5 days of shopping and site seeing at Temple Square. On Sunday we actually parted ways - Dan kindly drove home with out me and I got on a plane to Columbia, Missouri to visit Neha and family. My, how that baby Parth has grown into the most adorable boy you've ever seen.

 

Overall, it was a wonderful holiday. My expectations were completely exceeded by the national parks and I don't think these pictures really show how brilliant they are. It was a wonderful way to celebrate 6 months of marriage, and we're looking forward to going back someday, since we still have so much to see!

Bits and bites

Last week I neglected to mention that Neha had her baby, a beautiful tiny boy! His name is Parth and we still need to meet. Mom and baby are doing just fine. Look at this awesome photo a photographer at the hospital took. So excited to be Janice masi!!


Work is going really well. I feel like I have developed some kind of routine for my class, and I can see what I want to work on with them. Putting it all into action is daunting, but, one day at a time, right? Today we were talking about safety in the workplace, and how you have the right to safe work. If you are a welder and your boss asks you to do a small job, but he doesn't have a mask for you, should you do it? Seven people said "no way" and one kid said "yeah, of course. He's the boss. In my country, I did it." Okay. Which led to a somewhat condescending discussion about how some things that were okay in your country are not okay in Canada. Like, for instance, in your country, hanging on to the outside of a bus or sitting on top of a train is totally cool, but in Canada it's not. Is it safe to hang on to the side of a bus? Two students shrug their shoulders - I guess not, but we did it every day. To which someone else said "But it's a free ride, right?" Nope, we still had to pay. Really? And so on... Can you imagine people just hanging on to the top of the c-train on their commute home from work? It makes me laugh just thinking about it, but it's so common elsewhere. Today I was invited to be a guest blogger on our work's ESL Literacy Network website in February, so I'm looking forward to that opportunity. I know you're thinking that I barely pay attention to my own blog, how will a manage a second? I'm wondering the same thing...

Here are some photos that belong with last week's post:

Snow shoeing at Lake Louise


Skiing at Sunshine

Life is back

It's so great to not be working nights. I feel like a normal human being again. I go to work, get the job done. Come home, go to the gym, spend time with friends. Starting up a new class last week was stressful, as it always is, but by the end of the week I felt like I had a handle on where the students are at and how we will progress through the term. I love my new little class. I have eight students who come from Nicaragua, DRC (Congo), Albania, Vietnam, Philippines, Nepal, China, and Ethiopia. Yep - 8 learners, 8 countries. They're hard little workers and we've had some fun. Most of the students are returning and are already friends. One of the students from Nicaragua is new and quite shy. The first three days he said almost nothing. On Wednesday, we were having a discussion about our favourite actors. When I got to him, he said "Arnold Schwarzenegger." So then I said, "Oh yeah...like I'll be back..." and some of the students gave me a weak pity laugh. Then he was like, "Hasta la vista, baby." Everyone was so surprised to hear him talk that they started laughing and clapping, it was awesome. Since then he's been opening up more. It's only been one week but I'm already in love with my students.

Dan's been out of town for work this week, so I've been getting some stuff done and getting together with other friends. On Wednesday I went to this pub with Sarah Baugh and friends for 1 cent ribs. I didn't believe it at first, but it's true - we ordered 100 riblets, and the bill came to $1.00. I can promise you I'll be going again.

Back track to New Year's - I was going to add photos here BUT I can't seem to download them from Dan's google plus so you'll have to wait until I do. Dan and I went to Lake Louise on Dec 31 for some snowshoeing and skating. Then on January 2 we went back to Banff for skiing at Sunshine. We were really lucky to have beautiful weather!

Looking back and forward

Happy New Year!
Calgary has been very good to me. When I wrote last I mentioned that I taught a listening and speaking class twice a week. Part way through October, I also took on a second evening class called Culture and Language for Work, which I taught using teleconference. Some of my students were in the classroom in Calgary, and some of them were in Red Deer. It was challenging sometimes, especially when we had technology issues, but the course itself was a blast. Basically, I taught the soft skills for culture in the work place to very fluent students. It was amazing to see them make connections and have real "a-ha" moments. We talked a lot about the importance of clarifying instructions with a supervisor, how to make requests like ask for time off, that kind of thing. Before each lesson I thought, "ah, this is going to be so obvious, I don't think any of this will be surprising to them," but it always was. I never realized how much I take these cultural idiosyncrasies for granted. For example, when you have to ask your boss for time off of work, how do you start? Well, first it's necessary to greet them in some way politely, maybe ask them if they have a minute to talk, use a sentence like "I was wondering if it would be possible if I could..." and give a reason if it's appropriate ("because my family is visiting from India". In that exact order. Mess up the order, it doesn't come off as polite. How could you ever pick up on that if it wasn't taught to you explicitly? Not to mention the appropriate body language, voice intonation and pauses. This is one of the reasons immigrants can experience difficulty moving up the corporate ladder at the work; they can't see the hidden cultural intricacies in making requests or dealing with conflict. ANYWAYS I really enjoyed teaching that course even though it had challenges. Here's a picture of some students doing group work.



I also took on a great little gig teaching English at a business downtown. The managers at this company felt that three of their employees needed some remedial English. When I actually met the employees, I thought they were incredibly fluent and comprehensible. Um...?? So...what I have been finding is that it may not be language, as much as confidence building and more of that cultural stuff. So I go to the company in downtown Calgary once a week for 90 minutes and have a blast exploring language and culture together. Usually I find out what they've been struggling with it, and then we try to address it the next week. Right now we're working on presentation skills. One student described giving presentations in a second language like typing on a keyboard. The only problem is that there is no backspace key! Another one of my students asked me if I was going to write a book about them. =) I told her I would blog about it.

My other evening class was a challenge at times. I really liked the students individually, but as a group they just didn't really gel. My favorite class was the last night. I only had four very diligent students stick around until the very end. I delivered an impromptu lesson on how to make requests using "I was wondering if I could..." and at the end I asked each person to give me an example. The last student said "Janice, I was wondering if you like chocolate?" I was confused, and then he pulled out a chocolate bar from his backpack as a parting gift. You had to be there, but it was hilarious and made the whole term worth it.

When I wasn't working, I was living the daytime dream; going to the gym with retirees, watching Jaimie Oliver at 9:30 a.m. and Ellen DeGeneres at 1:00 p.m., and getting acquainted with my new city. I particularly enjoyed going for runs in my new neighbourhood and running errands in Marda Loop, a great little community just south of my neighbourhood. Dan and I went to Edmonton for a friends wedding in October, and we also made it to Kananaskis for a day hike to Chester Lake during the shoulder season. I also went to the west coast to visit friends and family. I went to Vancouver for two days to visit Neha (who was then 8 months pregnant) and Sumit. Had to get one last visit in before the baby arrives! I took the ferry to Victoria and Dan came the next day to visit with my Lokhorst relatives for a few days. An enjoyable time was had by all. We were lucky to be in town for my Opa's choir concert. It always is enjoyable when I visit my friends and family, thank you for your hospitality!



The one thing I complained (often) about last term was working evenings - four nights a week. I did not suffer through it gracefully. And fortunately, I don't have to anymore, because next term I have my own class during the day, 80% workload. Fantastic! I'm teaching in a program called Youth in Transition, so immigrants aged 19 - 24 who experienced some kind of interrupted education. Teen immigrants who move to Canada with no English still attend high school here, but obviously do not study age appropriate grade materials (except maybe math). When they turn 19 they are too old for high school, and so the point of YiT is to bring up English levels in younger people so they can eventually enter high school upgrading. They have a long road, but I hear they are motivated and they learn quickly. I'm very excited about it, although I've been told it can be like teaching junior high sometimes (some students don't have a lot of classroom experience due to a lifetime spent in refugee camps). Wish me luck. I hope to have some fun stories about teaching to blog about next time.

I'm alive

Greetings from Calgary! This weekend marks my four week anniversary of living here and I like the city more and more each day. I graduated in April, and after nine years in Edmonton I knew it was time for a big change of scene. There was only one tiny thing holding me back; I didn't have a job in Calgary. However, I was offered a part-time research contract for the government of Alberta, which could be done anywhere, so I decided that it was enough to make the move, and it would be easier to find work in Calgary once I lived here. So move I did, and sure enough, I was hired part time by Bow Valley College. I currently teach an evening speaking and listening class to newcomers, and I also substitute teach which is proving to be quite lucrative. In mid-October, I will take on another part-time 10-week contract with BVC teaching an evening course via teleconference. Half of my class will be here, and the other half will be tuning in from Red Deer College. It's going to be interesting and challenging, I'm sure.
I'm living the dream in a sweet apartment close to downtown. The central location is amazing, I feel like I have easy access to the best parts of Calgary. It takes me...
15-minute bike to get to work downtown
3-minute bike to get to the bank
7-minute bike to MEC
7-minute walk to church
5-minute walk to new favorite kabob place, Ali Baba's
3-minute walk to The Chocolate Bar, a new dessert joint I still need to go to
15-minute drive to Grandma's
15-minute drive to Dan's
50-minute drive to Kananaskis
Here are some photos of my new pad... the world's smallest one bedroom apartment at 450 sq feet, but it totally works. I even have laundry!



Other activities I've been enjoying include checking out parks in my area, enjoying a fall bike ride around the Glenmore Resevoir, shopping at Chinook Centre, and hiking in Kananaskis. Yesterday Dan and I took advantage of the weather and went to the zoo. Check out this tiger!


Come visit soon!

A Blast from the Past...

I wrote the following entry last October in 2010, but never got it up on the wall. I just found it as I was cleaning up my computer. I'm currently back at NorQuest teaching LINC 4 and loving it. I hope to post many more experiences about the classroom!...

I have been meaning to blog for a long time about the work part of my summer - the part where I was thrown into the deep end of the pool - or, the part where I started teaching English as a second language. Last summer I worked at two locations: Grant MacEwan University two evenings a week, and NorQuest College during the days. It was a great opportunity to put into practice what I had been learning for a year, and to also learn that I have a lot to learn. But I loved it, even the bad days, I loved all of it. What a relief to discover that I actually do like the career that I'm working towards in school. At NorQuest College I taught a high-beginner course, LINC 3. It's a great level to teach because they know enough that you can converse and have class discussions, but not enough for them to ask scary grammar questions that I don't know the answer to. One of the many reasons I love teaching ESL is because it is pure comedy sometimes. One of my discussions in class:

Me: Okay everyone, today we're going to talk about small talk [I write “small talk” on the board]. What kinds of things do people talk about when they make small talk?
Male student: Uhh teacher?
Me: Yes?
Male student: I don't think women know small talk. Only long talk.

Classic. In another class, we were practicing language you use when someone calls you on the phone but you are busy and you can't talk. They had a series of pictures on a work sheet of some kind of scenario, like a person cooking dinner, and they had to come up with a sentence like, "I'm sorry, I can't talk right now, I'm cooking dinner." This was one of the prompts:


I'm circulating the room, listening to students:
Faz: Teacher, is this right? I can't talk on the phone right now, I'm melting the baby.
Me: HAHAHA sorry. [trying very hard not to laugh but it's too late] Uh no, haha, no sorry that's not right.
Faz: What did I say? What is funny?
Me: uhh you know the verb melt? To melt something? It is when you put something like butter in the microwave...
Faz: uhhh HAHA ohh no not melting baby.

Peter: Teacher, is this right? I cannot talk on the phone, the baby is swimming.
Me: uhhh not quite...

Now, before you think I'm horrible for laughing at my students, you need to know that they think laugh too. Because they know that making mistakes is inevitable, which is part of learning a language, and sometimes everyone just needs to laugh at themselves.

I've always depended on the kindness of strangers

I think this phrase never rings truer than when you are travelling. Really, think about all the times you have to ask some random person if they know when the next bus is coming, where is that cafe you read about in Lonely Planet that's supposed to be on this street, and do you know where I can get vegetarian food in this city? And if you didn't take English 30 in Alberta, then I'll let you know that the title is also fitting given that it comes from the play "A Street Car Named Desire," set in New Orleans. (See this for the line in the movie by Blanche, and if you hold out to the end you'll hear a good "Stella!" too.) Another title I thought of for this post was "Janna takes on NOLA!" Janna is a hybrid of Janice and Anna. NOLA is a hybrid of New Orleans, LouisiAna. Anna is my amazing friend I met last year in university, and we are often found together at school so some people in our program refer to us as Janna just to simplify things. We went to NOLA for the TESOL International conference March 16 -20. TESOL is a hybrid of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. The conference sessions we chose were informative and we got free dictionaries at the trade show. Okay. Now why we really went...



WE LOVE NEW ORLEANS. Love it. The weather was perfect. The people are friendly and service is great. The food is fantastic. The architecture and design are beautiful. Everyday we took the same walk from our B&B in Marigny to the French Quarter, and we noticed something different every time.
Our B&B was outside of the super touristy French Quarter, but I think it still had all the charm and some really great places to eat. Oh, eating! Heaven! The food is heaven! Consult me before you go to NOLA, because I know where you should go to stay and eat. Back to the B&B, called Lions Inn. The breakfast wasn't anything special, but the beds were super comfy and it had a nice big backyard with a pool, lounge chairs, and lots of greenery. Ed, the host, was so soft spoken but so helpful (hence the title of this blog). He was always available to answer our questions and gave us some really great tips about where to eat and bike. That's the other thing, this place had touring bikes we could borrow, and on our last day we just hopped on and toured around our neighborhood in the sun.
We really felt that while New Orleans seemed very friendly and happy and welcoming, it also seemed to have an edge to it as well. It's hard to describe, but it shows itself once in awhile, like in some of the graffiti art or how the iron work on homes is beautiful in the day but downright creepy at night in the light of gas lamps. Maybe it has something to do with the Mardi Gras culture or the fact that Voodoo was (is) big here. Either way, we always felt safe, but sometimes a little creeped out.




NOLA is also famous for its above-ground cemeteries. The land is too boggy, so they keep their dead above ground.



One of my favorite things about travelling with Anna was her ability to slow down and appreciate really subtle things like the smell of blossoms on jasmine trees only open in the evenings. This is us at the St. Patrick's Day parade, sorry for the lame photo quality.


Food time! It looks gross but I swear it tasted delicious; a grilled shrimp po'boy from a hole-in-the-wall joint.

Good southern food: sweet potato fries and the best crab cakes you ever ate.


These are yummy little deep-fried beignets covered in icing sugar from Cafe Du Monde. Famous AND tasty...


No wonder this place flooded, it's surrounded by water. Here's a few teens on what we think was their grad trip, taking in the ol' Mississippi.

This is just quirky, and it's just for Bethany. Someone decorated their entire truck in a "redheads" theme.


We came across this haunting 'x' more than once. After Katrina hit, rescue crews travelled from house to house and left their mark by spray painting a big x at about the water level of the building. In the top section they left the date, on the left was the initials of the state the crew was from, the bottom was the number of animals found dead and the right side was for humans. Fortunately, this house was empty when it was found.

This was tiled into a sidewalk:

Who's Mahalo?

Love love love love Hawaii. I get it now. I get the obsession, why people who go need to go again and again. It's beautiful, it's friendly, and it's American. There is something for everyone; beaches for beach lovers, adventures for adventure lovers, Obamas for Obama lovers.
It's easy to catch the aloha spirit in Hawaii, partially because people really say "aloha" and other Hawaiian phrases all the time. The title of this blog is a bit of a joke. One night we decided to go to a movie. Right before the show begins, a screen flashes up which reads, "No smoking permitted in the theater. - Fire Marshall". I probably made some lame remark to my aunt Yvonne about why is that even necessary anymore, blah blah blah. The next screen flashes up and it says "Please do not talk during the show. Mahalo". I turn to Yvonne and say, "Who's Mahalo?" "Uhhh...Mahalo means "Thank you" in Hawaiian." But I don't speak Hawaiian, so you can understand why I was confused, right? I was picturing some large Hawaiian man who works at the theater and occasionally checks up on audiences to make sure people aren't chatting. Or, maybe Mahalo is the Polynesian god of communication who frowns upon disruptive conversation. Anyways, the point is... I don't know what the point is but I won't forget what mahalo means and I was more inclined to use that than the English version for a week after I got home.

We stayed at Hau'ula, which is about half way between Honolulu and Waimea Valley on the north shore. An ideal location in my opinion; while it was usually overcast where we were staying, a 20-30 minute drive north or south usually brought sun. The waves are the biggest at this time of year on the north shore, so we enjoyed avoiding getting crushed in the surf or watching others do the same. At Sunset Beach and Pipeline Beach, we didn't even bother swimming, since signage on the beach indicated it was unsafe to do so. I love bumming it on the beach, so this is my number one highlight.


Other highlights include...

Eating prawns at a shrimp shack. Yummy!


Going on a "Hole in the Wall" Food Tour of Honolulu. Our guides were hilarious and they showed us some great eats in the city that we never would have found on our own. If you're going to Oahu, I recommend it. This is a photo of me at the "Look Funn Factory" in China Town.

The Polynesian Cultural Centre. Who doesn't love traditional song and dance? It was very entertaining and exceeded my expectations.



Turtles!


Hiking in the Waimea Valley.


Perhaps the best part of the holiday was spending quality time with my family. I'm glad we took this opportunity to take a long trip together when everyone was in a position to do so. Thanks for the fun times!