Canadian girl out and aboot

Well, I've been in Grande Prairie since Friday, and it has been fairly interesting. After a fairly stressful day, and driving through a rainstorm, I arrived in town at about 9 p.m. at night. I drove myself to my friends' place and managed to visit with them a bit before they went to bed. In the morning, I got up and went down to see the new library and cultural centre, which was fantastically magnificent. I was in absolute awe. It's a truly wonderful building, and I got to see a bunch of Peace country friends that I hadn't seen in a while.

That night, I went back to Darrell and Debi's and ate pizza with Debi's family, which was nice because I got to meet her mom and hang out with her. D and D are getting married next month, so they're a little bit stressed and busy.

On Sunday, I got up fairly early and drove to Bay Tree to visit a llama farm and have a tea party. The owner has 30 llamas and 8 llama babies, which was pretty great. I fell in love with the miniature donkeys, who followed me around like dogs.

D and D and I made dinner and then they treated me to my first James Bond movie ever. Yes, my Bond virginity was broken with "Casino Royale."

This morning, I woke up at a decent time, and stopped in at the office to visit with a bunch of my former coworkers, which was fun. Then I drove to High Prairie, which is about a 2.5 hour drive away. I visited Kemp Honey, which is an apiary where they make body care products from honey. Pretty cool.

Now I'm staying with family friends who live in GP. They moved here right after I left. I wanted to stay with them in order to spend some time with them, and to give D and D a break so they could have their alone time to get ready for their wedding next month.

It's been really great to visit my old stomping grounds, and to visit so many interesting places while I'm here.

Bad- My friend is in town and I haven't managed to catch up with her. She's at a horse show and phoned once, when I was out :( I've called back, but I think she might have already left town. Or will we go for brunch tomorrow? I don't know. Ugh.

The good- I had a good weekend. On Friday, I attended "Titus",which I've already blogged about. I neglected to mention that Mari and I were accompanied by a playwright/actor friend of hers who turned out to have the same nerd-tastic taste as I do. He loves "Veronica Mars", "How I met your mother", "Mean Girls" and a wide variety of other nerdy things that I love too. We bonded immediately (and platonically) for those of you who are following along at home.

Saturday I woke up very late and then went to the farmer's market where I went crazy because of the fresh produce. I got beans, fresh baby bok choy, white cherries, and a variety of other tasty things. Then I biked over to a friend's going away party. It was held in my neighbourhood and I clicked with the host of the going away party, who works at the independent folk radio station here in town. We ended up drinking mojitos and a tasty Brazilian drink called a caprinha, which was very strong and very boozy. The host of the party had a sheltie named Captain, who I adored and two of the guests brought their twin girls, who were seven months old. The parents were very into exposing the babies to new things, so I got to hold one of the girls for a very long time, which made me quite happy. I like babies.

From the party, I biked to meet Mari and two of her ladyfriends to go see a play called "Mother of the Year". This was an over the top black comedy penned by an Edmonton based playwright. It was created as an accompaniment to Titus, and touched on many of the themes in Titus. The play was set in the 80s, and so we got to laugh our asses off at the cast members who were wearing big sunglasses, dresses with uneven hems, shoulder pads, bad prints, lots of bling and horribly bad makeup. I remarked that I was glad that I didn't hit puberty until the 1990s, as the 1980s were a pretty shitty decade for fashion.

Unfortunately, I couldn't fall asleep when I got home since it was so fricking hot and for some reason, I had neglected to eat and woke up famished at 5:00 in the morning. It's been incredibly hot so I've been eating a lot less and have been subsisting on salads.

Today I did absolutely nothing. I watched several episodes of Weeds and then a great documentary about Ed Brown of Tassajara Zen Centre called "How to cook your life." Tomorrow it's back to work. I'll be on the road a lot this week.

Not much to report lately. I had a pleasant Canada day at my friend Amanda's house. We sat in the backyard around her fire and drank wine and in my case, cider. Then a group went off to see the fireworks and a few of us stayed behind to watch the fire.

I got a free ticket to see "The Comedy of Errors" and ended up going by myself. I've decided that I don't really LOVE Shakespeare. I like some of it, but really, it's not my favourite thing. I just feel that I should learn about it as it is so historically significant. That said, I've definitely got a hankering to go see "Antony and Cleopatra" in Saskatoon when I go.

I finished watching Season 1 of "True Blood". I love it, especially all the sexuality of the show, but I sometimes wish it wasn't so gory.

My weekend was rather quiet. I'm still catching up on work, and didn't have much to do over the weekend. On Monday night, I drove out to Barrhead to stay overnight so I could catch a bus and go to Athabasca. Athabasca is a gorgeous area that I haven't really explored.

Yesterday I went on a tour of a farm called Big Coulee Farms. The man who owns it pasture raises all his animals, including turkeys, pigs and chickens. It was a pretty interesting operation. I ended up getting home pretty late. I was supposed to go out of town again today, but there's a thunderstorm warning. I don't mind rain, but I'm not driving 3 hours to stand outside in a thunderstorm.

When I first moved into my building, there were a bunch of young couples and singles all around my age. Many of them have moved out and all the people who've moved in are of Middle Eastern descent. There are nine suites in my building. Two of them are occupied by women in their 40s who have lived here for over 6 years each. Another suite is occupied by a woman slightly older than me who has been here for a while. A single woman who is younger than me occupies the bachelor above me and there are a pair of Middle Eastern men who live in the third upper suite.

Across the hall, there is a Middle Eastern engineer, and down the hall there is a young, Middle Eastern family. The husband of the family speaks English, but the wife and the children speak little or no English. I saw the two-year-old in the hall with his dad the other day, but today I finally got to meet the wife and the baby, who is nine months old. I was playing with the two-year-old by pushing a hair band back and forth under their apartment door. I kept pushing it back to hear him laugh, which he did every time I moved it. Finally, the wife opened the door to see who was making her son laugh and introduced me to the two boys. For some reason, she passed the baby over to me and let me hold him. I am a total baby snuggler, so I didn't mind, but I wonder if this is something that is more socially acceptable in these cultures.

My landlord is Middle Eastern and speaks Arabic, so I think that may be a factor in the new demographics in my building.

Had a lovely, lovely weekend, although I am stupid tired right now. I went to a Halloween party on Friday night. My friend and her husband are both graphic designers/illustrators, and they went all out for their party. Their entire house was decorated, their costumes were great and the food was good too. We had finger like breadsticks, meringues shaped like bones, and a bunch of other yummy treats. The other people in attendance were nice too. There were a lot of visual artists there, and people really made an effort with their costumes. I'll post pics to my flickr and facebook.

On Saturday, I had an extremely lazy day. Then I met my friend at the theatre for a showing of "The Forbidden Phoenix", which is a new musical theatre/Chinese opera/Chinese acrobatics play. It was the story of the Monkey King, who is banished to the West and has to fight an evil man named Horne. However, the story is also an allegory for the story of the bachelor men who had to come to Canada to work on the railroad. The costumes were beautiful, the music and story were good and I really enjoyed the fusion of the art forms. It was a kid's play, so there were lots of kids in the audience, which was nice. We had fabulous seats about four rows from the front.

Today I went to an intense yoga class, then drove out to the country to tour an agricultural centre which will soon be used to teach young farmers, and urbanites more about agriculture. It was pretty cool. Now I'm home, about to eat, and rest because the week coming up is pretty damn crazy.

I've been waiting to see this movie ever since I heard it was being filmed.

The trailer seen here on the Mongol movie website, nearly made me pee my pants with anticipation.

I love that it was filmed in Mongolia. The filming and cinematography displays everything I love about that barren, desolate land.

Yesterday Debi, Darrell and I went to the movie theatre to watch the Met's video broadcast of "La Boheme." I'm not sure how many of you have heard of this, so I'll just outline. The New York Metropolitan Opera taps some of their performances and then broadcasts them in movie theatres. It's about $20, and you can go and watch the show, which is filmed using multiple cameras so you get a good view of everything that's happening.

"La Boheme" was pretty good, and there were about 40 people in the theatre. In addition to showing you the show, there are also video extras. You get to watch interviews with cast members, tour certain areas backstage, and see clips from other shows. They also let you see backstage when they're moving the sets and putting them into place.

During the intermissions, they film the auditorium at the Met and put a little timer on the screen that lets you know how much longer it is until showtime. Basically, you can stare at the Met audience as they fidget and get in and out of their seats to go to the bathroom.

All in all, it was pretty enjoyable and I'd recommend the experience.

But I have one question for my opera friends. What does toy toy toy or choy choy choy mean? Does this mean good luck? The three of us had no clue.

Leaving Batangas and all of our friends there was difficult. We had to say goodbye to our cook, housekeepers and of course, Rico. There were a few tears during the goodbyes.

From there, we drove to Manila and checked into our hotel. Manila reminded me a lot of Jakarta. It's just a large Asian city. We went shopping at the luxury mall, where the people watching was even more interesting than the shopping. I was surprised that the Filipinos in Manila were noticeably taller than the Filipinos in the countryside. I didn't buy anything, but enjoyed my day following others around and looking at things. It made me want to stay in and explore Asia even more....

That evening, we went to a grill for supper and had the most amazing food. Karen and I each ordered a plate of vegetables with no meat and were practically weeping into our plates. I also had my final green mango shake and some amazing calamari.

Some of us lingered for a while to consume pitchers of timebombs, which consisted of two types of rum, triple sec and a splash of grenadine.
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I ended up sleeping for a bit before we went to the Manila airport in the morning. We had about three hours in the airport, so most people wandered around. I needed to get my fix of Chinese food, so I ate two orders of ha gow chinese dim sum dumplings.
On the first plane, Rich and I were seated next to a very nice couple from Canada. They have been working as international teachers in China for the past four years. I managed to get their contact information and info about their school for my friend Ramona.

We spent a bit of time in the Hong Kong airport, which I loved. The HK airport is one of the nicer airports that I've ever been in and I find it fascinating. From HK, we flew to Vancouver. The flight was fairly pleasant and I watched "The Jane Austen Book CLub" which I enjoyed a lot more than I expected that I would.

Customs in Vancouver was a breeze. I've never had an easier time going through customs. While standing in the Vancouver airport, I wondered if I would run into anyone I knew. I did! [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] was passing by, and I managed to grab a hug and a few quick words before I said goodbye to my fellow travellers.

I arrived home to Grande Prairie and a balmy plus one. It's been very, very cold here, so the warmth is a blessing for everyone. I went back to work for a half-day on Tuesday and felt very loved and missed by my coworkers. Today is my first full day back, and I'm going to go play dodgeball tonight with my rec team. On the weekend, Ian, Jeanne and I will be travelling to St. Isodore, which is 2.5 hours away. We're going to check out their winter carnaval festivities. I think attending a francophone carnaval in northern Alberta should be a lot of fun.

I'm still jetlagged, but am slowly getting back into the swing of things.

Part of an email I received today about the food we will be eating on our trip-

our ladies would like to know if there are food preferences for catered functions. I was specifically asked about sea food -shrimp, crab, squid as well as sea and river fish (lapu-lapu-grouper, usually prepared sweet and sour; maya-maya - red snapper; blue marlin; bangus -milk fish, often served 'rellenong' stuffed with onions and tomatoes, or fried fillets with rice at breakfast, tilapia -a carp, often barbecued on the grill).I have said that I am sure a good range of fruits and vegetables- emphasizing tropical varieties readily available in the Philippines are sure to be popular. We have access to potatoes but more sweet yams and camote (cassava are eaten in the root crop group of crops. I have said that local squashes (calabasa) and vegetable marrow (upo, patola) varieties would also be enjoyed, along with local spinachs' (kang kong,) okra, egg plant (talong) and ubiquitous tomatoes. With respect to bread, most local breads are white flour and overly sweet for Canadian taste, but there are high fibre breads in hotels and urban areas and many of the pan de Sal breakfast rolls -usually offered for sale early in the morning are great at breakfast time. Overall the Philippine diet has too much sugar in it (hence the serious problems with diabetes in the country).

I've been sitting and waiting for this news all week and it's nearly driven me INSANE.


Here's the good news- I'm going on a two week trip to the Philippines.


How- CCA, the organization that hired me as an intern, runs an annual study tour each year. This year's trip will consist of exploring rural cooperatives. The group usually takes about 10 people, plus a journalist and a CCA staff member.

When I heard about this, I immediately emailed my old boss, John, and asked him if there were any journalists applying for the position. He told me that the regular journalist had backed out and that I should apply.

So I had been waiting to hear for about a month. This week, the trip leader called me and told me that she really wanted to hire me and take me along on the trip, but there were certain pressures that required them to hire internally. However, today, she called me back and told me that I have been accepted.

I will fly to Vancouver on January 26 and will spend 2 days there before heading to Manila. From Manila, I will travel to the north islands where I will tour various coops including a deep sea fishing coop, a seed coop and various rural coops. My background in rural development, writing and overseas travel made me an ideal candidate, I think.

As part of my role, I'm expected to freelance as many pieces as possible.

The whole trip is paid for, except for my shots.

I will return to Canada on February 11.