The Eye of Patrick

Hello,

sorry for the lack of updates, at the moment i am in chile skiing and find it difficult to find time to post. I hope to start posting after the 21s or 28th of this month, when I am in Vancouver.

talk to you soon,

Patrick

It was after my return to Halifax that I was able to make my way to Montreal. Montreal has been a city I wanted to visit for a long time. Just for the longest time it was too far for me to think of visiting (when I lived in Calgary) and then during my university days I never seemed to have the time or people to visit it. But when i went looking for tickets to return to Toronto I noticed many of them had a stopover in Montreal. It was that stop-over that got me thinking of maybe making a trip to Montreal as the time to get to Toronto then get downtown and then to Peterborough was almost the same amount of time needed to go from Montreal to Peterborough.Plus this was going to be one of my last opportunities to see the city. Montreal is a city that for many Canadians is like a trip to a different country. The reason is that while most of Canada was controlled and influenced by England, Quebec and the city of Montreal had French influences. This has resulted in my opinion of a city that is more European then other cities in Canada.

When I arrived in Montreal I made my way to my hostel “Sunset” I checked in and made my way to the dorm room and settled in. This was not my first experience at dorm living as I had spent 3 months backpacking through SE Asia. At first I had taken the bottom bunk but realized that the noise below was going to wake me up so then i moved to the top.

After settling in I went exploring, the location of my hostel was near St. Laurent Street, which is a unique street in Montréal as it is filled with edgy cafes and unique restaurants and bars. Considering I had not eaten all day I had decided to settle down and get something to eat. Seeing as this was the time of the world cup I made sure to select a place that contained a TV showing the Swiss vs. Ukraine play off game. When I had thought I found the perfect place I had settled down and ordered and watched the game. But as the meal progressed and the game looked more and more as if it was going to a shoot out, the TV started to blur and fuzz out. So in the end I was not able to see the shoot out. But it being Montreal I could hear the noises of other people watching the game and heard the result that way.

I realized when traveling, sometimes it is good to leave the guidebook out, so that the waiter has something to say. I thought at first that my waiter was French, but as the meal progressed and she saw my guide book about Montreal, she asked if I was visiting. I had told her yes and we had a small discussion about what to see and visit in Montreal. Which was nice, as you never know when you are going to meet new people. And never knowing who you are going to meet is what leads me into my next story.

I was walking around downtown Montreal and feeling a little blue as I was lonely and felt disorganized in the city. So I was walking around trying to locate one of the builds in my guidebook when I noticed or thought I noticed someone I knew. We looked at each other, hesitated then looked again and realized that we indeed knew each other. It turned out that out of the million or so people that live in Montreal that I had ran into another Kansai Gaidai former exchange student. At first we were just stunned to imagine that we would run into each other.

But it was like a gift from God that I had ran into him, as he mentioned that he was not suppose to be here on that day and was actually suppose to be back in his hometown planning his trip to Japan or China. But by chance he was still in the process of moving his stuff back from University and he mentioned that he was free to hang out. So I asked him what are some of the things that I just must do to say I went to Montreal and saw Montreal. The things that he listed ranged from culture to history to food, and seeing I had not eaten yet that day we decided to go for some Montreal smoked meat. I had heard of this wondrous food, and I wanted to try it out. We went to an eatery called Dunn’s and ordered a Montreal smoked meat sandwich. It was interesting as I was asked to select the fatness of my meat, so seeing that I had no idea of what was a good portion of fat I decided to go with medium. Medium is the perfect answer to anything I realized, it is the moderate answer.

It was during this meal that we had time to catch up and discuss what had happen since we both left Gaidai. It seems we have similar ideas about the future, as both of us wanted to return to Asia and possibly pursue a career in law. It was nice to be able to click so well with a person that you had not talken to in a long while. I think because we clicked so well we decided to continue or tour of the city and after the meal he took my on a tour of this city.

In my next post I will go into what I saw and how it was. But in the mean time I will share some photos.

So after I went to Wolfville I decided to go to Cape Breton. It is a island located to the northern part of Nova Scotia, it is like Hokkaido is to Japan. It was once a growing mining and fostery economy, but with the advent of globalisation and the ability to buy such products from cheaper producing sources the economy has gone into decline.This has meant that they have had to expand into other areas and one that has taken on a greater importance is Tourism. There are many Victorian B&B there, nature sites and a interesting highway experience called “The Cabot Trail” It is a highway that runs along the coast of the island, which is fairly rugged due to the fact that much of it is exposed to the harsh north Atlantic ocean. But it has contains some of most breath taking scenery and natural sites.

On this trip I went to visit a old friend from when I used to visit Cape Breton on a more regular bases. We had not seen each other in over 5 years and so it was a good time to catch up because I was unsure of when I would ever get the chance to come again.

The weather was raining the day that I went and we thought it would be best to stay inside. So we went to the Alexander Grand Bell Museum in Baddeck. If you do not know who he is, he is the Scottish inventor of the Telephone who moved to Canada and made his residence there. It is an interesting museum to visit as he was a prolific inventor. Initially he started working with the deaf to teach them the ability to communicate, and then he got interested in the telephone and other modes of communication. Later in his life he had a interest in flying things, hyrdofoils and planes. The museum is all about him and his inventions. I think this is my 4th time going there and I still enjoy it.

And after that we drove home to Halifax and I caught my flight to Montreal.

I have a question for those who read, what do you think of my layout, can you see any area for improvement? please leave a comment to suggest.

Thank you,

Patrick

I am not sure if I have posted about my placement. But I finally found out where I will be going. I will be going to Shimokawa, Hokkaido. If you are anything like me, you are wondering where is that.Shimokawa is located in the nothern part of hokkaido. It is about 2-3 hours from Sapporo by train. The town contains about 4,000 people (plus or minus census source). Its primary industries are logging and farming. On the right there is a map of it so that you can have a clearer picture of shimokawa, hokkaido.Being selected to live in Hokkaido is an interesting event, as when i made my application for the JET program I had selected no place because I thought that I would get sent where i was meant to be, plus there was just to many places i wanted to go to in Japan. So when I found out I was going to hokkaido i was excited. I started googling it and ran into a lack of information. The wiki post on it just states the location and the population. So I dug even further and asked my Japanese friends to help me locate more information, even in Japanese there was not too much.

So I was happy to hear from the person I will be taking over. He called me and we talked about it. From the sounds of it, I really lucked out for many reasons.

1. I will have western toliet that flushes, this is not that common in hokkaido supposely.

2. I will be getting a brand new heater! so those winters will not be too cold.

3. I can get high speed internet, which supposely is not that common in small towns of 4000 people. I can’t imagine life without highspeed!

4. My rent will be 72 dollars a month due to my town helping me.

5. It comes more or less fully furnished.

6. My town has an Indian and Italian resturant.

So I was happy about that, plus my schools I will be teaching at are very nice too, from grade K-12 and also and adult class. He mentioned that the adults are very nice and friendly and can actually speak english. I should only be teaching 2-3 years a day, but have to spend the other time at the BOE. This means I will have a lot of time to study Japanese, which is one of the reason for me wanting to go to Japan.

He also mentioned that there is many festivals and that my town has two local festivals. One is an ice candle festival. You are probably thinking Ice candles? but doesn’t water put fire out, and yes that is the case. But in Shimokawa, hokkaido they have a special way.

This is what my pred said: “To make an ice candle you first take a bucket and fill it with water. Now leave it outside overnight, exposed to the frigid temperatures. By morning, the top and sides of the bucket will have frozen but the bottom and core
will still be liquid. So, turn the bucket upside down, and drop out the contents — they form a large ice ‘cup’ around the remaining unfrozen water. Pour out the water, wait until night, put a candle inside then light it, and voila! You have an ice candle. As I’m sure you can imagine, these are quite beautiful objects.”

He also told me that there was many opportunities to get involved in the community through events and festivals. I look forward to that, and that was part of the reason I requested to be put in a small town, as I wanted to get a unique Japanese experience.

Seeing that it is hokkaido, there is lots of skiing and from what I have heard it is just covered in them. I can’t wait to ski again, while living in Ontario I have not had much desire to ski as the hills are poor, but some of the hills in Japan are used for super G and other races so the quality must be good. Also the ski season runs from Nov to May and it is only 20-40 dollars a day, which is very cheap. I heard that many people go skiing 15-20 times in the ski season, so I hope to learn to snowboard while there.

On the right I included some photos of my apartment, I hope you enjoy them. Have any of you been to Hokkaido, tell me about it?

Patrick