So I went to Montreal for the weekend after my first practicum block and our seventh (or eighth...depending who you ask) anniversary. I was pretty glad to be done the first bit of practicum + going to Montreal to see Gillian made it a pretty good weekend. We didn't do anything special, just ate at an Indian restaurant (since we have yet to have it as a type of food in the past ...7 ...years).

Also we ate at a Vietnamese place Pho Cali on sunday before I hopped on the train back. They don't do very good Bun Thit Nuong (vermicelli, bbq pork!) but I didn't feel like eating pho. I guess it's one of those places that has good pho but not much choice on anything else? I think we'll try a different place next time. Oh yes, I forgot the main reason I was writing was to say that I then bought a few Vietnamese subs to bring back to Kingston. I would've taken a picture but I've eaten them already... mmm.


( Two pictures... there weren't many )

Today I was reminded about my big problem with Canada. This morning, October 28, when I got up to go to school, it was raining, which is fine, I'm okay with rain. Later on in the day, when I'm ready to go back home, I realize the rain has turned into snow. Actually, come to think of it yesterday it was hailing, then sunny, then rainy. I guess I should be used to it coming from Halifax but I remember the good ol' days of a few flurries on two occasions in the entire winter.

For our last day of the thanksgiving weekend we went to a farm that had a corn maze for people to wander through. We went with my littlest cousin and the farm gave us a little sheet to mark off animals as we found them in the maze which explains the pictures of animals. We didn't find them all and eventually gave up. After that we went on a hayride, had a picnic lunch and then looked for pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.


( Pictures of a maze )

So I had my first week of teaching before thanksgiving (This is currently my second) and although I'm only teaching one class, I'm now realizing how busy teachers really are! I mean, you know teachers are busy but then when you are one, I can almost barely keep up...
Oh well, it's just the first practicum...I have 3 more...

Anyway, for the Thanksgiving Weekend, Gillian came to visit and we went to a family gathering in Peterborough for dinner on Saturday. Good times. We also went to a farm to explore a corn maze on the Monday but I'll put pictures of that up later.



( Thanksgiving...no pictures of turkey, but of an emu? )

Today I went apple picking at an orchard that I've been hearing about since August. It was worth the wait, because the apple cider doughnuts they make there are fantabulous. We went to the orchard in the morning then went to my aunt's for dinner where we played Rock Band and sang some fun tunes on the piano...

Overall, a nice saturday before I begin practicum.

( Apple Cider Doughnuts! )

I guess not many check this anymore seeing as how no one has posted in 16 weeks! Well, I go to Queen's Education program now and my cousin wanted to see a picture of my bachelor, so I have a few photos from a typical day this week. It was gloomy the whole week...probably because this is the last week of classes before our first practicum.

( A typical day until the evening )

Big news: This year is the 100th anniversary of Anne of Green Gables!

In even more exciting news, we recently had a takoyaki party with my language exchange partner!

( Yummmmmm )

Aside from that, Gillian will be going to Montreal next year, and I will be going to Kingston, Ontario for school. Hopefully they'll have takoyaki there.
Also, I won't be going to Japan with Toshi for the last 2 weeks of may, Gillian and I will go to Europe instead. Maybe I will have to go to Japan in July!

So the moral of this post: come to PEI this summer, we'll have takoyaki.

So a couple weeks ago we went to Varadero, Cuba for a week. It was my first time to an all-inclusive resort, and let me just say I put on a couple pounds (I'm sure). Aside from that, it was pretty fun, not much to do but it was nice to just hang out in the sun and check out a couple cities in Cuba.

The people were great, though always wanting a tip for everything, like the girl who held the door open at the restaurant. The food was so-so...it was never -great- though the sit down restaurants did a nice job, the buffet had good variety but was not super yummy. Though I eventually got sick of fried stuff. The beaches and resort were beautiful, the water (even in the 'winter' of Cuba) was great.


( I wanna go back to sunny days )

San Diego, California was warm, sunny, full of Vietnamese people and lots of good food. So, I spent 5 days there eating food with Vietnamese people in the warm sun. Of course we had to get there first. Our first flight was canceled! Then our flight the next day was delayed by 5 hours!

Anyway, long story short, we got there, I met a million cousins and first cousins once removed that I had never known (some who had just come over from Vietnam in September so they didn't know any English), ate lots of Vietnamese food and had all you can eat Japanese food once! Another important detail is that we went to a karaoke box with Japanese songs! I'm all out of practice here in Halifax, the city of no Karaoke box!

Well, my computer already crashed once trying to type this, so I'm just going to post it.

( Sunny days )

Just to let everyone know, we did eventually make it to California. Our flight to Toronto was quite on time at 6am but our flight to San Diego was delayed like 5 hours, I believe first due to snow not being removed fast enough and then our crew being illegal and having worked too many hours and for our safety they had to get in another crew. I don't ever want to be in the Toronto airport ever again.

One weird thing I noticed was a young girl who was sitting next to me on the flight to Toronto who called someone when we landed saying something about how she bought this ticket in the middle of the night and hopped on this plan and said her parents would kill her if they knew. She said she didn't tell her roommates so I guess her parents live in TO? It was weird.

There was also a man sitting behind me who liked to jab his touch screen which didn't help me sleep.

Oy.

Well, I was expecting this post from me to be while I was in Chicago or California as a surprise, but instead I'm back at home because of bad weather in Chicago!

We re-booked for tomorrow at 6am and instead of a Chicago stopover, it'll Toronto. Perhaps a breakfast post if I find a computer.


Anyway, yes, our family is going to California for the Vietnamese New Year...

I'm trying to figure out what warrants reason for posting in this journal? I don't really have anything to write about weekly but I realize now that I could write things at work. I guess exciting news doesn't come weekly now that we're living 'normally' here in Canada.

( Oh it was my birthday... )

Happy New Year and all that to everyone!

Christmas was rather uneventful and presentless (My parents decided not to give me anything since I won all that stuff which is fine by me) but we had a nice Tur-duc-ken (Chicken and Duck stuffed inside a Turkey) dinner. I guess I should've taken a picture of it.
I guess most importantly, we had our first karaoke experience since Japan which was cool...

( Some pictures of Karaoke and New years )

Well, it looks like this has become my journal sort of! Gillian gets the notifications of when people reply to posts, and I post. Works out huh?

Anyway, this post kills many a bird using one post-like stone. Bird 1: My cousin asked to see a picture of my brother with his new haircut, so I obliged. Bird 2: Showing off a piece of my games room. Bird 3: I haven't posted in a long time.

The first few pictures are from the Nova Scotia Casino where we went to eat at a buffet for my mom's birthday. Well it's been a while since I've had buffet style food (Oh I miss Japanese Viking style!!) so I stuffed myself sick which might be why I don't look super happy.

Middle picture would be the arcade machine I got, being big and in the way in our hallway.

So the last bunch of pictures are when my cousin Xuan visited with her dad, my uncle, Richard. We went to the beach and did a bunch of stuff...just threw in those pictures for kicks.

( Random! )

As for what Gillian and I are doing at the moment is basically applying for school for the next year, and I don't think pictures of that would be very exciting. I'll have more pictures of everyone enjoying the games room soon (I can't wait for this karaoke machine...Gak Chill comes to Halifax!).

Oh, speaking of chills and Halifax, we had our first snow a couple weeks ago. I hate snow that stays on the ground and gets all slushy.

Dear everyone,

Check out this link...

http://gamesblog.genieknows.com/

Woohoo!

More pictures to follow...

Hello Japan,

Finally managed to do a couple things on my to-do list. I got a job and a language exchange partner.

I work at a call centre where I answer questions that people have about their phone bills. Fun.

My language exchange partner is a guy from Hokkaido. His English is pretty good. As always, the best way to learn a language is to live in a country that speaks it.

I guess that is all...

Other than worrying about NOVA staff and teachers, I don't know much about what's up in Japan. How's the new prime minister?

So I saw a show the other night which reminded me of a show that I briefly saw in Japan. It's called Don't Forget the Lyrics and people sing songs karaoke style and then some words are missing and the people have to sing the correctly and win money!

The Japanese one I saw had people singing a song and when they messed up, they had water poured on their heads. I also couldn't tell if they were playing for money either, so I guess there is a bit of a difference.

Other than that, I've been having a heck of a time trying to find a language exchange partner or cheap Japanese classes. Gillian told me that one of the Japanese restaurants here Doraku has Japanese staff and chefs so たぶんちょっとれんしゅをしましょう！("maybe we can practice" but I'm not sure i said that right).

Anyway, we haven't really done much here in Canada except we went to an old fort a couple months ago. I'll try to remember to put some of those pictures up for you to have a taste of a Canadian historical place. Funny how this journal changed from showing Japan to Canada to the other way around...

This post is about stuf we miss from Japan aside from our friends of course.

- Various stores: Mr. Donut, Passport, Narafamily (especially the Food Oasis), Carrefour (the French Wal-mart), Bluegrass (Cheap clothing!), Uniqlo (Japan's Old Navy), Village Vanguard (Those little collectible chairs)
- Pop-up greeting cards.
- Japanese Lunch boxes.
- Game Centres (i.e. Arcades) with crazy interactive games, guitar hero, taiko drum master and drum mania everywhere!
- Food stalls that popped up at every festival selling overpriced snacks (Yakitori, Taiyaki, Okonomiyaki, candied strawberries)
- Ice cream available everywhere.
- Osakana tengoku song being played in the fish section and the OK song at the OK store (sort of).
- Pronouncing English words in a Japanese manner (Remon, Ice tea straight-o, orenjee joose)
- Free green tea with your meal.
- Calling french fries "fried potato".
- Automatic change dispensers in the cash registers.
- Shopkeepers greeting you when you enter (Irrashaimasse!)
- Shopkeepers thanking you when you leave (Domo! Arigato gozaimasu!)
- The amazing train system. (Always being on schedule, putting your teiki through the machine which looks cool.)
- How you get your purchase before you pay (the trust!).
- Print club!
- Japanese Fashion.
- Dollar stores having actual quality items.
- Picture menus and wax food
- Bakeries (Curry buns, sweet bean treats, potato salad or tuna/cheese bun).
- ATMs counting your money for you.
- Kaiten sushi (sushi train, esepecially the type where you put your plates in the slot and spin for a prize!)
- Sinks that have automatic soap/water spouts and a hand dryer all in one!
- Stall doors that go all the way down to the ground.
- Karaoke boxes. (Cheap ones!)
- Fancy toilet seats (heated, deodorized, etc.)
- 5% tax and taxes included in prices.
- Free tissues.
- Region-specific Hello Kitty! (Takoyaki Osaka Kitty, Nara Deer Kitty, Shisa Okinawa Kitty)
- Dangling things from your cell phone.
- All things cute. (Everything has a face!)


Did we miss anything? ...

Recently, our city had a Natal Day celebration and we went to the Public Gardens for the afternoon to see what we could see. We got some free iced tea as well as show we never witnessed in Japan, it was a Japanese woman dressing another woman in a kimono. Also, one of our city political representatives was dressed in a summer yukata. As it turned out, Hakodate, Hokkaido and Halifax, Nova Scotia are sister cities and have been for 25 years.
I guess these people came from Hakodate to visit for the long weekend so we took a picture of them.






They were also giving out stickers that said Halifax - Hakodate - Sister Cities, 25th Anniversary so I asked one of the children (boy on the right) for a sticker. It was nice to finally say 'Sumimasen' to someone and ask him for a sticker or a 'seal' (which is what they call stickers). After he noticed I was talking to him and I asked him for a sticker, he looked at me for a second and then said 'Hai, Doozo!' (Yeah, here you go!). It was nice to hear someone say that again.

That's the most Japanese practice I've had in the past month.

After our trekking about Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor, we hopped on a plane to Hanoi, Vietnam.

We arrived once again in the evening and called booked a hotel from the airport, then grabbed one of the many available taxis into the city.

( Hanoi, Vietnam )