Gifts for Unknown Friends

A friend and I had the opportunity to participate in something pretty special on Saturday called Gifts for Strangers, an annual event that Improv in Toronto started last year. Basically what happens is people buy/make and wrap Christmas presents, attach handwritten and heartfelt cards, and hand them out to strangers in the street. The moment I heard about this event I knew it was something I would love to be a part of. One, because I like talking to strangers. Strangers are like wrapped presents to me; they’re good friends that I haven’t yet met. Two, because doing something to reinstate people’s faith in humanity is always rewarding and usually good fun.

It turns out this event was awesome before it began. On Friday while buying gifts in China town, two guys walked in and one asked the cashier if they sold gloves. They didn’t, and as the guys turned their backs to leave I asked what kind of gloves. “Anything. My hands are freezing, even those small black ones would be great.” I reached into my bag of goodies and handed him a pair of gloves that I had purchased 10 minutes earlier. He offered to pay, but to his surprise I told him not to worry and wished him “merry Christmas.” The cashier, whose Mandarin was better than her English, seemed nonplussed and asked me if I knew him. I hope that most of her customers speak Mandarin, because a few minutes later I discovered that she did indeed sell gloves…

Matt and I met the other 40 anonymous gift-givers around 3pm and then as they split up to find strangers, Matt and I found a hotel lobby so we could finish writing cards and wrapping our 21 presents.

After our first prospect - 30th in line for the hotel desk - declined our gift offer we set out determinedly into the cold afternoon at dusk. We quickly made up for it by locating a young family of three in a restaurant, wishing them a “merry Christmas,” and handing them a hand-written note with a wrapped $25 gift certificate for that restaurant. They weren’t sure what to think of us, but they thanked us and as we exited we saw their little girl reading the card. Don’t worry, we made sure to suggest they open the present before they leave.

Other gifts that we gave, most around $2 or $3, included gloves, a warm ear band, a kid-sized Moose U-pillow, coloured candles, playing cards and, of course, chocolate.

It was a real adventure though, finding the right stranger for every gift, getting great reactions from kids and adults alike, and convincing people that we weren’t asking for anything in return. As I knew from hitchhiking, not everyone is equally open with strangers and we definitely had our innocent offers turned down a couple times. It may have helped had we worn Santa hats and began before nightfall; note to self for next year. That said, we found the right home for every gift and those who were open enough to accept our gifts, were clearly grateful. One family of four by the skating rink at city hall responded “you guys just made our night!” A man in a wheelchair admitted that he hadn’t received gifts the two previous years and another thankful man gave us a hug and said he was going to be overseas for Christmas. Many good wishes were wished and many genuine smiles were shared among unknown friends that evening, even with bystanders pleased by the spontaneous giving.

As for those with more modest reactions, when they’ve opened their gift and accepted that there was no catch, they too will feel the love. Each of us is loved, and a little less fear and more attentiveness helps us recognize it. I hope that one day, armed with another bagful of goodies, I run into you on the street, or anywhere really. Merry Christmas!

http://giftsforstrangers.org/

P.S. Not surprisingly, a lot of people enjoy spreading the love. 20 people participated in Gifts for Strangers last year and this December there were 23 cities around the world running the event.

Why Pole Vault?

So I'll explain my comment from my last post "Pole vault seemed like the logical next step". The sport was just a fun hobby in university and pursuing it was never part of my plans. I blame the change in my thinking on 3 things. 1) the sport for being so fun. 2) my coach for telling me I had potential and 3) me for believing him. I knew that I loved jumping and if I didn't give it a shot I would likely regret it.

Am I any good? The answer's average, I went to university nationals twice but pole vault in Canada isn't very strong. I tried the sport for the first time in university and the months when I've actually practiced a couple times a week add up to about 14 months. My personal best is 4.60 metres, I would need at least 5.60 if I wanted to even think about olympics.

Why I'm doing it then? Refer to reasons listed at the beginning. I decided I would dedicate an 8-12 month period to find out if I can jump high. If I don't get over 5 metres (my best is 4.60 metres) during this trial run, I'm planning on working full time.

How it's going: As of January I had vaulted 3 times in the past year, so in Montreal I started pretty fresh. I've been jumping twice a week with smaller poles and shorter run ups and getting in shape on the other days. I've competed twice, I jumped 4m25 in early February and got 0m (missed my opening height) at Quebec's indoor provincials in Sherbrooke. A busy outdoor season begins in mid May, nationals are in Toronto at the end of July.

Note: I've never jumped outside before. It's the same thing with some sun, wind and sometimes rain. We start practicing outdoors next week, I can't wait.

Montreal living

Hey there, unfortunately, my written journal (more like a collection of loose papers) that I kept in europe is currently in a location unknown to me, which is why I haven't added the rest of the 19 week europe trip. So looks like if you want the rest of that story you'll have to call me OR make something interesting up in your head.

Update: In January my brother Ben and I moved into a nice furnished 5 1/2 apartment in the Plateau part of Montreal. It's been the first time living with him in 5 years and first time living near my home town (Saint-Lambert) in 13 years. The 3 things I wanted to focus on here in my first 4 months (the length of our lease) were : Finish reading the Bible, improve my french and pole vault. I recently finished number 1. I have been improving my french but not as much as I would have liked because, despite my efforts to meet new people, everyone here (practically) is english. To answer the question "why pole vault" the answer is simple, after graduating with a degree in commerce, it seemed like the logical next step :)

Anyway having a good roomate has definitely kept things interesting. Through a track connection Ben and I found jobs at the 10 day Auto Show in Montreal which was pretty neat and we got the chance to drive cars in and out of the building. On the last day, Ben actually took a Volvo down into the underground parking lot whose car-top-carrier made it taller than the height allowance, which was a little funny. Meanwhile we made the most of the short winter, we went sledding twice, skated on Montreal's ubiquitous skating rinks a few times(separately) and took in the winter olympics at our Dad's place on the west end. I got to know the pole vaulters and the members of the french CS church we attend nearby while Ben taught himself how to play the accordion and composed in preparation for a tour in March. I also checked out the winter festival on Jean-Drapeau island where they flooded the bike paths for skaters and had lots of other activites like tubing, sculting and eating maple syrop on snow. In late February I flew out to Vancouver and stayed with Sarah for 5 days where we watched a live curling match between Canada and Japan (it was awesome and we came back in the final end for the win). We also took the ferry to Vancouver Island for the first time and visited friends of mine in Victoria. Beautiful little city with seals in the harbour and Darth Vador playing violin downtown.

The last weeks in Montreal have picked up, brother Nicholas and his wife Karine had their first baby which was a pleasure to visit a couple times. I had easter lunch in Montreal for the first time in years yesterday and today was my first day of work at a part-time job AND Ben's return from the US tour. Wednesday we start a 10 day sleep over when brother Matthew (who I haven't seen in 2 years) and his girlfriend visit from Thailand.

Madrid

Aug 4th (5th stop)

We're nearing the end of a 2 hour flight from Stuttgart to Madrid and although the AC is on I can smell the heat. We each have a bottle of sunscreen, we have 2 litres of water carrying capacity and we've paid 10 extra euros for AC in the hostel but I am still terrified that we won't make it to Lisbon in 3 days. Looking out the window the landscape has gradually gone from snowy mountains tops to dead brown desert. Sure it's been 40 degrees C in Ottawa before but that happens every day in this wasteland. The chances of us 3 cold blooded Canadians making it through this are slim. If I do survive that's the last time I let Jamie book our trip.

Jamie: Spain is comparable to me (Jamie), as it is extremely hot.
Richard: The plane just landed, I have heat stroke just thinking about this place.
J: I have sunburns all over my body.
R: Tonight I rinsed my mouth with uncomfortably hot water and the faucet was on the coldest setting. Only in Madrid.
J: It's 42 C outside right now (day 2). Enough said.
R:
But enough of that. For all except Jamie or "Iceman", who doesn't take heat that well, it wasn't that bad. We found that as long as you play it smart and don't mess around you'll survive spain or at least central Madrid where there's lots of shade. As for language this was the first time in 4 countries that none of us spoke the national language. I had the most background with 2 spanish courses taken in the last 4 years and I failed both midterms in the 2nd one. "Banos" was one of the words I remembered and they aren't even called that here. But that's alright, europeans in major cities always speak some english right? Wrong.
But at least things will be labeled in english too....wrong again. Spain for those of you who haven't been (and thanks for the heads up to everyone else) is very spanish. I think the only times english was helpful in 3 days was at the hostel and at tourist information. The rest of the time at meals, asking for directions or buying tickets we relied on sign language, intuition and Richard's spanish. It definitely added to the experience though and made even the duller parts of the day more exciting. Madrid I thought was a great city, stange, but nice. We walked around the Plaza Mayor which was right nearby, the beautiful Almudena Cathedral and the aligned Royal Palace. The royal gardens were worth walking around and we encountered a live peacock, just strolling around, not in a zoo.

One thing that made the local Spaniards less foreign is the fact that they too walk on the sidewalk on the shaded side of the road, leaving many sidewalks deserted. Walking around at night there are lots of street performers such as the statue people, the robot, the silver man who drops his suit case and slips for laughs. And some good ones like the man playing spanish guitar with his lady partner doing a flamenco dance or the man who played some stringed xylophone creating sweet melodies in the main square. One of the strange phenonmenon we encountered were the popular 'ham bars' in Madrid. Picture butcher shop and bar in one; large sections of meat on display and hanging from the ceiling with a bartender werving drinks from a bar in the middle.
We also met up with 2 of Jamie's friends and the 5 of us saw the great el retiro park while sharing stories of our journey's before finding a restaurant and tasting some 'tapas' consisting of assorted meats and cheeses served on bread. And of course like every other eurocity we ate delicious donair kebab. The last day we saw a transported egyption temple, the Del Prado art museum with the most christian art I've ever seen and we took a nice long swim in a public pool.
In case the language barrier wasn't clear enough before, we ordered a sandwich and burger after the swim from a bar without a printed menu and they didn't know any of the numbers between 0 and 10 in english. Luckily 'sandwich' is the same, and just as glorious, in both languages.

Home

So after 6 weeks of traveling at the beginning through 10 countries, 3-4 week farm stays in England, Southern Norway and Normandy and a final 2 weeks of traveling through Switzerland, Italy and France I'm back home in Ottawa as of 3 hours ago. Obviously I was pretty bad about it during the trip, but posts about the adventure should follow. During the next few weeks I'll figure out where I'll be living during the winter, see friends and family, walk Davey and hopefully look for some work. It's good to be home though, I had a lot of fun in Europe and I'm now looking forward to this next step.

Brussels

July 25-27th (2nd stop)


Alex, Sarah and I only had 2 and a half days in Brussels but luckily I knew a lot about it and the rest of the country before arriving by train from Paris. I knew it was the capital and that the Belgian people made great chocolate and waffles, they could speak France's language and had pretty well the same flag as Germany. There weren't any free tours so we would have to discover it as the new world explorers did, by looking around. And since none of us knew a word of flemish we stuck with french. The most impressive thing I found about this city is that everyone knew multiple languages. The man at the info booth who found us a good hotel when we arrived was fluent in 5 languages, our waiter who told us the water wasn't potable (it was) and served us bottled water instead also knew 5 languages and the manager of the chocolate shop we visited 3 times spoke 10. Yes, as in 9+1. This made me feel quite inadequate with my native english and decent french and inspired me to take on a third language seriously. Living in North America, spanish would be the obvious choice if I could only roll my "r"s....


Back to the city. It was beautiful, had great food and felt much smaller next to Paris, with drivers who didn't aim for us. Predictably my favourite part was the square (Grand Place) which Victo Hugo called the most beautiful of its kind in europe. We fortunately walked into the large cobblestoned square just before some evening show where the town hall is light up in different colours while music plays and a narrator talks to all of the tourists in...flemish. Grand Place is lined by 4 old buildings, each full of statues, decorative carvings and gold higlights and the main focal point is the town hall's narrow white stone tower that kept us oriented during our stay.

We spent much of our remaining time discovering that the extensive prior knowledge I had of the place, was all true.

Capital. We gave up looking for the parliment buildings but after visiting the EU headquarters and finding out that NATO was based out of there as well, Brussels is very much a capital city.
Chocolate and waffles. We visited the Chocopolis chocolate shop 3 times in 2 days and after Sarah ate more than her half of our delicious waffle a fight ensued.
Like France. Not only do they share the language but they both have impressive Arc de Triomphes. The french one is much older and grander but the belgian arc's surroundings compliment it far more than a busy car-packed roundabout does.
Like Germany. They do have the same flag while the belgian Arc de Triomphe and german Bandenburg Gate have the same quadriga statue up top. (Same = just short of identical)



Other highlights:

-St-Michael and St-Gudula Cathedral: This church that I hadn't heard of was a great surprise. Just east of Grand Place, it had my favourite interior of any church I'd seen so far.
-Mannekin Pis: Europeans are strange. I didn't find this famous landmark of a boy urinating very interesting but because I was eating my undersized waffle half in the meantime, it wasn't a waste of time or money (its free). There's also a famous statue of a girl peeing which is unforturnately not next to a waffle shop.

-Tintin: I watched Tintin growing up and always figured it was a french thing. Turns out it's belgian and I payed 22 euro's for the only shirt I'll buy on this trip. I didn't used to but when dealing with a 22 euro shirt, I'll be seperating my white and black laundry.
-Palace of Justice: nice to walk past and behind it is a great view of the city.

Brussels is a great city to walk around, enjoy a musical flemish trio in a park or appreciate buildings built with care, plus tasty food is never far. On the 27th we flew to Berlin, and although Sarah was concerned about the regular plane noises, we landed safely :)

Paris

July 21st-25th (1st stop)

My first day in Europe kinda took me by surprise. I had finished working at camp for 5 weeks where I didn't have much time to think about anything else and then the day after I left Bowen island I ended up checking into a cheap french hotel and walking the streets of Paris. My first day in Paris was my only day alone in europe so far and it was a nice period to get acclimatized. Knowing that I would be seeing the traditional sites with Sarah and her friend Alex over the next few days I just walked around, past countless bakeries and sandwhich shops, listening to a language I hadn't heard in a while and to the constant hum of scooters and enjoying loads of monuments/church facades that date back to before my country was even a country. All this only 2 years after living in and learning about Calgary, a city of 1 million people that wasn't even discovered by pioneers until the 1870's. Let's just say I found it fitting when I walked past my first ever palm tree later that day and sat down in the Luxembourg gardens to listen to an ochestral play the Disney tune "A Whole New World". TV by the way does a really good job of portraying what palm trees look like, I wasn't even surprised when I saw one. Until I realized that Paris is farther north than Ottawa, aren't they a hot climate tree?

Over the next 4 days we, as predicted, saw most of the traditional sites, and took in everything in between. We enjoyed the outside, the inside and the view from the top of the Notre Dame cathedral all on seperate days. What it lacks in colour compared to the Notre Dame Bascilica in Montreal, it makes up for with history and its incredible detail. I won't bore you with any facts but one, it took 200 years to build. I'm talking years with 365 days each!

We also went on our first free tour, which we discovered isn't that strange of a thing in Europe. They toured us around the city, showed us loads of great sites and filled us with history and knowledge I may have been too lazy to look up myself. It was a great introduction of the city and also began an extensive World War lesson which was updated at nearly every european stop after Paris. The police department downtown still has bullet holes from WW2 which I found incredible.

Here are some of the other highlights:

-Ham and Cheese crepe: I had never even thought of a savoury crepe; I hope to try this with pancakes upon my return.
-Not the Louvre: if you spent 30 seconds on each piece in the Louvre it would take 68 days without pause to finish, so we surrendered in advance and didn't go.
-1900 World Exposition: Although I didn't attend, I wish that I had. Practically half of Paris was built for that exposition including the most beautiful bridge there, the equally impressive Grand and Petit palaces as well as Paris' metro system.
- Eiffel Tower: Oh! you've heard of it? well I liked it. We visited in the evening and its really nice up close and light up. Sitting there in front of it was also a strong reminder of how not in Canada I was.
-Staying dry: The weather was great and I was very tempted to jump in the Seine river since I travel in swimsuits until I discovered that still today, during especially heavy rainfall, city sludge is added to the mix.
- Signing the song "Champs Elysees" while walking down the same famous street and having someone close by join in.
-Tour story: Finding out that during the Germans' retreat, Hitler ordered a commander to have Paris decimated and the commander for whatever reason, staged it, saving pretty well the whole city.

Having a few days before meeting a friend in Berlin we picked up train tickets to Brussels for the next day and that was our visit to Paris in brief. We missed Versailles but I plan to see it before Canada happens again.