That’s basically what I’ve been doing ever since I decided to take my physical activities to the pool. Running, just wasn’t cutting it, basketball here is the equivalent of mini “d” and I’m just bad at all the other sports that people do around here so I made an executive decision and bought a pass to the local pool. It’s no gem by any standard, but it’s impossible to open your eyes under water without getting a good 10-minute burning sensation deep in my eyeballs, so, I figured it was safe to get to swimmin’!
My first day at the pool was a tough one. I still wasn’t fully accustomed to the local traditions, so, unknowingly I moseyed down to the pool and took a lay of the land. Yup, this is a pool alright, A couple lanes, flotation devices scattered around the outskirts of the pool and the typical overweight lady floating with very little purpose in the shallow end. I was eager for some fitness and excited to test out French water so I got to it. I dove in and got into front crawl mode. I was feeling relief and enjoying the easy fitness a good swim provides. It was then I realized something was off. When I got to the other end I was told to get out by the life guarding staff who had already labeled me an out of Towner. Little did I know that a bathing cap was required and I couldn’t swim any longer unless I found one. Not a problem, I would just head up and borrow one from the front desk. Then I noticed a women starring quizzically at my bathing suit. This was going all wrong. I just wanted a swim. Then the lifeguards laid it on me. After they had a little chuckle, they told me I was not allowed to wear my bathing suit in the pool because it wasn’t proper. I’m talking about your regular average Joe suit here. But as I looked around the pool, I noticed that I was the only male in the facility not wearing a Speedo! Could this be so, was the proper bathing suit actually a Speedo. Well dog my cats, it was a Speedo and I was told not to return unless I was equipped for the occasion. Lucky for me, right before I left, when the family was giving me last minute presents of things I might need in Europe, Doug cleverly thought that a Speedo was a must bring. At first I thought the present was just a good joke… little did I know that Doug had gone out and done some research on this purchase. He knew what the pools were like over here, and me, being the fool, thought it was all a joke!!Well, I’ll tell you this; I headed back to that pool the next day with my Speedo in hand and a stomach full of butterflies. Got to the pool and put on the gear not quite sure how I’d feel. At first I was feeling a little self conscious and not sure if I could do this thing, but darn it, I didn’t even know any of the folks. I through my shoulders back, tightened my buttocks and headed down to the pool. When I got to the doorway I stood there for a minute and took it all in. Hands on my hips, black swimming cap, fresh purple goggles, towel slung over my right shoulder, chin held high wearing nothing but my black and red striped Speedo. I then thought, why stop here, I’m letting it all hang out now, so I went for a stroll and took a warm up walk around the pool. I nodded at some of the regular swimmers, and then approached the lifeguard from the day before. She barely recognized me, but when she did, I could tell that the pool was mine. I hopped in and shot off 40 laps in a matter of minutes. Then to finish it off I raced an old man, who beat me. I think I may have to shave my legs if I want to get that extra mili second on him.

When I'm in Halifax, I always buy a poppie during the rememberance day period, but this year I decided to take it to another level. Tummers and I met up in Arras, France, November 11th to set off on a Canadian, Remeberance Day pilgrimage. We didn't expect it to be a pilgrimage but it just turned out that way.
Vimy Ridge is where we were headed. Vimy Ridge is a site where some of the blodiest battles in WWI took place. There were 100,000 Canadians who took part in the battle of Vimy Ridge. Sadly, 3,598 were killed and 7,004 were wounded. The Ridge was recaptured by the Canadians and returned to the French. As a token of French gratitude, a monument was placed on the site to honor the Canadian Soldiers who lost their lives. Also, a portion of the land is officially Canadian soil. With our spirits high and proud, two Canadians headed off to find a piece of their heritage...
We started the day watching the Rememberance day parade that was being held in the city of Arras. There were children reading poems (Flanders Field, in French, Champs D'honneur) and reciting letters some of the casulties in the war had written to their loved ones before they perished. We watched all of this from the top of a Church steeple about 150 feet over the square where the readings were taking place. With the cool breeze, the marching band in the background and a magnificent view of Northern France, we were convinced we had it right. After the wind drove us from the steeple, we headed out to Vimy. I had over looked the fact that November 11th was a National holiday in France and all the buses were down. This wasn't about to stop the two pf us so we told the lady at the information desk that it didn't matter and we would walk the 8km. She looked at us strangely and told us "Bonne Chance".... Against our better judgement we dismissed her comment and headed off with a makeshift local map, 2 large beers, 1 chocolate bar and two Canadian Flags.
We got to the exit and began to walk on the side of the highway. I put my Canadian Flag around my head and then put my thumb up and within minutes we had a lift. Two females about our age picked us up and they were off to a party. We told them where we were headed and we began to move. We went about ten kilometers until we both were wondering where on earth we were. "Stop! Here is good" we yelled. Happy with how much ground we had covered we jumped out and thanked them for what they had done for us. Little did we know that they had taken us about 10 kilometers in the wrong direction! We walk another kilometer until we discovered how far off track we were. We were now even farther away than when we had stared! Only now we were east instead of south.
" All my life I've been waiting to be picked up by two women on the side of the road.... and now I pray it never happens again" -Kevin Tummers. I was feeling the same way. We managed to cross the highway and were now headed back where we came from. It was about 2:30 pm now and we were no where near our destination. We stuck our thumbs up once again and were picked up quickly. On the way back to Arras there was a side road that had a sign towards Vimy reading 10km. We jumped out there and began to walk along the backroads approaching Vimy. We walked through a ghost town called Oppy, which seemed to be overrun by dogs. After we came to the conclusion that no one was going to pick us up we cracked our beers and began to enjoy the walk. We eventually found a bench, a boulangerie and a meats store. We got a bit of chicken and bread and enjoyed our beers on the bench. It was slowly getting darker and we still hadn't made it to Vimy, nor did we have a place to stay. So after an hour on the bench, feeling very much recouperated, we set off again on the long road.
Once we got out of the small town back to the country side again, we could see Vimy in distance. It's a ridge spanning miles and miles. I could only imagine what it would have been like to have been a soldier in WWI, preparing to attack the ridge, with full knowledge that it was protected by German soldiers and heavy artillery. Knowing full well that the chances of returning alive were low, but for friends, family, country and honor, going ahead. These thoughts among others ran through my my mind and I was happy that I was walking to Vimy the same way the soldiers may have attacked it. I was also happy that there was no one defending it.
It got dark and began to rain. Our spirits were getting low. The rest of our night had som many question marks. Our only idea was to get to vimy and see what we could find there. If there was nothing, so be it. We had no idea what lay ahead there, but if everything was closed, we had spied a couple sheds with hay in them that looked better than the sidewalk. Nothing was open on the main strip, but off in the distance we saw a light. Since it was the only ligh,t we approached it. Low and behold it was a pub, filled with locals playing cards and dice, chatting and drinking beers. We eagerly went in, sat down and had a beer. Before long we were chatting with the locals and when they discovered we were Canadians they started buying us beer!! Before to long we knew everybody in the place and had 2 people looking for a place we could stay the night.
After 2 hours with the friendly people of Vimy, one of our new friends gave us a lift to a local guest house that was run by a woman of about 75 years of age. She took us in and when we told her we had not eaten she immediately got to work and began cooking omlettes and potatoes. She made us tea and coffee, gave us milk and yogurt and fresh bread, not to mention the omelettes were some of the best I've had. The bedroom was cozy and nice, and much better than a barn. within minutes I was asleep from the adventurous day we'd had.
We never made it to the monument, but we did get a Vimy Ridge experience that I think was even more valuable than the classic tour. We met the people and actually felt what it was like to see the ridge and get to it on foot. We recieved some amazing French hopitality, something that I will never forget, and when it comes down to it, I'd sooner meet new people than new monuments anyday!

Hello All!! I'm doing great over here still and am nearly a full-fledged Frenchman. I know my way around Paris and my French is becoming impeccable. I last left you on my way out of Paris on heading for a flight to Cork Ireland...
Josh, Jeremy and I decided we would leave ourselves a bit of extra time in order to make the flight in Paris, just in case anything were to go wrong. We arrived at the terminal get checked in, only to find the largest security check line that I've ever seen! We thought we'd left ourselves enough time but this line looked to be a 2-hour wait and our flight was scheduled to leave, in 45 minutes. They were starting to board and things weren't looking good. We waited in line for about 15 minutes and at intervals we would each do a little prospecting. There were two security checks but only one line, even though it looked as though there should have been two lines... We decided this was the time to make our move and we rushed it. We were at the front of the line in no time and no one said anything. I guess being 3 males about 25 years old deterred anyone from trying to stop us, and none of us were about to miss this flight. Josh had already missed one and I like to keep my track record pristine. After we made it through, mass hysteria ensued in the line behind us with everybody jockeying for good position in the new line that we had created. Something like the stock market perhaps. We just made the flight and were off to Ireland.
We touched down in Cork and I immediately got hit with the sense of being somewhere different than France. Very different. The air was a little crisper and grass a little greener. I hadn't made it through customs before I had met some Irish folks giving me names of people that I might be related to. Not to mention I had a five minute chat with the customs agent who was telling me about some of the local hot spots (much to the chagrin of those behind me). the people were already very friendly. We got our bags and were off. Jeremy's friend Dan, from Acadia, who had been in Dublin for the year met us outside the airport we were officially a foursome. In Cork we stayed a little longer than perhaps expected, but the night life was good and I seemed to find myself outside a chicken burger restaurant at about 2 in the morning each night, enjoying the fried chicken and mayonnaise concoction (something my body would whole heartedly reject the following day). After 2 nights of chicken burgers, Guinness and poor ABBA impersonators, we rented a car and took a voyage through the Irish outback.
The car was under my name, so I did the driving, and let me tell you, the back roads in Ireland a very very skinny. It was a little struggle at first to get used to being on the opposite side of the road and even more difficult only having a couple extra Inches of road when passing cars travelling in the opposite direction! Eventually I got used to it and we toured the south west coast line of Ireland. The scenery in this part of Ireland gave me the impression that I had left reality and entered a fantasy world. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a tree get up and begin to walk, or even a sheep tap me on the shoulder and begin to talk. And let me tell you, there were a lot of sheep. But they seemed to have a very limited vocabulary. We found a circular fort built in mid-evil times which would have provided protection and served as a lookout post for this particular community. It was a great place, but I can't help thinking there were unknown natural forces at work there. When I got out of the car I instantly had a strange feeling in my stomach, but, because we were at a medieval site I shrugged it off as a sense of awe of this timeless structure. We walked around and on top of the structure, took photos and read some of the very informative tidbits... such as: "Don't Climb on the Structure". I then noticed a little stream about 50 feet away and thought to myself...hmmm, what a great place for a picture. There were obviously evil forces a play here drawing me down to the stream. When I got there I was standing on a wet rock and slipped! Luckily, I know, you wish I fell in. No such luck, I made a miraculous save and jumped across, dry and safe. Happy with the events that had just passed, I headed back to the car to meet the fellas. At which point I discovered I no longer had the Keys!! Now, I was a little worried here. Out in the middle of the Irish mountainside, rented car, money in car, rain and 3 other guys wanting to get in the car. I let the news out and we went on a search. My worry was minimal because I thought we would find them but I would be lying to say I wasn't devising a contingency plan to what we would do if we didn't find the keys. Finally, $the river that had tried to swallow me, had also tried to swallow our keys. Seems the Leprechauns were on my side on that day because two more centimeters and we might still be in Ireland. Our first night brought us to the small town of Cahirciveen where we were treated to the hospitality of the local bed and breakfast. We then ate at a local Irish pub were the Guinness flowed and the atmosphere was lively. After being there about an hour, a local group of Irish musicians came in to have a little fun. We were then treated to some the best music I heard throughout my stay in Ireland. The next morning we woke up and we got treated to a true "Irish breakfast", which to me was strikingly similar to a Canadian breakfast. Much more so than the French breakfast. We spent the day driving, we saw the cliffs of Moher which were beautiful, checked out some of the tourist goods and then continued on the Dublin where we would meet our friend Ross who lived there.
Driving to Dublin was a nightmare because the rest of Ireland has yet to catch up with the growth of the Country and its capitol city. This means that from one coast to the other there is a one-lane highway with construction everywhere and backed up traffic. Thousands of people going in and out of Dublin but no infrastructure to support it. They seem to be working hard at fixing these problems and in a few years Ireland I think it will be a better place to travel by road in. Ross was a gracious host and allowed us to stay at his place for the week while we saw Dublin and learned some of the finer points of their culture, drinking Guinness being one of those things and we even went and saw the Guinness Brewery at St. James gate which I really enjoyed although Josh and Jeremy seemed to think it was baloney. The Guinness at the top of the brewery with a view of the city was the finest Guinness I've ever had and made the wheels in my head begin to spin. Throughout the week at Ross's house we hung out with Ross' friends Jack and Lewick and they helped show us around the city and the nightlife. We made many trips into the center of town and went to some very fine wine bars and clubs. Dublin has some of the friendliest people I've ever met in a large metropolis city and always got the feeling that there was a warm bowl of soup waiting for me around each corner.
The trip ended with me heading back to France and Josh, Jeremy and Ross off to Amsterdam. A place I have yet to visit, but plan on making the stop there before Europe is behind me. Hope everyone is doing well and I will talk to you soon.

Geoff

The French education system seems perfectly set up for anybody looking to earn money yet maintain a good lifestyle. As soon as I got here they handed me a lengthy piece of paper which outlined the vacation schedule. I was thinking to myself it would be non-stop until Christmas...How wrong I was! On October 20th I was to be set free from the school and allowed to do anything I pleased (within reason) for two weeks. It was then I remembered that my good friend Josh and his Brother Jeremy were to be visiting France sometime in October. I got in touch with them and immediatly I had a plan, which was a good plan. The Plan was to go to Paris for Josh's birthday, and then go to Dublin For Jeremy's birthday. Simple, effective and a thousand times better than staying in Caen with nothing to do for 2 weeks.The two Ewings arrived in Caen on a Wendsday night and we immediatly got into some wine drinking, card playing and chating. They seemed to have a travelling vineyard in the trunk and we managed to put a good dent into it in two nights. We stuck around Caen for two nights until I was finished teaching and then headed to Paris. In Paris we met Josh and Jer's cousins Tom and Julie along with Julie's boyfriend Paulo and pal Roscoe who were both fun loving Portuguese folk. In Paris we stayed at a pretty high class place, because of course, we were travelling with a poker player, where dollars slide in and slip out with ease. The time in Paris was well spent between eating fine meals that would start at 10pm (early), with some wine, and end at 12:30am or later, with, of course, a bottle of wine. During the days and nights we filled our time with some tourist sight seeing such as the Notre-Dame, the river Seine and Julie's apartaments. We also got to watch Roscoe show off his skills by pretending he was tarzan above the Seine, let me explain; there is a tree with some vines coming down it and Roscoe would jump out, grab a vine, fly out above the river and then come back to the safety of the wall. I really thought he was going to go in to the dirty Seine and it would be a mess, but all turned out well everyone had a good hoot and holler.Most mornings we would make sure that we got our full amount of sleep, which may or may not have been somewhere between too much and way too much sleep, but all the same, the maids would wake us up before they went home and that seemed to be good enough for us. Each night we found ourselves at a more luxurious restaurant and even had a few of the local Parisians Join us for a hug and a laugh. I had the same hair style going as a guy in a restaurant called, "Chez Paul", therefore, we both told the other to say hello to each others grandmothers. So, grams, if you read this, "hello" from your long lost Parisian relative who's hair is similar to mine. I can only hope that he remembered to fulfill his half of the promise.SO, after spending a 5 days in Paris it was time to leave. We had lived the fine dining and fine drinking life, as far as I've known it and looked pretty darn good doing it. So there we were off to Cork Ireland getting ready to enter the realm of Guinness Brew and magical scenery. That however, is for another day.

Teaching English in France


This year I have decided to take a teaching assistantship job in France. The city that I have been placed in is named Caen in the Northern part of the country. It is in the province of Normandy and it is the city that was founded by William The Conqueror. It is about the same size as Halifax but the downtown area is very old and tightly would together like all of the old European cities. I am teaching at a high school on the outskirts of the city that is pretty high class. The French love to make sure that things are always well catered. Every meeting and function at the school is followed by desserts and wine, ciders and poires ( a pear cider), and lots of extended conversation. Not to mention the cafeteria that I eat at, which is the school cafeteria, has shown me to some of the finest food in France, and it only costs me two euro's a meal!!!

I am living on the school grounds at the moment and there are two other assistants who are living on the same floor as me. One of them is form England and the other is spanish and from Chili. We do what we can to make dinner an event(the way the french do) yet all we seem to be able to cook is spaghetti! One night we tried to cook rice and it got really burnt, next thing I knew the fire alarm was going off. As I looked out into the parking lot I noticed that there were 100 people waiting around, they were other teachers who live in the building and some of the students who travel from far away to attend the school. The three of us were a little embarassed but but the headmaster came over and had a little laugh about it with us. The headmaster is an serious guy, who will never be caught without a nice suit on.... even at 11pm during a fire drill. Also, he has one heck of a hand shake and I always have to be ready for it; he love to shake hands (as most French) and there is nothing worse than getting caught with a weak shake.

I teach 12 different classes and they range from a low level of English to really high. The subjects I can teach are my own choice and the School provides all of the teachers alot of reaserch tools to help us out with. My French is slowly getting better but it can be tiring to constantly be learning something new. Some nights I just pass right out because I have been speking french so much during the day. All in all everything is great so far and I will keep putting up posts and keeping you all updated about my year.