"Life in the Greenhouse” or “La vida en la casa verde”

Here I am. In the middle of nowhere, with a whole alphabet of new friends!

Aside from the most horrific political changes in our country over the past week, things are looking great. 

My most recent deadline for the GIFTS project went well, as did the packing up of my belongings for the next +8 months of my life. It was stressful and slightly overwhelming, but I got through it and managed to keep my head… mostly. 

My flight was on Thursday afternoon so I spent the morning with my lovely mom. The morning was mostly spent with her distracting me with activities so that I wouldn’t fret and panic about the upcoming change/move/job/adventure. It was exactly like it used to be when I was a kid before going to kamp. Extreme excitement, mixed with a lot of panic. The usual “what if the other kids don’t like me” or “what if my councillor is mean” or “what if I don’t get in the cabin group I want to be in” all came flooding back to me in a wave of nervous excitement. Mom, in true good parenting fashion, kept my mind and hands busy by letting me beat her at backgammon. As the clock ticked away closer and closer to my departure time, my heart started beating double time. When it was time to get into the car and head toward the airport, I started getting the nervous butterflies somewhere around my tummy. I kept trying to be rational and tell myself how great everything would be, how I’d make friends right away, how the program would be a great experience, how I wouldn’t get fired as soon as I got there for speaking average Spanish… my rational brain just wasn’t connecting with the rest of me. I had my mom drop me at the airport and not come in, fearing that I (not her) would make a scene before I boarded the plane. Trooper that she is, she helped me unload my stuff from the car, hugged me goodbye and drove off as I walked into the airport. 

This part was fine, I’d done it many times over the past few months. I could handle the airport part. One thing at a time, I told myself. I got in line to check my luggage and waited. And waited. And waited. It was taking forever! I checked my watch. 45 minutes til departure. I waited more. And more. Twenty minutes later, I checked my watch again. 42 minutes til departure. 

OK. Breathe. My nerves settled down after a lovely girl walked up to me and asked if I was Emma. A! How appropriate that my first new FBC friend’s name started off the alphabet. I dropped my luggage off and wasn’t charged for my extra duffel bag. Things were looking up! I went back in line to where A was waiting with her bro and friend and started chatting. 

She dropped off her bags and said goodbye to her fam and friends and we set off to the gate. We quickly discovered that we were both in the same boat as to not having a clue about what we were getting into. Our flight was quick and bumpy on a teeny propeller plane that chugged along like a champ. An hour and a half later, we landed in a different province and a different world from Montreal. We grabbed our bags and settled down to wait for our lift to our new home. As it happened, our lift wasn’t arriving for two hours and the canteen at the airport had beer. 1 + 1  = Great idea. 

A and I chatted and got to know each other a little better over some good ol’ Keiths IPA. Halfway through our second beer, a tall man with a purple kerchief wearing a forest green flannel coat and a huge genuine smile asked us if we were the new FBC interns. He introduced himself with a big strong handshake as J, our Intern Coordinator. We instantly started asking him questions that he easily answered or deflected. Just after 8pm, the third new arrival landed from Vancouver and we headed off in his big truck. 

After a pit stop at the Fredericton Sobey’s for some groceries to tide us over for the weekend, we headed off on the dark highway. It had been a really long time since I’d been in an area so void of light pollution. The nearly two hour drive passed by quickly as I learned that our intern coordinator had been in the army for nearly 30 years and this position was his retirement project. He told me about bear hunting with his partner and kids, tanning the hides, rendering the fat… I took an instant liking to this big lumberjack of a man. He seems to walk the fine line between wilderness and civilization. Or rather, he seems to combine the two rather well. J told me about his son who goes hunting with him (and helps with all of the stuff that the average city dweller would never even imagine doing for themselves) in the same breath as telling me about his son’s new Wii.

My home

We arrived at FBC well past 11pm and unloaded our luggage and groceries. By some stroke of luck, I walked into a cabin called the Greenhouse before the other two girls and am now living here. It may very well be one of the nicest cabins. It has an adorable little greenhouse/hotbox attached to the front of it (I am now in charge of making sure the lettuce and spinach in there grow well). 

The Conference Centre

The cabin itself is divided into four parts: two bedrooms, a kitchen and a dining room/living room. I share the cabin with E, which has so far been amazing. We have a lot in common and christened our new home this weekend with a crazy impromptu dance party. It also turns out that we have friends in common! The biggest upside to this roommate is that our combined laughing power could provide electricity to the entire North-East. Once we get rolling, we can’t stop. I think I may have cracked a rib again just from laughing with her. Our giggles have already proven to be too intense for some of the group.

Outdoor cookhouse

Back to the narrative… Thursday night was a little bit of greeting and meeting the girls. There are four of us: S, E and A. S and A are in living in the conference centre until another cabin opens up. It seems to be a pain in the ass for them, but it’s nice to have them close to begin with for bonding purposes. They are just across the solar panel from us. HA! The Greenhouse kitchen and living room/dining room have been proclaimed as common space so we have people hanging out here for meals and downtime. I like it for now, but I’m sure that I’ll be looking forward to having more alone time as the summer progresses. 

Life in the Greenhouse

Post coming...
Life here is wonderful so far!

Spreading the word

To my Canadian readers, the People’s Food Policy Project is a pan-Canadian network of citizens and organizations that is creating Canada’s first food sovereignty policy.
http://peoplesfoodpolicy.ca/policy/resetting-table-peoples-food-policy-canada

For those of you who absorb information only through youtube, one of my heroes presents the PFP: http://www.youtube.com/user/peoplesfood#p/a/u/1/PgtEZDw-aFg




Also, as Rio +20 approaches, the ETC Group is making sure that we know where the priorities should be and what the concerns are. The ETC Group is an environmental watchdog organization that, (among other amazing things) "address the socioeconomic and ecological issues surrounding new technologies that could have an impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable" (http://www.etcgroup.org/).
Another one of my heroes has a wonderful segment on
http://www.earthbeatradio.org/uranium-mining-at-the-grand-canyon-gearing-up-for-rio20/
To listen, just click on the PLAY button at the top of the picture. His segment is from 27:40min, just after the wonderful Vandana Shiva.

Funemployed

For someone who currently doesn't even have a job, I am overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do. I have a new task for the research and a shorter deadline than I had hoped. I also have to figure out how I'm getting to NB and when. I need to get ready for that, with all the acquiring of things that it entails.

Getting Political

So, I didn't think that this blog would get political, but then the election was called for... so here goes.

I overheard two girls my age talking about how they are sick of all this election talk and don't see what the point of it is. "What's the difference if I vote or not?" The other one said something along the lines of "I don't like any of the parties, I'm not going to bother."
I almost turned around and slapped them.

It never ceases to astound me how completely apathetic we can be about our political system. It especially frustrates me, seeing as people in other countries are literally dying to gain a voice and a vote that we take for granted. Here we are, across the ocean, with the chance to have our voices heard and we don't really seem to care. Though, on the positive side, I feel like this is the first election I can remember where my age group seems so invested in getting the current party out of power.

I'm no expert on politics and I admit that I don't actually know that much about it, but the point is that I'm trying to learn. I believe in exercising my right and what I see as my duty to vote. I don't understand the arguments from people who talk about spoiling their ballots, or not voting by choice, or not caring about politics because it doesn't affect them. WHAT? First off, I don't see how spoiling a ballot makes any statement whatsoever, other than making oneself appear like a spoiled child. Not voting by choice also seems like a ridiculous statement to make. Our system isn't perfect by any means, but until we change it, it is what we have. Why not use it.

Getting my generation's attention

I've been hearing a lot of debate about how if you don't vote, you lose the right to complain. A friend brought up an interesting point, in that if you DO vote, you lose the right to complain because by voting, you've participated and contributed to the system, therefore you have to abide by the outcome. I like to take a third view on this. I think that it is our right and our duty to complain, as much as it is our right and our duty to vote. The fact that we live in a country where we can complain about the government is taken for granted. I say, COMPLAIN LOUDLY. Write letters to the MPs, get informed, figure out what your interests are and discuss politics. Loudly and proudly. Here, I would like to take the opportunity to quote V for Vendetta: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." Yeah, I went there! I'm not such a big fan of fear-mongering in general, but I believe in the government being accountable to its people... Like, apparently they are like, supposed to like, represent us. (Quoted from the same two girls who didn't want to hear about the elections anymore)

It was interesting being abroad and telling people about Canada's poor turnout in previous elections. From what I experienced recently, Canada still has an amazingly positive (and recently completely undeserved) reputation in the general international community. Until recently, I didn't quite understand the full extent of how Harper has set us back into the dark ages, in terms of women's rights, environmental issues, culture and science.

The website that has gotten the most buzz recently (http://shitharperdid.ca/) or the kid and elderly friendly one (rubbishharperdid.com) is like reading a Dr. Evil's To Do list. My favourites in no particular order include , but are not limited to
1) Silencing Environment Canada employees about climate change (I was directly affected by this at the time)
2) The whole "arresting over 1000 Canadians" at the recent G20 summit in Toronto
3) Cutting funding for women's advocacy groups by over 40%
4) Anything to do with first nations in Canada and water security (including not signing on to declaring clean water as a basic human right)
5) The whole "losing our seat at the UN security council" and "almost getting kicked out of the commonwealth" thing
Scary to think that all this happened in CANADA. The True North. The Great White North. Our home and native land. It's terrifying that we've become so apathetic that we haven't pulled an Egypt and kicked Harper out on his creationist behind. Is it that we didn't know about all these things that were happening? Is it that we actually don't really care? It's not as if this information is all recently coming to light. A lot of these events have been going on for years. Maybe it's some kind of cumulative effect. The straw that broke the camel's back. Or the log that broke the lumberjacks' back (if we are keeping it Canada appropriate).

I missed out on the beginning of the election buzz because I was in England at the time, listening to the British talking about similar problems with their government. I tried catching up on it as much as possible and read up on the debate highlights. The main comments I heard about the debate was that it was a total cage match. Now, to be perfectly honest, I don't have strong opinions on most of the things that they talked about during the debate. However, I was SHOCKED that not a word was spoken about environmental issues. I still have yet to hear any of the parties make any strong commitments towards any environmental issues. I don't get it... is this no longer a concern?

Did I leave for four months and suddenly our federal parties don't need to talk about their environmental platforms? It seems to me, that at this point in time, we can't have environmental issues not be part of any major political debate. Whether we only touch upon environmental issues through other major platforms, it is a subject that needs to be addressed by anyone who will be running a country.

It's been interesting to see how social media is affecting this election. Several interesting and useful websites have been floating around the Facebook world.

JUST VOTE! http://www.youtube.com/user/MercerReport#p/u/2/OYgwUQTSC3I

My aunt sent this one to me:
http://www.projectdemocracy.ca/
It shows you the breakdown of the different parties in your riding, based on recent polls (I don't know how they get that info though). It has been especially interesting because I am registered in Duceppe's riding. One week ago, it was a clear Bloc choice. Today, it seems as though the NDP has pulled ahead in the polls.

The Council of Canadians has some interesting things on their website too.
http://www.canadians.org/

Sidenote

I just wanted to mention something that I think is really interesting. Over the fall and winter, I started making an effort to cut out skin care products that have bad chemicals in them. There are more and more studies about the dangers of the various chemicals that we voluntarily expose ourselves to several times per day with every cosmetic product we use. As women, we use much more than men, and these chemicals negatively affect us at different times in our lives. This includes antiperspirant with aluminum (Interesting article at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/stealth-shopper-sneaks-toxic-lables-on-deodorant.php).

To be proactive, as a project for the holidays, I made friends little homemade skin care packages that included lotion bars and homemade lavender bath-salts.

During this whole DIY trip I got into, I was introduced to a recipe for deodorant. Now, I tend to be somewhat skeptical about these things, especially since I feel that I need something quite efficient. I must say, having finished the deodorant towards the end of my trip... it was amazing. I'm making more and I encourage everyone to try it. It is sooooo easy to do!

It is all natural and works better than anything I've ever used.

This is the recipe:
5 Tablespoons shea or cocoa butter or mixed (I just used cocoa butter)
3 Tablespoons baking soda
2 Tablespoons corn starch
* optional: 2 vitamin E oil gel caps (puncture and squeeze out the oil)
* optional: Essential Oil (ex. peppermint, lavender... basically whatever you want to smell like)
                                -I think it smells great without the essential oils... like chocolate!-

Basically, all you have to do is melt the butter and stir in the powders. The website I found this on (http://angrychicken.typepad.com/angry_chicken/2008/07/homemade-deodor.html) suggests pouring it into a little pot, but what I did was reused an old deodorant stick and poured the melted mix into an old Tom's of Maine container and put it in the fridge to harden for an hour.

It lasted me four months of use. And was amazingly effective.

The lotion bars were also really well received, and all of the research I've been doing on traditional medicines has shown me how incredible bee related products are. I used beeswax in these bars and someone I know who has terrible skin said that this bar cleared up his problems.

The recipe for the bars is also really simple, just use equal parts:
Beeswax
Cocoa butter
Sunflower oil (may substitute sweet almond, jojoba, etc.)
* optional: essential oil or fragrance oil
Basically, you melt the butter and the beeswax together in a double boiler, you add the oil, mix it and then you pour the mix into a mold and let it harden. Super simple.

p.s. I got my raw ingredients from here http://www.mountainroseherbs.com/

Here are some interesting sites that could be useful:
http://storyofstuff.org/cosmetics/
http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/

Dog Days Are Over

I've returned home to sweet Montreal and hit the ground running. But I get ahead of myself.

My last few days in England were magical. I had a lovely easyjet flight from Nice to London and made my way back to Oxford from Gatwick, which isn't the quickest route. Unfortunately, I hadn't planned ahead and was ill informed about buses. Instead of a direct bus from the airport to Oxford centre, I was sold a ticket from Gatwick to London to Oxford. Not quick. Not direct. But, at least I saw London!

It turned out to be well timed. The entire bus ride back, I was texting J to figure out who was going to get to Oxford first. She was taking the train from Brizzle and I was old-school bus-ing it. The race was on! I went black ops on the texting when she wrote that her train was pulling into the station. My bus ended up stopping at every possible stop to let people off. When the bus finally pulled up to Gloucester Green, I hopped off and made my way back through the familiar town that I had grown to love to the home that I had become attached to. Along Jericho St, within my first few minutes of being in Oxford, I ran into people that I knew. Love that town.

I of course stopped in at the grog shop to pick up some vino to celebrate my return and as I exited, I saw a tall, leggy platinum blonde girl walking along the other side of the road. I of course cat-called to her. It's times like that I wish I were able to whistle. It turns out that J and I had planned our arrival perfectly! After many hugs, we strolled along to our home away from home and walked in to the cozy Oxford nest. It was a really great night with lots of catching up and wine. Once we finally both admitted that we were knackered, we settled into the Canadian room and had a lovely sleep over.


The next day, we had a really slow start to the day and the finally got ourselves sorted out and headed to Portmeadow to enjoy the sun and warmth. We brought our poi and our books and had a perfect afternoon. The only thing that could have made it a little better would have been a little less goose and duck poo all over the grass. Damn foul fowl. Who do they think they are?


The rest of the day was more of the same. When we felt appropriately sunned, we headed back home and timed it with the arrival of A, N and R, just back from a friend's birthday party in London. After a brief family meeting, we decided that we were going to make a break for it and head to the country.

J and I were incredibly excited to get back to the Cotswolds. A quick 40 minute drive later, we pulled up to Calcot and settled in for a few days of lovely British countryside.

I was shocked by how much the garden had changed from when I was there a month earlier.

In just a few short weeks, there seemed to be an explosion of colours and shapes in her backyard. I could almost imagine the three fairy godmothers from Sleeping Beauty flitting around the garden and pointing their wands at the different flowers to add a splash of colour. Or... I could picture the cards from Alice in Wonderland propping up a ladder against different plants and painting the roses red. Except in this case, the roses were tulips and the red was more of a palette of colours.

Things had bloomed and grown and greened. It was GORGEOUS! That garden is A's pride and glory. I can't imagine how much work it must take to make it so beautiful. In one spot in the kitchen, you can stand and see through the four sections of the garden, all the way to the pasture in the background.

Her garden is an incredible work of art, like a living painting.

There was a great moment when we arrived. The drive to the cottage had involved a 30 minute talk about colours, during which A spent a long eloquent time telling us how much she loathed orange and yellow flowers.

This wasn't new to me. I have heard her say this before. She seems to take their colour as a personal offense. So, we get to the cottage and my first stop is the garden. I walk out and my eye is instantly drawn to a beautiful patch of orange and yellow tulips that are in direct view of the kitchen. Obviously J and I spent the next few days teasing A about this.

The garden really did blow me away.



We went on a long walk through the countryside. When we left, it was warm and sunny, by the time we returned, we had seen sun, rain, rainbows, hail and then more sun.

At the beginning of the walk, I saw an old tire swing by a pond and managed to bully a little kid off of it so that J and I could play on it! After my bullying instincts were satisfied, we continued the walk and passed by old mills, beautiful streams, lovely countryside...

LAMBS! It was lambing season. At one point, J just said "LAMBS" and started running toward a fence. Before I realized what she was talking about, I found myself running to see the absolute overwhelming cuteness of fluffy white lambs.

Newbie

Can you see the umbilical cord?

The best part is that we saw lambs that had JUST been born. One lamb and it's mom had been fenced off. Another mother and baby were in the corner of the field and as we walked up, we saw the lamb take its first few wobbly steps. The mom still had traces of the birthing sack (or whatever that bloody mess is called) on her backside and the baby still had a yellow sack covering its back. The lamb had an umbilical cord trailing from its tummy as it ran after its mom, trying to gain access to some yummy sheep's milk.

The rest of the walk was nice, except that at one point, we noticed that the cloud cover was getting quite dense. Sure enough, ten minutes later, it started raining. Then hailing. Being the troopers that we are, we kept walking. A kept telling us that there a pub just over the next hill. She was lying most of those times. By the time we got over the last hill, there was a pub. For some reason, on top of closing early, pubs also close in the afternoon. A noticed that I hadn't planned my wardrobe for rain and that my previously white shirt was no longer very opaque... Cunning woman that she is, she sent me ahead of the group to talk our way in to the pub for a drink. One round of drinks later, we had the very nice bartender call us a taxi to take us home to warm up in front of the Aga.

The next two days were spent playing Blokus, Charades and reading in the garden. The first of my tearful goodbyes happened at the train station when we dropped J off for her train back to Brizzle.

The night before my flight home, I said another tearful goodbye to A and R. (Something tells me that I'll be having a lot of these over the next two weeks.)

N drove me back to Oxford so that I could pack and get ready for my long flight. I didn't end up sleeping and got to the airport at 4:30am, 4 hours before my flight. It was wayyyy too early, but the advantage was that I was able to upgrade to first class... meaning that I got drunk the entire flight.

The stewardess came by my big comfy seat as everyone was boarding...
"Hello Miss, would you like orange juice or sparkling wine to start?"
My answer: "Yes!"

Needless to say, the 7 and a half hour flight passed by in a daze and I was the first one off, the first one through the doors where I ran to my mommy who was waiting patiently!
Home sweet home!