I’m about to embark on the My Explore program, a month long French Immersion class at the University of Laval (or en français de l’Université Laval). Posting may be sporadic throughout July or then again, maybe I’ll find that I have a lot of both interesting experiences to write about and time to write about them.
Au revoir, I’m off to Quebec.
I ended my week on such a high note I can hardly believe it. To keep this interesting to the casual reader, I’ll try and keep this short.
Spending some time with my kid sister and her two kids was fantastic. I really can’t get enough of her kids. Her 18 month toddler is just so much fun, and I’ve never had so much time to spend with a newborn—yes I even changed diapers and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was led to believe. Of course, I never had to change any seriously smelly ones. Oh man that kid does drop the occasional bomb in which hazmat suits would be ideal.
Then yesterday I had a good time hanging with one of my best friends in Lethbridge and her mom—which was totally nice if uneventful. However today was even more excellent than any day of the previous week.
It started out as one of those bland Saturday’s where even though the weather is nice, the lawn needed to be mowed, the laundry to be done, repairs made on the damage that my psycho roommate inflicted upon the house while I was gone (that’s one I’ll save for a different post), and it didn’t look like I had much on my plate that I was interested in actually doing.
But then, by the glorious miracle of the Internet, I found a group of guys that had blogged about going kayaking in less than an hour; all I had to do was show up with a boat on my Jeep.
We hit the lower St. Mary’s river which I had never been down before. Pictured below is a one of the guys that went with us and a bunch of Calgary folks’ vehicles and boats—we were all getting ready to hit the water.
The thing is, there has been a lot of rain in the last week. Apparently it rained pretty much everyday while I was gone to visit my sister. Well with lots of rain comes a high river and let me just say, wow that river was flowing! I was getting pretty confident going down it though and noticed that the other guys were all pulling off to the side, but thought, oh well I’ll just go down a bit further and pull off after a few of these big waves.
Well HELLO, the waves kept coming bigger and bigger, until I noticed that the whole river was raging around me. I found out later this was probably in the area of class four rapids. The best thing to do in a time like that is just go for it—which I did; which was awesome! I got right through them without even flipping and then parked in the eddie like a pro. The other guys were mighty impressed. Two of them followed my path and the other two opted to walk around these particular rapids.
Later one of the guys lost his boat—which looking at it now is kind of funny but I was quite worried at the time. The two more experienced boaters wanted these other two guys to come over to the shore with us so we could check out the hole around the next bend. Well I think they might have scared him slightly because while crossing he was a little unstable and then dumped. Well knowing he was in trouble he quickly bailed and didn’t even hang onto his boat. I went after him—again charging into the great unknown but at least the other guys told me to keep left. I went down this even bigger set of rapids, but this time a little less gracefully (I did it upside down)—depending on how you think about it perhaps I should get extra points for style. Luckily I flipped myself back up (after several tries) and we found his boat circling in a nearby eddie.
So to treat myself for my hard work today I made myself what I consider a perfect supper fit for a king and watched the Oilers shut-out the Hurricanes 4 to nothing, sending them to game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals and giving me the perfect ending to a perfect week.
I think I’ll start out next week with more kayaking; I’m going again tomorrow.
I had some big plans to go down to the States this week and drive all the way to Indiana. However, due to the way things just work out sometimes, the trip is cancelled and now I’ve got to make something with this pile of lemons I’ve been handed.
So I’ve decided instead of the beautiful Red, White, and Blue, I will head north to visit my kid sister again and her, ever-so-cute, kids. Life seems to be an allusive adventure lately. Hopefully we’ll spend some time at the lake and besides the drive will be a good chance to practice my French. Only twenty more days until I leave for Quebec.
Today I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in New Media from the University of Lethbridge.
My time spent at the University passed by like the blink of an eye (with the exception of my last semester when I was only taking one class—that took an eternity.)
But alas I’m really done and now that I’ve got my piece of paper I’m free to go out and do whatever I want. The world is my oyster. (Here’s hoping I don’t choke on a pearl).
A short time ago, the bake element in my oven decided it would prefer to experience life as a sparkler rather than as the key component in the “heating up Jeff’s food” process.
An interesting thing happens when good elements go bad. It’s not uncommon for the metal to start shooting fiery sparks in all directions travelling around the whole element or until it snaps apart due to the breakdown of the material. It’s fun to watch but a little scary at the same time especially if no one has warned you that it’s not unusual for old elements to self destruct in such a manner.
Ok, here come the boring (but important) life lessons:
I guess that’s it. Now I’m off to enjoy some gourmet frozen pizza. Oh and I did clean the oven after I got the old element out—Mr. Muscle you are my hero. I just hope that now my pizza won’t taste like heavy duty oven cleaner.
I had a fantastic weekend. The May long weekend is one of those fickle beasts where anticipation is rarely meted out with actual reward, but I have to say I never would have imagined mine would be so fun.
My kid sister and her husband Glen invited me out to Buck Lake for some fun and adventure with their family. Glen’s brother Jason even picked me up halfway in Calgary so we’d each have someone to chat with on the way up and of course to save a little gas. What a fantastic family. I’m guessing the invitation was due, in no small part, to the fact that I’ve seen better days. Though I might have a thousand people read this website, when it comes to the real world I have been a little bit of a recluse lately. So again, this weekend was a lifesaver.
First thing when we arrived on Saturday morning the boys immediately started to play. It was one game after another, tossing the baseball, a little catch with the football, and then the competitions started. I bet you I can knock over the lawn chair from here, next time make it Ryker’s minuscule plastic chair. Of course the chair was no match for the pig skin.
“Yeah, it was weird, the wind knocked it over and the leg just broke right off”. The grandparents are apparently used to the their sons breaking Ryker’s stuff as Grandma says with a smile, “Oh, sure it did”.
It rained that night as Chris (Glen’s oldest brother) and I finished up the Texas Hold ’em Poker match. I had a pretty big lead, but it was getting late so we went all in blind on one deal and I ended up losing everything. Still that game is extremely fun, and we weren’t playing for money. Seeing the rain pouring down on my little tent—though I’m sure it wouldn’t have been bad once i got in it—I opted to sleep on the floor of the fifth wheel. The next day Jason, Jock, and I took the Quads out through the fresh mud and had a spectacular time. Part of the fun is trying to go through the most impossible rutted up mud traps to see if you can make it. If you can’t, well then that’s what the winch is for and with a little help from the other guys you can pull yourself out of anything. It’s great!
That night the Oilers beat the (not so) Mighty Ducks and afterwards we took the boat out wakeboarding. I have never been wakeboarding in such perfect conditions. The water was like glass and as the sun set it left pink and purple streaks that glided down into the reflection of the lake. I wish I would have had my camera out that night because except for swallowing a few bugs, the mood was absolutely perfect! I even landed a few big jumps across the wake.
 I got to spend the next morning playing with the little man, my nephew Ryker, at the park and got a few pictures of him there. It’s so fun to watch what he finds entertaining.
Back in Calgary that evening I met up with one of my old friends from Medicine Hat and we went to dinner together.
Things are really starting to line up for her. We started talking about when we were younger going to church together. She caught me up on what everyone else in the same church age-group was doing with their lives and eventually the conversation turned to reminiscing a little bit about what our Sunday School lessons were like and how even as a kid she realized that I was the only one in class asking the hitting questions and she could see the pain in my eyes when the responses I got weren’t very satisfying.
She also helped me realize something that night which might very well change my life. She pointed out that I’ve had quite a hard time letting things go, whether it be a misunderstanding from junior high or a break-up or whatever. She claimed (ever so kind that she is) that she thinks I’m a genius and on that same note that sometimes my great mind refuses to just forget about things. Obviously I’ve been aware of this my whole life, but something about the conversation just stuck and I began to finally realize that holding onto anger for things whether they happened 20 years ago or just last year was pretty ridiculous. What was I trying to accomplish anyway? It’s high time I let things go; it’s high time I learn not to cling onto things so much; and it is such a burden off my shoulders.
So I’m back home, reclusing as usual, but I feel good. I’ve done all my household chores, the lawn is mowed, the DVD I have been meaning to burn for a friend is done, and it’s got me thinking, why shouldn’t I be happy anyway? After all, every day is a gift, and some days are extra special gifts—like the ones where you go quadding and wakeboarding in the same day. I’m a lucky guy.
I’m counting the days before I head off to Québec City for the five weeks of intensive courses in French as a foreign language. I’m extremely excited and have been hitting the Speak and Read Essential French MP3’s extra hard lately.
I’ve also been reading up on the 1759 Battle for Québec. I find early Canadian history so rich with action and excitement, I love to read all about it! We’ve got our fair share of stories that would make brilliant blockbuster movies, allow me to share this one and let me know what you think.
The odds were stacked against New France. The British outnumbered the French three to one in ships, four to one in troops, and the Brits had a ten to one advantage in money.
I’ve been checking out Google maps to try and figure out where the attack must have happened. As the story goes, the British sailed down the St. Lawrence with more than 140 ships (one full quarter of the British Navy) and were spread over a distance of 50 miles. James Wolfe, the English General, had also in his command over 13,500 men — 9,000 of whom were from the best units in Britain.
It was the best trained and equipped army North America had seen, supported by the biggest and best fleet.
-popular historian Gordon Donaldson
However, conquering Québec City, “the Gibraltar of the New World” was not an easy task, and Wolfe soon discovered that despite his huge advantage there wasn’t really any way to get beyond the city’s fortified walls. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, the French general, was misinformed by native-born Canadien and governor Pierre de Vaudreuil’s engineers that the English cannons did not have the range to reach them over the huge St. Lawrence River, and so didn’t reinforce the southern shore. In this they made a grave mistake.
Determined that he would wear the French down by sheer persistence, Wolfe ordered his cannons to pound the city for months killing civilians and destroying homes by the score. The prolonged destruction served no real military purpose other than to terrorize and demoralize the city’s inhabitants.
Summer turned to autumn and still Wolfe had not taken the fortified city. Time was beginning to run out for Wolfe, and he began to worry how he would explain to England why the attack was taking so long. He decided to try a new strategy.
Earlier, [Wolfe] had spotted a break in the cliffs west of the city, at a cove called l’Anse-au-Foulon. If [he] could somehow land his men undetected and then scale the cliffs, he might be able to put his army on the plains behind the city and draw Montcalm out into the open . . . and so it was, on a moonless night in mid-September, that a flotilla of 30 flat-bottomed boats slipped silently downriver with the tide.
On September 13, 1759, after bluffing their way past a French Sentry, an advance guard climbed the narrow trail and overpowered the French post at the top. The rest of the troops followed soon after pulling themselves onto the Plains of Abraham and by daybreak more than 4,500 English troops assembled on the far side of the City.
The surprise was complete. General Montcalm had been convinced that the final attack, if it came, would be on the other side of the city at the Beauport shore. When an aide suggested that the British might try to climb the cliffs, Montcalm had snorted with derision. “We do not need to imagine that the enemy has wings,” he wrote in his journal, “so that in one night they can cross the river, disembark, and climb the obstructed cliffs.” But now, they had done just that. As he hurried to assemble his troops, Montcalm looked out at the redcoats that were lining up behind the city, and complained, “They have no right to be there.”
Wolfe had managed to drag up only two light cannons. Montcalm decided that time was of the essence and that the British had to be attacked immediately, before they could dig in and strengthen their position. For the first time since the British arrived, Montcalm acted impulsively. He had 3,000 reinforcements somewhere behind the British lines—a message had been sent and they were on their way—but he didn’t wait for them to arrive. Instead, Montcalm gathered the troops he had on hand and threw open the city gates . . .
The battle lasted only 15 minutes. The British had formed a “thin red line,” two men deep, and the French advanced in a ragged charge, the regulars and the Canadiens stumbling over each other. Native snipers were picking off British soldiers from nearby woods, but Wolfe stood his ground. Then, when the French were only 30 paces away, the order was given. The redcoats raised their muskets and fired, one platoon after the next in rolling thunder across the Plains. Smoke filled the battlefield. The British re-loaded and advanced, emerging from the smoke like ghosts. They fired a second volley, and that was all it took. The French broke and ran.
Both Wolfe and Montcalm were killed due to injuries suffered in the battle, Wolfe on the Plains and Montcalm within the city walls. The two sides had each taken roughly the same number of losses, 650 each, and the British hadn’t really won anything of consequence, it was just a field, and in fact not a particularly safe one, but all the same the French were rattled.
The British had won a field. That was it. If anything, they were in a dangerously exposed position. Québec fell not because the British won, but because the French lost their nerve. Vaudreuil panicked and fled with his troops along a side road. Five days later, the city’s bewildered commander (who had been left behind without any clear instructions) surrendered the city. The Canadiens hadn’t been conquered by the British: they had been abandoned by France.
I’m in Medicine Hat for the weekend. I guess I should mention, I was totally non-plussed to see the Flames lose in game seven to The Mighty Ducks last night—’nuff said.
However, last weekend was a little more exciting. I went to visit a friend in Calgary, watched the Flames game where they actually won, and then had a job interview on Monday morning that went spectacularly well. (Some extenuating circumstances may prevent me from being available to actually take the job, but the interview was great).
For those of you that have never been in a hockey town during playoffs, let me take a moment to describe the experience. Calgary is a booming town and as such traffic has taken on a new level of horror. I understand even the life-long Calgarians, many of whom were born in traffic jams on their way to the hospital (and as such are used to bad traffic), have been complaining about how unbearable it’s gotten.
But when the hockey game starts the streets clear out. Everyone sits on the edge of their seats, glued to their TVs. At a moments notice the entire city jumps to its feet and makes a collective cheer as one of the Flames scores. Those brave few souls that venture out of their homes to refill their beverage/junk food collections will be notified of any goals via cars honking and people cheering from their homes. It can feel pretty disappointing if you happen to miss a goal, but all the same, its exciting to hear the reaction of so many people around town.
Watching the game anywhere would have been entertaining but we had a particularly fun evening lined up watching it on the roof of a building in downtown Calgary only a few blocks away from the Saddle Dome. And if all that weren’t enough, two of the people attending were also celebrating their birthdays! It was a perfect setup for a great night, so needless to say, a great time was had by all.
That was, until somebody discovered they had imbibed just a little too much wine just a couple of glasses too late.
You’re probably wondering if that someone was me, and the answer is no… luckily for me, The Universe was turning its wrath on someone else. But it meant that going down after the game to enjoy the festivities on 17th Ave (or Red Mile) was out of the question and I missed seeing the 18,000 fans stumbling into one another giving each other hugs, and spilling their drinks on each other, and telling complete strangers how much they loved each other, in celebration of the win. Instead I caught an independant private cab (what some would have described as a sketchy unmarked gypsy cab) back to the place I was staying for the night. Meanwhile my friend gripped onto the homemade puke bucket in the back seat hoping not to have to use it. Oh the adventure!
When we got to the place I quickly setup the futon for myself and was about to get her into her friends bed when I was surprised to hear her say she wanted to sleep on the futon beside me, and of course she wanted her trusty bucket nearby too. I got her all wrapped up in a blanket and pillow and laid her down to sleep.
As the moment just before I drifted off arrived; I looked over at my platonic friend and contemplated on what a fun time we’d had. The cheering as the Flames won, the yelling down from the top of the building at the happy fans as they made their way to the Red Mile and the all around unifying force that only a home town win can bring. Despite the evening being cut short, what I really liked most was how good it felt to have someone to take care of again, even if it was only for one night. It’s moments like that, where I can make someone feel just a little bit better, that make me most happy to be alive. Oh and of course the Flames winning was a nice bonus.
I’ve had a letter from the Alberta government sitting on my table for the last couple days. Seeing it sitting there made me realize I should be more diligent in my letter opening consistency but I’ve developed a Pavlovian response that most of the time snail mail = bills, credit card applications, and a minefield of potential paper cuts. I decided today that I needed to turn over a new leaf and stay on top of the old-fashioned post.
I am pleased to say that this particular letter was, in fact, very good news. I’ve been accepted to the 5 week Explore program at Université Laval in Quebec City, Quebec (I wrote about it here). I am so excited!
The government funded French immersion program runs from July 3rd to August 4th, which is great, but as far as timing goes might make getting a job right out of University a little more difficult. At least this is a rather positive dilemma—you can’t really complain when everything seems to be going your way.
A friend of mine was giving me a bit of a hard time saying that if I move to Quebec I’ll become an official frog.
If I’ve learned anything from a lifetime of watching TV it’s that Princesses love to kiss toads (which are basically frogs, just less good looking) so if all goes according to plan, this could be the best five weeks of my life!
More updates as I get them.
Last week I won an informal race against my friend Stephon doing the 100m IM after our water polo match. He is going back to his home country of Germany today and last night after our last game of water polo he challenged me to a rematch, only this time we would swim something a little longer—the 800m freestyle.
It’s no secret that I am not a long distance swimmer. However, I let my confidence in combination with my unbridled enthusiasm get the best of me and agreed to the race. I figured that if I could average 45 seconds every two lengths (or 100’s on 1:30) I’d be fine.
I loaded up a nice foot long pizza sub from Subway just before the race. I wanted to have plenty of energy for the longest race I’ve ever done. (Well that’s not true, I’ve done longer timed events but never anything that I considered a race against anyone else but myself) As I was sitting there, eating my lunch, I ran into one of the lifeguards who swims quite a bit and told her about the upcoming event. When I explained my plan to do 100’s on 1:30, she warned me that Stephon was pretty fast and that when she swims with him, he does them on 1:25 and that wasn’t even at race pace. Hmmm, this might be a little trickier than I had anticipated.
I actually paced myself pretty well, but towards the end, I could feel that pizza sub wanting to have an unwelcome reunion. Almost needless to say, Stephen really showed me up in the 800m Freestyle. I didn’t even make my goal time of 12:00, but if I had, it wouldn’t even have been enough.
Now the score was 1 – 1. We needed to have the rubber match to determine a true and final winner between Germany and Canada.
“50 Free?”, I pondered. He knew I am a sprinter through and through but he put into consideration that I was quite tired. He agreed, and I just hoped I had enough left in me to still get up to top speed.
It’s not an exaggeration to say I was extremely tired as I prepared for our final showdown, but there’s something magical that happens in the sprint. Getting up on the blocks, preparing for the lightning round, it’s as if my body forgets its limitations and I an unseen power takes over. I don’t know what it is, but when it comes to the sprint I can’t help but swim at 100%. Despite how tired I was, I was excited for the rematch. The moment I dove in I could feel the shortage of blood in my head. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake as tiny shooting stars streaked across the pool floor. Was I going to pass out in the middle of the pool? I certainly wasn’t going to slow down to find out.
I raced into the first turn and whipped out of it as fast as I ever do. I could see Stephen just crossing under the flags. Though light headed I pressed on pulling and kicking just as fast as ever. It felt like a new record for me, and in the end, it was a solid victory for me. Stephen is a fast swimmer, when it comes to distance, but he’s no match for my sprinting, even when I am on death’s door with fatigue.
So victory goes to the Canadian! :) But as a parting gift I gave Stephon my U of L Horns swim cap. Tonight while he’s flying home to Germany, I’m going to sleep like a baby.