Highway (and Airplane and Bus) Chile

I had grand plans for what I would write about my trip to South America last summer, and have achieved none of them. After that five-week adventure, I began another that was unlike any I’ve been on before – moving across the country to pursue a relationship. Adjusting to sharing my life with another person (and to life in Alberta) has been uniquely challenging and rewarding, and has moved the writing of blog posts a few steps down my priority list. So this post is less involved than I would have liked. But it is at least something, before the memories of last summer’s trip become so covered in dust as to be unrecognizable.

My time in South America began with a week alone in Santiago, Chile. Two classmates from Dalhousie would be joining me later. That gap was mostly a result of more ambitious trip plans that I had reduced, but it also gave me time to adjust to the new surroundings on my own. As the most experienced Spanish speaker of the three of us, I needed some time to revive my knowledge; as the instigator of this trip, I wanted to be somewhat comfortable before they arrived.

I had never been to Latin America, and despite my well-worn passports, most of my travelling has been in first world/OECD/developed countries. I’m ashamed to admit that I had something of a siege mentality for that first week in Santiago. I walked everywhere, partly to see the city but partly to avoid the challenge of taking the subway. I didn’t make much small talk. I think my worst fears were that Santiago would turn out to be like Marrakesh, the only other second-world/non-OECD/developing city I’d visited. It had been impossible to avoid hawkers there, and asking questions just meant being hassled for money before long.

My fears were baseless. Chile is (I believe) the most developed country in Latin America. I walked through crowds of people with no one batting an eye at me, most of them too busy on their smartphones to notice that I was not from there. Santiago is Chile’s largest city, but it’s hardly a tourist hotspot. That gave me a comfortable level of anonymity as I wandered around.

Each week of this trip deserves a separate blog post, but here are three highlights/observations about Santiago:

It’s mostly flat, but a couple public parks had excellent views of the surrounding Andes. Walking on Cerro San Cristóbal was particularly memorable for the chapel/amphitheatre at the hill’s summit; it was also there that I noticed just how many tourists to Santiago come from other Latin American countries.

A large area of Santiago’s downtown is pedestrianized, which made us three urban planners wet our pants with excitement. During business hours, the pedestrian malls were packed with people of all stripes: vendors, customers, people-watchers, chit-chatters and checkers players.

It was not until after I left that I realized how polluted Santiago is. It’s hardly surprising, given its glacial traffic. But I learned later that I had spent my first week walking through smog so dangerous that children and the elderly had been advised to stay inside.

After a week in Santiago, I was ready to move on when my friends arrived. Luckily, they quickly were too. We hopped a bus to Valparaíso, on the coast. It was one of the few destinations in Chile I was aware of before researching for this trip. Three quick highlights:

Valparaíso is made up of nothing but hills (42 by some counts). Therefore, elevators make up an important part of the public transit system. The elevators are old, still mechanically operated and are dirt-cheap to travel on.

Almost every surface in Valparaíso has art on it; murals are especially popular. There is a thriving arts community that benefits from the city’s tourist industry without catering exclusively to it.

Valparaíso is also a major port and the main headquarters of the Chilean navy. The port, the hills and the arts community made me think of both San Francisco and Wellington.

Our visit to Valparaíso was probably too short, but one of my friends was only staying for nine days, and sights had to be seen. In the most complicated travel day of our trip as a trio, we took a bus from Valparaíso to Santiago, another bus to Santiago airport, then a flight to Calama and another bus to San Pedro de Atacama. If you’ve heard of the Atacama Desert, you may know that it is the driest place on Earth. Being right next to the Andes and in the Atacama, San Pedro is in the middle of some pretty dramatic geography. We did our best to see as much of it as possible via organized tours. Three quick highlights:

Just west of San Pedro is la Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon). Reminiscent of Tatooine, it was an aggressive reminder that deserts are more than just flat sand and hot sun. In that extreme setting, it almost feels like you can watch geology happen. The wind was overwhelming.

The salt flats near San Pedro are among the largest in the world (Uyuní, just over the border in Bolivia, is the largest). A visit to el Salar de Atacama gave us the chance to go swimming in the saltiest water any of us will ever see, taste, or frantically wash off when it starts to crack skin. It was also freezing cold – it was winter, after all – resulting in this memorable picture.

We also got super high when we were in San Pedro. 4,320 meters high, to be exact. The Tatio geyser field in the Andes looks its best at sunrise, they said, meaning we woke at 4 in the morning to get there. The combination of waking early, altitude, and freezing temperatures made for a physiological roller coaster. Jumping in a thermal pool right when my feet lost feeling was a welcome relief.

After waking at 4 in the morning, we spent one final afternoon in San Pedro before flying back to Santiago. One of us flew home; the remaining two prepared to cross the Andes by bus. The journey we took on July 20, 2016 deserves its own blog post. Stay tuned.

Add llama to the list of animals I've eaten.

Watch This Space

Nothing motivates me to write like a deadline, and that last post came right before a pretty big one. Tomorrow evening, as Americans set off fireworks for Independence Day, I'll be on a plane to Chile. My impending departure reminds me that I have not kept readers of this blog up to date on my future plans, though some of you may have heard them in bits and pieces.

My original idea for the year after teaching in Quebec revolved around South America, one of the remaining items on a mental checklist I mentioned previously. Teaching English seemed, again, like a convenient vehicle to allow me to live and work in a foreign country for a set amount of time. I had my eyes on a job in Brazil, with an idea to travel through Latin America by various means before ending up there in August to start teaching.

As I started putting this plan in motion, I also fell/jumped into a relationship with another anglophone in Quebec. Suffice to say I began to waver in my convictions about my plan for next year. Brazil almost felt like a default choice, as if traveling is what I do, and therefore I should go to the next place I want to go and do the work I can to make it happen. Don't get me wrong - it didn't seem like a bad choice, but teaching English for a third time seemed less interesting than pursuing this new relationship. And when it came time to say goodbye indefinitely, it was abundantly clear to me that I did not want to do that. So we didn't.

I've never based my plans around someone else's, making this decision more adventurous, in some ways, than moving to another country. Instead, I'll "only" be moving to Edmonton (in Alberta, near the Rockies, for those not familiar with Canadian geography), where she will be doing a Masters and I will be doing something else.

Edmonton, soon to become the largest city I've ever lived in.

As a result of this change in plans (and an assessment of finances), I have had to adjust South America's role in proceedings. Over the next month and a bit, I will be traveling around Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. Two friends from Dalhousie have managed to convince themselves to join me, spending their hard-earned summer vacation in the South American winter (thanks, guys). With any luck, we'll have an awesome time, send lots of postcards, and avoid the Zika virus.

When I return, I will have a hectic August including family visits and a bicycle repair training course before a cross-country drive to Edmonton. Will I have time to post on this blog? Maybe. Will I have enough material for several posts? Definitely.

Une Rue à Deux Sens

My time in Quebec came to a close almost a month ago.  Given the province’s unique history and identity, it was a year that offered no shortage of reminders that identity politics are a two-way street. While I would hardly call myself an expert on the issue, here are a few snapshots that stick in my memory.

Because Quebec has been officially recognized as a “nation within Canada," the provincial government is called the National Assembly. I had known that before I arrived. But the “national” distinction is in other areas of the public sector as well, including the provincial parks. As a result, the naming system for provincial parks can be easily confused with the federal parks that happen to be in the province, as any provincial park is formally called a “national park.” From what I can tell, the two are distinguished as “parcs nationaux” and “parcs nationaux du Canada.”  

Even more than its overarching national identity, I was struck by how clearly people distinguished different regions of the province. My students from Quebec City jokingly referred to the weird accents people have in Gaspé, Lac Saint-Jean, and Montréal, all while disregarding that all Quebeckers have funny accents. Laval University’s radio station even ran a program in which people from different regions debated their various strengths and weaknesses. I was impressed to learn that they found representatives from some of the more distant regions (Abitibi-Temiscamingue and Cote-Nord), but Quebec City - la capitale nationale – draws people from all over the province.

“Locally grown” has become a trendy label throughout the Western world, but Quebec’s inward focus seems to have put it ahead of the curve. It’s not only hipsters and environmentalists who buy locally grown in la belle province, and it’s not necessarily for environmental reasons, but out of national pride. Produce grown in the province is labelled with a big fleur-de-lys sticker, and dairy products usually name the specific farm of origin. That said, Quebeckers aren’t proud of everything they produce – bringing a sample of its miniscule wine industry to a party does not impress people. Believe me, I tried.

Having a strong sense of one’s origins and identity is a good thing for many reasons that, in the interest of space, I will not discuss here. In my experience, however, it can also limit one’s curiosity and understanding of differences. Many of my students had never left Quebec; those who had seemed surprisingly unaware of things beyond the province’s borders. As stunning as it was to me, my students’ lack of curiosity was unfortunate but harmless. Many of them had just finished high school and were studying to be paramedics, nurses, and a variety of other professions about which I know very little.

   

However, my fear is where that lack of curiosity leads in the future. After the Christmas holidays, I began tutoring a couple in their fifties that wanted to learn English to travel across Canada and get to know their own country better. Especially given what I knew about many Quebeckers’ typical attitudes, I was impressed at their interest. Then one day, they told me about a trip they’d taken to Montreal that weekend. Montreal is about two hours away from Quebec City, but culturally much more distant. My two students didn’t like it there very much. Why? “There was…trop de râce.” Literally: “Too much race.” They then proceeded to list all the races they saw using words that would end a politician’s career (or in Donald Trump’s case, launch one).

As I’ve said, identity politics are a two-way street. How do we balance out the positives (sense of belonging and connection) with the negatives (limited curiosity, disdain for those outside the community)?

One of my students works at a fast food restaurant near a highway and serves a lot of Anglophones. His English is not perfect, but it’s better than many Quebeckers. He told me a story about a very demanding Anglophone couple who were unhappy when the restaurant could not meet their very specific requests, and had little patience for his limited English. The student was understandably annoyed that, in a restaurant within throwing distance of the house in which he was raised speaking French, he could be judged inadequate by customers for being unable to speak his second language well enough. In response to his story, I explained my approach as an Anglophone living in Quebec City – to begin every conversation with a stranger in French, only switching to English with their approval. Another student in the room said “That’s it. That’s respect.”

Cyclists waiting to cross on part of Quebec's Green Route.

Quebec City skyline.

Yours truly tapping a maple tree.

Epilogue:

When I left Quebec at the end of May, I stopped for coffee just outside the city. A large crowd was waiting, not really in line, as they read the menu. The woman behind the counter asked, in French, if anyone was ready to order. It was a shock to the system to hear several of the group belligerently respond in Australian accents, “Sorry, I don’t speak French.” As I stepped ahead of them to order, I grumbled inwardly before realizing the irony in an Anglophone getting annoyed at other Anglophones for not speaking French. What did I say about this place being unique?       

Par-laying the Fran-say

It’s been two months since I began my job here in Québec City, and the process of transition has been smoother than almost any of my previous moves. Although experience has definitely played a role in simplifying the adjustment, it also helps that I am moving within my own country. Not only is my new home within a day’s drive of Anglophone Canada in either direction, it’s also still in Canada. The differences of language and culture are definitely significant, but most little things are familiar – I still buy the same brand of pasta, collect the same grocery points, use the same bank, and watch the same sports. Autumn sets in just as quickly, and people complain about the temperature almost as much (admittedly, Haligonians have more to complain about).

The most obvious and defining difference in Québec is language, of course. I last studied French in high school almost (gasp!) a decade ago. Since then, I’ve confused myself by studying German and Spanish, becoming almost fluent in Spanish after being immersed in it for a school year. I also threw in a bit of Dutch, Kiwi English, and urban planner-ese for good measure. Suffice to say, my limited French resources were buried deep in cobweb-ridden parts of my brain, probably next to the names of elementary school classmates who moved away and my lacrosse skills.

But I had hope! Anglophones have fearfully referred me to the fact that 2 out of 3 Québec City residents do not speak English, but I prefer to see it as a glass 1/3 full. After all, some of my Odyssey colleagues have been placed in towns where the English glass is only about 1/100 full, so I’m rather lucky. The balance of languages here means I can practice French all the time if I want, but I am not obligated to. Store clerks are usually able to switch to English, and servers frequently offer a choice between the two languages; some will even ask if you’re learning French to give you the opportunity to practice.

That said, I usually make the effort to speak French when I’m out and about. It’s mostly for fear of being rude that I won’t ask people if they speak English; instead, I steamroller ahead in poorly-pronounced French until they decide to switch over. And the more I try French, the less necessary English becomes. My comprehension is still pretty weak, so I’m not shooting the breeze with any strangers, but I can usually get what I need (a library card, for example). I’m pretty impressed with how far I’ve come in two months, given that I’m basically building from French 2 in high school, my knowledge of Spanish, and my experience reading food labels in two languages over the past 8 years.*

I have also come to a couple important realizations lately. Firstly, Québec French is not my high school textbook’s French. It’s not even uniform across the province. Pronunciations are weird. English words appear at unexpected times. There are even phrases made up of English words that are not phrases in English, but work as such in Québec French. The other day I heard a francophone telling a story that included the words “bye bye, Charlie Brown” as if they had some agreed-upon meaning. I’m sure it does to him, but I’ve never heard it in English.

Secondly, I’ve realized that French as a whole is not easy. Growing up speaking English, all I heard from language teachers was how complicated English is and how every other language followed its rules more closely and oh, weren’t we lucky that we learned the hardest of all languages as our first…bull. French has as many exceptions, weird expressions, and strange rules as English. You can tell by the number of times I’ve asked people to explain various things and heard “I guess we just say it that way” in response (that almost never happened in Spain).

These realizations have been extremely liberating when it comes to trying out my French in public. Did I just say that wrong, or is this language just weird? Did I just put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, or am I just speaking with a Parisian accent? Did I just cheat by using an English word, or is it one that Quebeckers use too?

Who knows? At least I have a library card now.

Traffic calming for bicycles near my new place. You can take the nerd out of planning school, but you can't...

The first time I've had an office with my name on it!

The dunes near Tadoussac.

*When my French roommate asked what was in the clam chowder I made, I quickly dove into the recycling bin for the empty can of clams and said, “uhhh….palourdes.”     

A Wet Tinder Box

I have been in Québec City for just over a day now (after having visited in July to find housing). Given that my training begins tomorrow, I thought it would be wise to give an idea of my expectations before getting too immersed in my new surroundings.

For those unfamiliar with the province of Québec, a brief introduction: Québec was originally a French colony and developed alongside the British colonies that also became Canada. After the Seven Years’ War, France was deprived of almost all its territories in North America. This change in power left a sizable group of French-speaking settlers under the rule of a British monarch, a situation that has caused no shortage of friction. The challenge of accommodating the English and French cultures in one country has been a defining element of Canada’s identity. Until the mid-20^th century, it’s fair to say that Anglophone Canada had the upper hand in many ways, even in French-speaking Québec. The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s led to dramatic change in the province and across the country, as Canada became officially bilingual and the Québec independence movement rose to prominence.* The debate over independence and language rights continues today.

My interest in living in Québec began as a curiosity during my time in Halifax. Although I’d visited Montréal and Québec City in the past, moving from my parents’ house in Ontario to the Maritimes necessitated a long drive across Québec. Once in Halifax, studying for a professional degree accredited across Canada, I couldn’t help noticing how little we spoke about the role of our profession in Québec.** The language barrier was obviously a challenge for many of us; interpreting policy written in English is challenging enough.

The lack of Québec-related material that I perceived in my Master’s programme drew my attention to the way Canadians outside the province appear to think about it. The first thing many Canadians seem to think about Québec is the independence movement. The second thing they seem to think about is the independence movement. Beyond that, they might have something to say about the province’s strange language laws or highlights from their trips to Montréal, Québec City or Mont-Tremblant. I know Anglophones who have spent time in other parts of the province, often on language immersion courses, but they’re unusual (some of them are unusual for other reasons – they know who they are).

Beyond indifference or inexperience, there is significant hostility about the language issue among Anglophone Canadians. I would guess the same is true of Francophone Canadians, but I have no evidence to back that up. When discussing my plans to move to Québec, I was frequently warned that Francophones would be unwilling to speak English and unpleasant to those who did (though the warnings were often phrased in harsher terms). I was even warned against going to specific areas because of the prevalence of indépendantiste ideas.

Maybe fear and resentment are the other side of mutually accommodating two languages in one country. But as I mentioned above, bilingualism is part of Canadian identity whether we acknowledge it or not. When people from elsewhere learn that I’m Canadian, they frequently follow up with “French or English?”*** I don’t necessarily feel the need to become fluent in French or start celebrating St-Jean-Baptiste Day every year, but that question makes me think about how little I know about French Canada. I’m curious to know what makes it tick, so for the next nine months, I’ll be ticking along with it.     

Les Chutes de Montmorency, north of Quebec City

Le Chateau Frontenac, probably Quebec City's most recognizable building

Quebec's provincial parliament - sorry - national assembly

The skyline from too far away

  

*A bit shocking in a country known for its politeness and its commitment to “peace, order and good governance,” this era also unfortunately produced Canada’s very own domestic terrorist organization, the FLQ.

**For the record, I remember talking about Montréal’s two-way bike lanes; the design of multi-story townhouses in Montréal with spiral staircases that connect each level to the sidewalk (they have those in Québec City, too); and the Route Verte.    

***They also ask, “so how do Canadians get along with Americans?,” and the conversation really gets going when they find out my other nationality.

Goin' Out Wherever

After 6 years of university education, I’ve realized that most people only read the abstracts. So here’s one for this post (read on for more detail):

Having completed my Masters degree in planning, I have decided not to pursue jobs in the field immediately and instead to resume my pattern of traveling and working in various places that interest me. In the words of Tom Waits, “I’m gonna do what I want and I’m gonna get paid.” In September, I will begin an ESL teaching position just outside Quebec City.

As my previous post indicated, the completion of my Masters degree has put me in a rather contemplative mood. For months now, I’ve been debating the merits of the various options available to me and deciding that they were all roughly equal, like the roads leading to the Arc de Triomphe.

An obvious choice would be to pursue a job in planning, as that is what I have just spent two years studying. Although many of these jobs would have competitive hiring processes, graduates of my program do tend to get hired somewhere eventually. I could make more money starting out in planning than I ever have before. But in all honesty, although the idea of being qualified for a specific job was something that attracted me to the program, I never thought about going straight into a career-track job right after graduating. I guess I just thought it would be nice to be qualified in a field that I thought was interesting. And now I am, somewhat. Mission accomplished.

Of course, I considered looking for a planning job, but a number of concerns led me elsewhere. Discussions about these concerns turned into fairly long-winded rants several times in the past few months, so I’ll try to spare the internet what I couldn’t hold back in conversation (and to all those who listened, thanks). In a nutshell: I’m not eager to work a desk job; I’m not sure I even want a career in planning; and I am sure that there are still places I want to explore. It makes no sense to me to put off those travel ideas to pursue something I’m not sure I want.

My reasoning was not only negative. I have always felt a sense of accomplishment and personal growth from my experiences overseas. Some people, I think, are happy because of the familiarity of their surroundings; I certainly was when I was growing up. But the experiences I’ve had in my 20s (and late teens) have made me genuinely happy, diverse and disconnected as they have been. And the mental checklist of places I want to go has only expanded as I’ve spent the last two years at the same address.

My immediate plan is to spend this summer living with my parents in North Bay, ON. I owe them more than I’ll ever realize, and I figure the best way I can show my appreciation is by spending some time with them before I run off again. The gorgeous location with free room and board is a pretty great enticement too.

Summer in North Bay ain't bad.

My next adventure will not take me far away, either. Through the Odyssey program, I have accepted a job as an ESL teaching assistant at a CEGEP in Sainte-Foy, Quebec, just outside Quebec City. The Odyssey program is fairly similar to the one I did in Spain, with part-time teaching hours and enough pay to comfortably break even. This position will give me the chance to experience working with older students while becoming acquainted with life in la belle province (it’s on that mental checklist I mentioned).      

And after that, we'll see.

"And what do you do?"
"We're adventurers, sir, currently pursuing a certain opportunity but open to others as well."

Seriously, What Now?

The crossroads I am currently at may be the greatest of my life. Not “greatest” meaning “best” or “most important,” but “greatest” meaning “largest.” Large enough, I think, to justify a pretty big metaphor.

In the past, I have usually had to choose my next step after completing some kind of milestone, such as a degree or a contract. Most of those times, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do next. When I finished high school, for instance, there was very little chance I was going anywhere other than university. When I finished university, I knew I wanted to go to both Spain and New Zealand; when I’d done the first, I knew I was going to the next as soon as possible.

Those intersections were a bit like the one described in the only Robert Frost poem I can quote, the one about two roads diverging in a wood. I wouldn’t like to claim that I’ve always taken the road less traveled by, because that would mean I’d be ending a sentence with a preposition. And also it’s not true. I do think, however, that the roads available to me have always been distinct from one another, and that I have always had a clear preference. When I chose to go to New Zealand, for instance, I knew that if I didn’t go, I would always be looking for a chance to do so in the future. So I went, and it “made all the difference.”

Now, having completed my Master’s degree, I’m at another crossroads. For a variety of reasons, this one feels less like a choice between paths in the woods and more like deciding where to go from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

The Arc de Triomphe stands in the middle of a roundabout/rotary that connects 12 – count ‘em – 12 different streets. Paris was heavily rebuilt in the 1800s (thank you, planning education), meaning each tree-lined street has similarly gorgeous architecture. Although the Champs-Elysées is wider than the others, all the options look pretty good and relatively similar at first glance.  

Part of me wishes I was back in the woods, choosing between a few dirt paths. But if my current situation is like standing on top of the Arc de Triomphe, I can consider myself pretty lucky. 

Me standing on top of the Arc de Triomphe, more youthful and less metaphorical.