Canadian Experience

17.02.2008
Festival du Voyageur

Investigation of the culture of the people who are supposed to eat frogs (according to Germans and Czechs) and not to take showers (according to Brazilians)

This week there is a festival of French culture being held in the French part of Winnipeg – at St. Boniface. My friends and I went to check it out today.

We arrived there around four o'clock, paid 12 bucks and went in. The first think you notice is that all the signs are in French. Fortunately for us, there were also English translations and one can still hear people speaking in language one can understand.

What did we see there? To begin with there are lots of ice sculptures. It's a pity that not all of them are finished yet, but on the other hand we could see people working on them. Then we fixed our cultural deficit by visiting museum and workshops about aboriginals (native Canadian inhabitants) and voyageurs who are early pioneers who explored the Canadian territorium. They were hunters or explorers travelling mostly in kanoes. After that my friend and I took the advantage of being adults and went to a snow bar. We saw people drinking from glasses made of ice, so we decided to try this out as well. We ordered some red stuff and went to the outside bar made out of snow and ice. They also have an ice fireplace there. The drink tasted like a cold "svarak" (hot wine with some other stuff in it), but it's a pretty interesting to drink it out of icy glass. The advantage of it is that it's also impossible to break it (yeah, this is the real "nerozbitna sklenicka" we thought at first. However, our friend from Slovakia soon proved this thesis to be wrong). Finally, there was a huge tent where concerts take place. Lots of different kinds of music should be played there, but we didn't stay long.

In order for you to have a complete picture of the festival, couple of other things have to be mentioned. First of all, there is a wooden fortress in which the workshops and the museum are situated. It looks exactly as the one from the movies based on the novels by Karl May. You almost expect to see Lex Barker behind the next corner. Secondly, you can find there an ice maze and a "hill", both primarily designated for children. Thirdly, there are lots of fires where you can warm up a bit. However, we didn't need it at all, because today was a really unusual warm weather – -1 degree and freezing rain in the moorning. Finally, there is a huge tent with souvenirs and of course a bunch of kiosks serving fast food.

It's also funny that no matter where you go you always meet there someone who you know. (Vow, it's almost a rhyme) We've met there some of our classmates and also other international students.

10.02.2008
Exams

The first semester finished couple of days ago. Let's have a closer look at how the final exams looked and what classes I'm taking this semester.

In Canada students write a final exam at the end of the semester for every subject they're taking. One of the exceptions is Physical Education, though. The final exams makes 30% of the final mark whereas the course counts for 70%.

My first exam was English provincial exam. Every grade 12 student who is taking English has to write it. The preparation for the exam almost look like a secret CIA operation – the booklets arrive in the moorning of the exam day and the teacher cannot open them till shortly before the actual start of the exam. All the students are writting at exactly the same days so they can't get any hints from other students. Yes, it's days – it's not a mistake. The English exam takes four days to write. During the first day there is a response to written text such as peoms and stories, but pictures were included as well. Furthermore, there is also a group discussion. At the end of the first day a first exam booklet should be finished and it's handed in. During the days 2, 3 and 4 students work on a second booklet. The task is to develop an original written text on a given topic. In fact there is a main theme for the whole exam – it was fairness this year and borders last year. So in the last three days we had to write something which has connection to fairness. We could choose whatever form we wanted – it could be an essay, short story, poem, etc. I decided to write a speech about charity organization, paying special attention to the situation in Africa.

The next exam was math. It was provincial exam as well, so everyone in Manitoba was writting it at the same time too. My goal was to beat my track coach who is also a math teacher. She got 99% in the course and 99% in the exam, so her final mark was 99%. My mark before the exam was somewhere higher than 97%, so I needed to do well in order to beat her.

The exam consists of two separate parts – there is one hour long answer calculator section and two hours non-calculator section. There is multiple choice, short answer and long answer in the second part. Let me explain what does it mean. I guess multiple choice is clear, short answer means they want just the solution – either number, formula or whatever. In the long answer they also care about how did you get the answer and you can get/lose half marks there.

On Friday we wrote our Chemistry exam – this one wasn't provincial; it was made by our teacher. He put some interesting questions there:
"Will there be a sound, if a tree falls in a forrest?"
A) yes B) No C) Potentially
What would you answer? There were also questions like "How would you spell my name?" (He comes from Russia, so majority of the Canadians answered this one wrong) and "Will you say hi to me if you meet me on the street?" I'm still not sure whether he gave marks for those or not.

I wrote my last exam on Monday – Physics. Well, it was the hardest one of all and I didn't even have time to finish all the questions. Moreover, one crazy thing happened during the exam. Imagine you're solving a hard physical problem and then out of sudden there is a little explosion right behind you. It was a bird who hit the window. My teacher looked out of the window and said: "This happens sometimes in this room."

What are my final marks? To begin with, I got 62% in the english provincial exam and my final mark is 80%. It was interesting that I did a lot better in the writting part of the exam than in the response to the text. By coincidence my teacher was marking my essay and he told me I got most of my points there. Thanks everybody who gave me interesting ideas what to write about and discussed it with me. In case of the math exam i still don't understand how, but I got 100%. My final mark is thus 99% and I ended up with the same score as my coach. However, there were students whose final marks were even better – my friend from Physics got 100% both in the course and in the exam! Continuing on, I got 95% in the Chemistry exam and my final mark was 96%. Finally, I somehow got 95% in the Physics (perhaps there was something inspiring in the bird crashing on the window), but I can't tell you my final mark, because I still don't know it. The same stand for the Physical Education, but I expect something around 80%. It looks as though it's not common to automatically get full mark for this course in Canada.

Let's go back to this semester. I have full shedule as well and my classes are: Math IB, Physics IB, Psychology, World Issues and English Transactional.

Math is lots of fun, because of our teacher who makes lots of jokes. However, she also explains everything well and she is really helpfull. In addition, a great thing about this class is that there are only 15 of us and I already know lots of people there, because I have the second slot together with them as well.

In my second slot, I'm continuing on with Physics. Last week we were doing our own lab and it was pretty interesting, because we had two beaker explosions. My lab was to test the strenght of a hair and if you're interested I could write more about that. When we were performing this lab we kind of felt like in a zoo. There were grade 9 students from a Junior High coming to see how High school looks. They must have thought what crazy animals are they living here at Miles Mac.

As my third class, I took Psychology. I took it just for fun and because I though that it would be a lot more interesting than in the Czech Republic. It really is – at the beginning of every class we're reading either Psychology magazines, articles or our own books. At the end of the week, two students are expected to tell the class about an interesting article they read. We've also done one experiment so far. Yes, we're taking some notes too, but it's not only about that as it was back home.

My fourth slot is Worls Issues. I guess it needs a further explanation. In this course our focus will be population, media, situation in the Middle East to name just a few. We're discussing what was in the news or what happened in the world at the beginning of every class. Right now we're doing gender issues. Everybody was asked to answer questions like "If you had a second chance, would you rather be a woman or a man and why?" "What's the worst thing about men/women?" You should have heard the discussion! Furthermore, our teacher is funny and he seemed he knows a lot.

My last subject this semester is English Transactional. I'm taking it with the same English teacher as I took English Comprehensive the last semester. Transactional means we will focus on letters, writting instructions, criticisms and so on. The teacher is cool and it looks like we will be doing lots of interesting stuff.

That was an overview what happened the last semester and what's gonna happen this one. The first semester is over and I'm curiuos what will come next.

6.02.2008
Last week

There was a holiday last week starting for me on Monday after I finished my last exam on that day – Physics. I had lots of plans to do, but it all went kind of differently.

In fact my friends and I spent most of the time at the airport saying goodbye to our friends who were leaving after the first semester. We were sort of camping there; the only thing we were missing there was a tent. There is a cool room designed as an inside of a plane from where you can observe the planes landing and taking off. We found there a free wheel chair here. It's pretty interesting to ride and you can't even imagine how soon your hands get tired.

There was a snowstorm in Toronto, so lots of flights were delayed or canceled. One of our friend's flight was moved to the next day, but he still had to stay overnight in Toronto. Exactly the same also happened to our german friend with the only difference that her first flight was postponed. It sucks that if there is a problem due to bad weather conditions, the airlines will say it's out of their control, so they won't pay you anything nor they will cover your expanses for a hotel.

After we left the airport we always did something together – went to a mall (sounds crazy, I know, but what can you do if it's -30 outside), skating or to a friend's house. However, we didn't go to sleep before 1 o'clock :)

I've learned some interesting stuff this week. Firstly, I always thought that the Czech word "cus" comes from the German "tschuess", but my friend from Germany told me that the Czechs weren't the only ones who screwed a foreign word – the Germans in fact screwed the Italian word "ciao" to form "tschuess" and after that Czechs screwed "tschuess" to "cus". Secondly, I've seen some really funny videos. Here is one of them: Silence! I kill you! The guy is just perfect – he doesnt move his lips at all. Thirdly, I experienced to coldest weather in my life – the windchill was -47. I guess it's a record for this winter... so far :). Finally, it's amazing how fast some of the new students learn. I was explaining something to my new home stay brother from Brazil when I was interrupted by a different new Brazilian student. Although it was his 5th day here, he already had incredible knowledge about how the buses work, where to go shopping and so on.

We've also decide to go to Brazil with my friends one day. The plan is to make some money and go. Let's see how soon will this happen, but we're going for sure!

In the next article, I'm gonna write about how the final exams looked.

3.02.2008
How have I changed so far?

My stay in Canada has had for sure a certain impact on me. In this piece of writting I'm gonna look at it more in detail.

To begin with, it has to be said that I can only write about such changes I'm aware of. This means there could (and most probably are) more of them, but it's up to you to recognize them. Moreover, some of the changes probably reveal only after my return to the Czech republic.

The first change is that I've started replying to questions like "How is it going?", "Wazzup?" and so on. It still suprises me that I've even started asking such questions myself. Those questions are considered as a normal start of a conversation or a part of saying hi. Although most of the people will reply that they're doing good, I don't think it's an unwritten rule to keep saying you're fine no matter what. Sometimes you can hear replies like "It's not that good" or "I'm tired". I also noticed that I've started to talk more than I used to.

The second change is the use of antipresspirant and deodorants and stuff like that. All the Canadians use them, but I've never met anybody who overused it and smelled badly because he or she put on too much. This is different from the Czech republic where you can sometimes meet women to whom it's dangerous to come close. Almost immediately after my arrival my home stay mum gave me an antipresspirant and I've been asked to put it on several times.

Continuing on, I was taught how to clean a bathroom and how make poridge which is stuff consisting mainly of oats and muesli. It's put into boiling water and cooked for several minutes until it becomes kind of dense. Although my home stay brother hates it, I love it. We usually eat it for breakfast with milk and sugar or raisons. The greatest advantage of it is that it keeps you full for a long time. Moreover, during my chemistry classes I've realized that even the teachers can make mistakes and they you should always check it yourself. In addition, one learns the importance of a face mask and that your hands can be cold even if they are in pockets of your winter jacket.

As I said before there for sure are more changes than those, but I'm currently not aware of them. I guess they'll be a suprise for both you and me after I come back.

29.01.2008
Skiing and Skating

I know I told you I would be writting about how have I changed so far in the next post. However, we did two interesting things on this weekend and I feel like writting about them first.

We went to Forks two times – it's a place in Downtown where you can go skating on the river. It is said that they have the longest skating trail in Canada (don't ask me how long, i have no clue), but I was told today that Ottawa also claims they have the longest trail. I guess it might be interesting what will happen next. However, if they want to make the trail longer here, it's just the matter of going further with the machine that makes it.

As I said before one can go skating on the river there. The path is about 3 meters wide and there are lots of cracks in the ice, so one have to be careful not to kiss the ice too much. When you are skating, you sometimes here the ice cracking. It's kind of scary, especially for those who has skated on ice rings only before. It's so cool that you can simply keep going and there is virtually no need to turn round. We skated there before midnight and it had amazing atmosphare. It was pretty dark with light coming from the windows of the building in the city and almost no one there – just we and the ice.

The second thing was skiing in Birdshill provincial park which is about half an hour drive from Winnipeg. The park offers both classic and skating skiing trails , but the classic ones are a lot longer. There are basically two loops – 14 km and 4km. The trails interesect several times and they both lead to the "hill" with wooden view-tower. The terrain is not completely flat there, but the elevations have no more than 4 meter in height. There is also space for snow mobiles. In fact, my Canadian friend says that more Canadians snow mobiles than skies. In the summer, you can go swimming, cycling or just walking there. The entrance is for free (you just have to be an owner of a year pass for bucks which allows you to go to any public park you want). Nearly the whole park is a forrest, mostly oaks, but the trees are not high and there is also lots of undergrowth.

The temperatures during the weekend were way above normal – it was around -5. My friend from Brazil says that we paid to see the winter with lots of snow and temperatures around -50. However, it hasn't snowed for a month and it's kind of warm. In addition, we haven't seen any northern lights yet. Therefore, he says they should give us our money back :)

UPDATE: There was a snow storm yesterday, the windchill is now -44 and we got about 2 cm of new snow.

The atmosphare here is now pretty crazy – lots of students are coming home in the next couple of days, so we're trying to spend as much time together as possible. One feelscloser to each other and it's amazing how fast one can make new friends. It looks as thought everybody is unconsciously aware of the fact we might not seen each other anymore. One realizes that there isn't much time left.

For those who are leaving: It was so interesting to meet you, great to spend time together and I hope to see you soon again. Maybe in September at the Oktober Fest in Germany! Cya guys! Have fun!

27.01.2008
Czech guide to Canadian vocabulary

There are several differences in meaning – even if you know the translation it doesn't mean you will understand.

1. OLD
When Canadians call something old it's most likely no more than hundred years old. Don't expect that it's something from the middle ages!

2. CLOSE
When something isn't far away for Canadians it means you'll need at least three hours drive to get there. However, when they say that it's far, it means it's really faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar. You could be driving here in one direction for twenty days and you still won't get out of Canada.

3. WARM
When you hear somebody saying that it's warm during the winter, you should expect temperature around -10. It's funny that this word has the same meaning for me now as well. Besides, I guess if we survive this winter, nothing will suprise us anymore (except the South pole).

4. HILLY
"Look! There is a hill overthere!" "Do you mean this little elevation?" I've kind of got used to the flat Canadian surface. I guess it will be interesting to run or ski in the mountains again.

I hope this will help if it happens that you out of sudden find yourself in Canada

P.S I knew I told you I would write about how have I changed so far, but I felt like writting this stuff down first.

25.01.2008
Exams in progress

My dear readers,
You probably notice the huge gap between my last two articles. The reason for this is not that I don't want to write anymore or that I'm out of themes, but the answer is simple that I'm now in the middle of an exam week. The English and Math exams are already over and I've two more to go – Chemistry tomorrow and Physics on Monday. Wish me luck, please :)

Today was also kind of special day – it's been the last day of the first semester. It looks as though I've succesfully survived it. The only thing that is left is to determine my marks and that will happen soon.

23.01.2008
Canadians

Canadians are NOT stupid NOR fat NEITHER arrogant. Let's have a closer look at those characteristics stepwise

In terms of inteligency Canadians are the same as the Czechs in my opinion. Lots of people in the Czech Republic might have the prejudice that all the USA inhabitants are stupid. Well, it's not the truth at least for Canadians :) There is only one interesting thing – Canadians are more naive and more likely to believe anything you told them. For example, my friend from Brazil told his home stay family's babysitter that Brazil is just a jungle and nothing else. Suprisingly she seemed to believe that.

You'd be suprised, but there aren't lots of fat people in Canada. However, when you meet someone who is kind of heavy, he or she is usually way too overweighted. When Canadians are fat, they have fat on every part of their body. It's not like in the Czech Republic where men owns big potbellies. However, needles to say that there are many fastfoods in Winnipeg – not only MacDonald and KFC, but also Wendy's, Burger King and A & W. By the way have you seen the movie "Super size me"? A friend of mine once told me that lots of people here had seen this movie, so they stopped eating at MacDonald's. However, they still go to all the other fastfoods. I have a funny experience related to this theme. My friends and I went to eat to Wendy's and there was a guy who was ordering XL fries, a double cheeseberger and then he asked for a XL diet coke :)

It's interesting how many Canadians know where the Czech Republic situated is and most of them even know that Prague is the capital city. Furthermore, lots of them actually have been to Prague and they say they liked it a lot. What else could they say? :P. In general they have pretty good knowledge about Europe. In fact I met only one guy that fits the Czech stereotype about the Americans. Let me show you our conversation. It looked aproximately like this:
..."Where are you from?" the Canadian guy asked me.
"The Czech Republic"
"Vow, that's really cool! What an amazing country!"
After this response I became suspicious whether he knows what he is talking about.
"Do you know where it is?"
"No"
"It's in Europe, right next to Germany"
"Where is Germany?"
At this point we were interrupted which probably prevented me from obtaining other interesting replies.

It's also interesting that Canadians say about Americans that they're ignorrant and doesn't know what's going on outside of their country. However, I'm missing the experience with the USA, so I can't tell whether it is a prejudice or not.

On the other hand I've realized how is it possible that some of the Americans don't have a clue about anything else than their our country. I was speaking with a guy from Serbia and I felt like a fool, because I had no idea if Serbia has a see or not and how many countries are there now in the area of former Jugoslavia whereas he knew all the important things about my country. I think the Americans just don't have a need to be interested in other countries. Besides this, think about how much have you been taught about USA from movies, music groups and so on. Are there actually any famous Czech films that are known international or any succesful Czech music groups? Thus, how do you expect "normal" American to know anything about a small country in Europe?

99% of the Canadian girls wear make-up. In addition, they wear it all the time – they had it on even when we went to a outdoor track competition. I still can't understand how is it possible that the make-up doesn't melt when they start sweating. It could have only two possible reasons. Either they don't sweat or the make-up simply doesn't melt. However, I still remember suncream flowing down my face when I was downhill skiing. Perhaps make-up is way different than suncream :)

Concerning Canadian humor and jokes there is one big difference. Nearly all the Canadians say "I'm just kidding" after they told a joke. I still wonder if it's just a custom or whethear they want to make sure that everybody understood that it in fact was a joke. They also use less irony and sarcasm than we do and it can happen that they won't understand a sarcastic joke.

Yesterday my chemistry teacher said: "If you experience putting in less effort then you are becoming canadiazined. I can only agree with him – Canada is the land of little effort.

In the next article I'll look at how have I changed so far after 4 months in Canada.

18.01.2008
Continuing on with sports

"It's so easy to be said to be "good" here in Canada. No matter how you do, they will always say: "Good job!"."

This two sentences appeared in the previous post and I feel like they need furher explanation

Basically, they are truth for all the sports I've tried so far in Canada. Let me tell you an example. We had a track meet in December and I was also doing long jump. There were other six guys jumping with me and they looked like profis. As I later found out they were much better than I. In fact, anybody who I've met there and looked like profi actually raced like profi. This is a lot different compared to the Czech republic – several people looked like profis at the track meets there, but it isn't hard to beat them. In this long jump you can't imagine how much did I get beaten – they overjumped me by nearly two metres. However, something funny happened afterwards. It turned out that they were different age category. Thus I won my age category since I was the only one there. The first out of one (or maybe the last one). I did horrible, but still won and they even anounced it on the radio at school. This can happen only in Canada. They usually have so many different age categories that almost everyone can get a fairly good place.

It's also interesting that all the girls wear make-up for the competitions. In fact, they wear it all the time. I still can't understand how they avoid melting it. Actually there is lot more to write about the people here, so the Canadians will be the theme of my next post.

We've been to a boxing club with the Physical Education today. Although we didn't fight with each other, it was really interesting – one of the hardest workouts I've ever had. The place has much friendlier atmosphare than the YMCA. I have a feeling that to the Y go people who want to be good-looking. Therefore, they spend lots of time weight lifting and watching themselves in the mirror. Well, they have muscles, but they don't look as though they can use them. It's more like jewelery than an useful tool. On the other hand, in the boxing club we've really trained – we were all almost dead after the practice. I'm thinking about geting a membership there after the cross-country skiing season finishes. It might be interesting. I was doing karate-do for half a year and enjoyed it a lot, but then I quit it because I couldn't kick higher than the waist level – my leg flexibility is bad. However, this would be no problem in boxing :)

16.01.2008
Ski trip

Ski area Holiday Mountain on the 15th of Jan 2008

Today nearly all the international students took the opportunity to go skiing or snowboarding instead of going to school. We left at 7.00 by bus and arrived at Holiday Mountain at about 9.15. My total snowboardnig time was 5 hours and 20 minutes. It was fun! (and my butt isn't suprisingly hurting at all)

I would be snowboarding longer, but we had to return the borrowed equipment and the plan was to head home at 4.00, so the teachers forced us to stop snowboarding at 3.20 – so early! In fact there were other strange rules we had to obey – everybody had to wear a helmet and no jumping was allowed. Canadians will once lose all the joy, because of so many rules. The highest allowed speed at highways – 70 mph (110 kmh) is terrible.

There were two big differences compared to Europe. Firstly, there are no safety bars at the lift chairs. It's a pretty strange feeling while you're going up for the first time, but then you get used to it. The lift goes very slowly, so the bars aren't necessary and then it becomes psychology problem in your head only – the other Canadians obviously had no problems with it. Secondly, there are no tourniguets for tickets check. Skiers only were a sticker on their jacket. In case of us we were also marked as beginners, intermediates or experts (red, blue or black) and depending on what category you were, only certain slopes were allowed for you. This means the instructors first looked how strong skiiers/snowboarders we were and they gave us the red, blue or black mark. If you got red, you had to stay at the practice hill untill you improved. With blue or black mark you were allowed to go anywhere you wanted (with exception of jumping or skiing in free terrain). Although I suck at snowboarding, I received a blue mark. They even considered me expert before the end of the day :) It's so easy to be said to be "good" here in Canada. No matter how you do, they will always say: "Good job!".

Eventhough the ski area was called Holiday Mountain, you have to think about the mountain in Manitobian scale. That means it's not a mountain at all. There were five slopes nearly the same length as in Vitkovice, two double chair lifts and one "moving pavement" at the practice slope. However, one of the lifts was out of order.

I was also speaking in German with my friends aus Bayern und Berlin. At first it was a mixture of German and English, but after a while it switched to German completely. I was amazed that I could say a whole meaningful sentence in German. However, I realised how much vocabulary I'm missing. The exams from German in September will be interesting.

There were amazing pictures of the Rockies hanged on the walls of the cafeteria. Despite the fact that the pictures always look much better than the reality, I'm really looking forward to the ski trip to Fernie, British Columbia.

P.S. I've taken couple of pictures, so if you wanna see them, just send me an email request. I'll see what I can do then :P

13.01.2008
High School

Miles Macdonell Collegiate

Miles Mac – the first two things you notice about it is that it is kind of big (1300 students) and that there is a huge parking place for students' cars. Needless to say, almost no canadians are taking bus or going to school by bus.

You'll get the best picture of how the school looks inside if you imagine an "American high school movie". There are long corridors with lockers on one side – usually two or three students share one. An important thing is that changing your shoes is optional which means no one does it. It might be suprising for the Czech teachers, but nor the hallways neither the classrooms are dirty. Moreover, there is no smell from socks :)

The system of the teaching is completely differnt. There are two semesters and a student can choose up to five subjects for each. There are final exams from each subject (including physical education) after each semester – they are worth 30% of your final mark. I guess I should say something about the marking. Basically everything is based on percantages. In order to pass a course a student has to get more than 50%. I was suprised how many people are actually quiting subjects or have problems to pass.

The school offers huge variety of subjects – there are three types of english and math, all the usual subjects and also subjects like cooking or hair-dressing. There are also IB courses (for a whole year) which are tougher and go more in depth. They are useful for the university. In all the subjects one is being taught almost the same as in CR, but since the course is only half year, they go through the stuff more quickly. I've never had so much homework.

Only two subjects differ a lot from the Czech ones – English and Physical Education. In physical education one does lots of differnt sports – we played golf, did fencing, archery, squash and we are going boxing next week. Every week is different and it's lots of fun.

In English we're doing lots of essays and projects. I'm in comprehensive English course which means there is no literature. I'm taking English transitional the next semester and this will be more focused on the practical stuff – writting letters, ... Basically here they are much more focused on writting and your opinions than on memorizing.

The school day starts at 8.25 and ends at 3:15. There are five classes per day – 3 in the morning, than lunch and 2 in the afternoon. All the classes have 67 minutes with 5 minutes in between. It's hardly enough for getting from one corner of the school to the other. 90% of the students have the same classes every day – memorizing your shedule is really simple :)

Miles Mac offers many afterschool activities – indoor track, volleyball, basketball, drama, choir, natural helpers, vietnam orphanage comittee and so on. There is lots of them. There is more to write about sports, drama and theater and I will return to it in a different article.

We will finish with some interesting facts. Firstly, the Canadian anthem is being played every moorning. Everyone has to stand up, remain silent and if you're walking somewhere, you have to stop. I guess I've heard the anthem more times than the Czech one. Secondly, we've already have three fire alarms. Than doesn't mean there was a fire – someone was probably trying to avoid a quiz or test.Thirdly, we were taught how to exit a bus in case of an emergency and what to do if the school was attacked. I think it was pretty useful. Finally, I still don't get the numbers of schools here – there are three of them within 15 minute walk from my house and the other two are even bigger than Miles Mac. There is also lots of Junior Highs near. I just don't understand where all the children come from.

I guess this is enough for today. I hope you've enjoyed reading!

P.S. Miles Mac webpage My picture is there several times :)

12.01.2008
Winnipeg

Winnipeg or Winterpack – you can call it as you prefer. A city where I'm going to spend six more months of my life. It's a "capital" city of the province Manitoba with about 600 000 inhabitants, but with size definetely larger than Prague. Everything here is big – the toaster, the fridge, the TV with lots of channels (Friends and Simpsons are always on :)), ... The streets here look exactly the same as in the "typical American movies" – they are broad with trees on both sides. Only the houses are a bit smaler. There is lots of space everywhere.

Two words that best describe the city are – wind and flat. Wind because it's always windy there. In fact, Winnipeg is one of the most windiest places in Canada. That's the reason why it's always cold there. In fact it is the wind that makes the difference. Although the absolute temperature might be -15, the real temperature (wind chill) can be -25. That's why other Canadians call this city Winterpack.

The whole province Manitoba is incredibly flat – one of the first things one realises from the plane. We also make jokes that Winnipeg has only two hills and both used to be garbage :) However, the Canadians are still very keen on all the winter activities. You can see people snowboarding on a 10m high hill or kids sliding down from a bank 2m high. Although there is a river flowing through the city, there is no valley. The bank is about 2 or 3 meter high and then the land is flat again. Thus, when there is a flood almost half of the city can be under the water level. That's the reason why they built a flood channel that surrounds the city – there is also a place for skiing situated in it.

The centre of the Winnipeg is called the Down Town. It was funny that when we first went there, my homestay parents told me "Look at this building, it is really old, nearly one hundred years old." Since all the international students aren't allowed to drive, the only way how can they get there is by bus. I have the feeling that only crazy or old people and international students are using the public transportation, though. One can always be sure one will meet someone strange-looking there. The reason why nobody is going by bus is that everybody here owns a car. It's pretty interesting feeling when your 16-year-old friend sits at the driver's place. Both the cars and oil are cheaper than in CR – one can get an old car for 1000 bucks.

It's good to be staying in a city – there is always something to do. My friends are living close, there are ice rings everywhere and when I need something, it's no problem to go to the mall.

This was just what came to my mind when I was thinkink about Winnipeg. I'll probably write something about the school in the next article.