I tried to make a Bitmoji classroom this weekend.  I’ve been intrigued by the incredible creativity of many educators in response to the pandemic.  Not only did they step up to try and stay connected with students this past spring, but they did their best to keep learning germane and make their “suddenly virtual” classroom engaging for students, many of whom were themselves struggling with new and difficult realities at home.

I was particularly intrigued by the way in which collective knowledge building happened, as thousands of educators across the province, country and globe jumped online and collaborated with renewed vigour. Social media was abuzz with the sharing and answering of questions day and night, as teachers and other education professionals highlighted how they were solving some of the problems the pandemic had thrust upon them and the students they supported. 

Through this largely grass roots aspect of the pandemic response movement, I began to see more and more Bitmoji classrooms pop into my stream, and I knew that was something I’d jump right into, were I still a classroom teacher.  I easily dismissed the naysayers who soon took to twitter to denounce Bitmoji classrooms (their argument is that teachers should be spending more time on concrete lesson planning, and less time on making “pretty pictures” for their online learning space).

​I know ALL about classroom set up.  This is the season when, for nearly two decades, I annually spent way too much money at Staples, Scholar’s Choice and the Dollar Store, and way too many hours in a hot, sweaty classroom, making sense of the jumble of desks, chairs and other furniture left piled on one side of the room, putting up integer lines, reference posters and bulletin board borders, setting up a cozy and inviting reading corner (hello, IKEA pillows and stuffies!)... Hell, I even got written up for it once, when a full colour photo of me standing on a desk, painting one of my bulletin boards, was published in a teacher mag and a reader got upset about the health and safety ramifications of not using a stepladder. (As an aside, have y’all SEEN the rickety old stepladders at some of these schools?  Give me a good, solid table to stand on any day!!!)

But I digress.

The point is, I understand how for many teachers, a beautiful learning space has always been a critical first step before launching into serious “first week of school” and cross curricular planning.  I remember how the rubber plant really could not wait, and yes, I really did need to have all those colour coded bins before I could even think about planning for an implementing any strategies from the three guided and independent reading books I had read earlier in the summer!!!  Because before I can do my best thinking around culturally responsive pedagogy, integrated instruction, assessment and learning, I need to know that where I spend the vast majority of my day is a visually energizing and well organized space.

I imagine that a virtual teaching and learning environment is no different.  And so, when the Bitmoji classrooms hit the Twittersphere and Instafeed, I was right there, coveting people’s colourful, creative and engaging digital classrooms!

I decided that as an experiment, and in solidarity with the many teachers who were getting ready to “return to school” in a year where the meaning of that statement was not yet entirely clear in all jurisdictions, I would imagine what my Bitmoji classroom might look like, and then build a mock up.

When I left the classroom to work at the ministry of education a few years ago, I had just been getting started with things like virtual classrooms (to supplement my in-person space and support myself and any students with frequent absences).  Collaborative online docs and digital assessment tracking were new to me, and I was frequently a resistant adopter. I was in some ways ahead of my time with the cross-board and international partnerships I forged with other educators while colleagues still dusted off the same binder of laminated lesson plans from a decade ago, but compared to the many who had already been experimenting with this stuff for years, I was (and still am) in many ways a Luddite.

So I had to do a little research.

I found lots of amazing websites explaining what to do and how to do it... if you know what some of the basic vocabulary means, and if you already have an existing Google classroom (due to my non-classroom-teacher status, I don’t).

A few that bedazzled me ones include:

• Hello Teacher Lady’s blog post on how to put together your Bitmoji classroom
• Glitter Meets Glue’s post with 15 amazing ideas
• Erin Integration’s amazing blog with this post on Bitmoji Classroom Scenes

Alas, I soon found myself knee deep in options and customizations, and completely overloaded with choices and challenges.

After several hours of failed attempts, I am left with no personalized Bitmoji classroom, and heaps more respect for the many educators across Ontario who are feeling the uncertainty and trepidation of heading back to school this September, and who are nevertheless somehow finding within themselves the strength and courage to prepare a warm and inviting welcome for the students they will teach this year.  We are not out of the woods yet with this pandemic and its aftermath, and these teachers on the frontlines are the ones we need to learn from and listen to.

I often reminisce about my classroom days... The neat thing about public education is that there are a tonne of jobs you can do over the span of a career, but there is no role quite so satisfying (yes, also exhausting) as that of classroom teacher. The engagement factor with students, the memories you build together as a special learning community as you co-develop the road map of your group’s learning journey together... even if you teach the same grade or subject two years in a row, every year is different as you refine your craft and respond to the unique learning opportunities of that year’s current events.

With the current health pandemic and resulting school closures, I have frequently fantasized about some of the lessons I would do with my Grade 6s... or 7s... or Grade 3/4 class... or Grade 8s.

Regardless of what I were teaching, I think this time would be one of tremendous bonding for me and my students, were I still a classroom teacher.

Here are three imaginary lessons of the many I have cooked up in my mind over the past 7 weeks. If you’re in a classroom, feel free to try them out, and let me know if I’ve still got it, or if three and a half years have made me lose touch!

1. Media Literacy Lesson Using Memes (Grades 6 and up)

If you and your students are anything like me, you’ve probably spent a good deal of time over the past two months surfing social media, and having a little chuckle of the ubiquitous COVID-related memes making the rounds. Maybe you’ve also noticed some emerging themes.

Why not use this time to draw your students’ attention to how we, as a society, use humour to cope with anxiety-inducing situations? A media literacy lesson on the surface, one could easily incorporate writing, math, oral language, social studies, art, and much more!

Here are some ideas:

• Have students collect and share memes virtually. Use a class Padlet, slide deck, google doc, whatever, and invite students to contribute 2-3 memes each that they have noticed online.
  
• Ask students to choose 10-12 memes from the class collection and sort them into 2-3 groups. What themes emerge? (Some I see most often are hair-related, food or body-image related, toilet-paper and travel)
  
• Compare the themes students notice (could lead a synchronous virtual discussion using a video conferencing platform, or post the question as a discussion thread in your online class platform and invite students to contribute over the course of a few days)
• As a class, sort ALL the memes into the categories students came up with (maybe the teacher demos this via video?)
• Have students graph the the categories in two ways (bar graph and circle graph, for example) - which themes are most common?
• Some thinking questions for students to reflect on in writing, or in a conversation with their peers online or with family at home: Why do you thinks these themes emerge most often? What do these themes tell us about what we value as a society? If we were to invite a class in a different grade or another school to collect 100 memes, do you think they would find similar themes in the memes they collect? Why or why not?
• Using an online meme generator, students could make their own memes about this time. (Brainstorm ideas for what makes a “good” meme... also a great idea to talk about copyright.) Have students collectively post their memes on a class padlet or closed Instagram account - a good laugh for the whole class, and they can share them with their families, too.

2. Mini Math Lesson (Grade 3 and up)

I noticed the following signs recently while walking along the path outside my apartment building, and thought, “if I were a classroom teacher right now, I would SOOOOOO share this with the students and get them thinking about “COVID Math” they notice while out and about for a walk in the community, or online.

According to this sign, how many feet long is a single goose? If you were going to measure the length of a grocery store line with 14 people in geese, how many geese long would that line be? (Assuming everyone is practising proper physical distancing.) In Florida, they are saying the appropriate distance is one alligator’s length. Why do you think they use alligator and Toronto uses geese? What do you think they might use (and how many of them) to visualize distance in New Zealand? Nigeria? Brazil? Why? What can you find in your home that you could use one of to measure the appropriate distance you should keep from others during this time? Two of? 5? 10?

And so on....

3. Jane’s Walk

Speaking of walks, this past weekend cities around the world celebrated Jane Jacobs’ vision of walkable urban living. Usually this consists of engaging in neighbourhood walks with a guide and a group, and discussing things like accessibility, architecture, nature and so on.

This year, Jane’s Walk organizers have had to get creative with how they encourage people to celebrate.

Here are some things I might encourage my students to do, were I still in a classroom:

• Go for a neighbourhood walk with your family. What are some interesting buildings you notice? (Pay attention to rooflines, doorways, signs, building materials and colours, etc.)
  
• Design a neighbourhood walk for a classmate to complete. Choose a theme (nature/trees, architecture, or something else you think your peer would like). Take 3-5 photos and post them, along with a description of the route, for your friend to complete.
• Imagine a family member were coming from out of town. What would you want to show them? Choose 3-5 highlights, and plan an imaginary tour, stopping at each highlight to tell a little bit about the community history of that stop, or why it’s significant to you.
• How accessible is your neighbourhood for different “walkers”? Imagine a family with a stroller, an elderly neighbour or family member, someone in a wheelchair, etc.
• What highlights would you choose to include on a neighbourhood walk that is 1 km long? 3 km? 5 km? Map your route using google maps, and post it for classmates to complete (as a class, you could notice whether people chose similar highlights for their walks of different lengths)

Teacher Reader Homework:

Choose ONE of the suggestion learning activities above. What curricular areas does it connect to? Develop a learning goal, and work with students to co-construct success criteria to describe successful achievement of that goal. The criteria can be shared with families, too, so that everyone can take turns providing descriptive feedback to students as they complete the tasks.

Use this time of school closure, focus on assessment for learning rather than evaluation.

I seldom write about work since leaving the classroom in 2016.

This is mostly because my experiences with policy documents that took 24 tedious versions before final approval are far less exciting (to me and my readers, I assume) than the awesome math lesson I planned, or the kid who said something thought-provoking in class, the hilarious note I got from a parent, or the inspired curriculum map a colleague and I made, that expertly connected 17 gazillion subject areas into one cohesive piece.

But also I don‘t really write about work anymore because I now work as a public servant, and some of my work is of a sensitive nature, and I have a professional obligation to keep my mouth shut. (Like actually. When you go to work for the public service, you have to sign an oath.)

But I had an experience the other day that reminded me of my former ignorant innocence, and how little many people actually understand about what we who are paid to serve society’s collective interests actually DO!


And so, I thought I would take a risk and attempt to write a politically neutral explanatory blog post. I know that as a classroom teacher, I would have appreciated such a thing, especially given the stress and anxiety of the current circumstances.


So, here’s hoping I do it justice.


What We Do

If you’re an educator in the field right now, you might be wondering what the heck government workers at the ministry of education have been doing for the past month. While you’re scrambling to reconnect with your students and families during this highly unusual time, what are we public servants doing to support you and those families, the public?

First of all, it‘s important to note that unlike school boards, the ministry of education does not take “march break”. So when the announcement came about a month ago that school would not resume for the first few weeks after March Break, we at the ministry knew that work was about to kick into high gear.


Systems and Structures

The public service is comprised largely of policy folks; our ministry is somewhat of an anomaly because we bring in “outsiders” (educators from the field), either through secondments or in full time positions, to inform the policy work in education. While this is generally a good thing (because it means that people who have actually worked in classrooms, schools and school boards can help to shape the policies that guides, governs and funds the work that happens in those classrooms, schools and boards), it also means that a great deal of time is spent on conversations seeking to clarify and understand.

More specifically, we former educators in the public service spend a great many hours explaining to decision makers (who most often are NOT former educators) the potential implications of certain decisions on actual children and families, based on our particular past experiences in the field.

And then we spend at least as many hours realising that our own experience does not necessarily represent all the students across Ontario‘s 72 school boards, and that learning about our colleagues’ past experiences (which differ widely depending on their former school boards) need to be taken into consideration when making decisions that will affect the whole province.

We also spend a great many hours learning about the significance and structure of the democratic process of decision making within the public service, which is supposed to be politically neutral (regardless of whether we personally chose the government elected by the people, we are called to serve the public interest by providing our best advice — grounded in research and based on our previous field experience — to that government, who then makes decisions which we are called to initiate the execution of, through the school boards, who then presumably operationalize it all through their staff at various levels, ultimately the classroom teacher).


Checks and Balances

The last point is particularly salient, because it requires a decision making process that is multi-layered. As an Education Officer, I am in many ways at the bottom of a process that involves as many as 5 or 6 levels of approvals, often across multiple branches (or departments), depending on what’s at stake. This means that a document I draft will often have 20 or more sets of eyes on it before it ever makes it up the food chain to someone with the authority to say „yes, let‘s do this“ or „no, we‘re going to move in a different direction“.

My policy colleagues, or OPS “lifers” as I lovingly refer to them, have varying degrees of skill and patience when it comes to schooling us former educators in the ins and out of said approvals process, with all its decision notes, information notes, to-through memos and other policy “stuff” that comprise the operational tools of a democratic process with built-in checks and balances for its public service.

For those of us who are former classroom teachers or principals, and who are — to be quite frank — used to closing our classroom or office doors and doing whatever the hell we want, this multi-layered approvals process seems horrifically inefficient, and it takes us a long time to realize that it is this very process that upholds the democracy within which we seek to ensure equity for all.

In other words, it‘s painful, but necessary.

I’ll be honest, for an action-oriented practitioner like me, during the current global health pandemic, this decision making process has been even more frustrating. At the same time, I have now been at this public service stuff long enough (over three years!) that I have finally learned the value of checks and balances to ensure informed decision making, and realize that, ironically, it is precisely during times like this that we need all these checks and balances, so that elected officials don‘t make highly erratic and fear-based decisions.


Democracy During COVID

For me, this past month in the public service has meant reviewing policies like Growing Success 2010 (our provincial assessment policy) and brainstorming with other former educators in the Ministry for hours and hours, to anticipate which pieces of the assessment puzzle might be affected by the current remote context, and beginning as quickly as possible to develop potential contingency plans that would preserve the integrity of the school year as best as possible while not penalizing students from Kindergarten to Grade 12, in consideration of all the various possible realities those students are currently living in, for circumstances over which they have little or no control.

While my former colleagues in school boards all had a week off for March break, and then — in many cases — two additional weeks without classroom duties, to obsess over the COVID crisis and worry about what comes next, we public servants at the Ministry of Education were busily convincing senior decision makers of the merits of one direction over another when it came to things like report cards, expected hours of engagement with students online or through other methods of communication once “school” started up again, how best to support students with special education needs, what to do about number of hours required for teacher candidates to graduate, considerations for mandatory graduation requirements like 40 hours community service, Ontario’s Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT), etc.... and a plethora of other puzzle pieces that continue to emerge almost as quickly as we can dream them up ourselves. (And all of this on top of our regular work, only some of which can realistically be set aside during this current situation.)

For a system that serves about two million students, it’s no small task.

I myself have also been involved in helping to coordinate (and in some cases deliver) some of the initial virtual support for our province’s 160 000 + teachers.

With the desire to engage partner input from Ontario’s 72 school boards and 11 school authorities and their federation representatives, the task of preparing and delivering these initial supports (webinars, teleconferences, website with resource links, etc.) within the context of a democratic public service is almost unfathomable.

Things that typically require 18 months or more to operationalize have been set in motion within a three-week turnaround.

In order to accomplish such an impossible timeline, many of us have been working 12-14 hour days and many weekends for the past month.

I remember seeing an artistic tattoo, “beautiful disaster”, in stylized lettering, on someone’s arm a few years ago. If you looked at it one way, it seemed to read “beautiful”, and from the other perspective, it seemed to say “disaster”. I was mesmerized. How could something be both disastrous and beautiful?

And yet, here we are, in the midst of a global beautiful disaster. Around the world, people are both hoarding toilet paper and volunteering to shop for the elderly and otherwise vulnerable. People are both “stuck” at home under government- or self-imposed isolation, and taking glorious “social distancing” walks in large open areas, breathing in earth’s abundance like never before. Hospitals are inundated and overwhelmed, and some of the most smog-impacted places on earth are healing and clearing up due to the reduced CO2 emissions resulting from social distancing and the (temporary?) collapse of the airline industry.

If these are not examples of “beautiful disaster”, then I don’t know what is!

As an educator long interested in the possibilities of the internet and digital tools for collaborative, global learning, I personally am intrigued to see how those who have been saying, “we can’t” and “not yet” are now jumping to “we must immediately”!

While nervous for students and their anxious parents who are waiting to see what all of this means for “public education”, I’ve also been extraordinarily inspired by the many corporations and individual educators who are developing/co-developing and/or sharing for free some of the most creative resources I have seen in a long time.

The global implications of this beautiful disaster are profound, in education as anywhere else. Earlier this week I attended a webinar put on by an Ed Tech company, on the topic of “supporting remote learning”. The panel consisted of a principal, a Kindergarten teacher and a middle school tech teacher. In the chat pod, i counted over 150 participants, from at least 11 different countries. I found out about the session from an educator I follow on social media. I’ve never met her in person.

The big themes in that session, shared by the people on the ground, were threefold: First, a reminder that teaching is a highly personal profession. For all the systemic complaints some people may express, the truth is that Teachers usually have a lot of control over what they, personally, do with students and how they do it. Second, teaching well is about relationships. Relationship with students and their families, and relationships with one’s colleagues. If and as teaching moves to online, teachers will have to leverage new and existing tools to (re)establish and maintain strong relationships with the little (and big, in secondary) friends who often have spent more time with their teachers than their parents! Finally, differentiation. “Live where they are” said one of the educators on the panel, referring to the fact that — since the middle schoolers she taught “hung out” on Instagram — that was where she was posting her lessons. This women knew her clientele!

In our excitement to contribute, there will be a lot of “stuff” that continues to be created and shared. It will be a challenge for the average person, also dealing with the personal fallout of this pandemic (possible job losses, small abode with kids and other at home, lack of resources due to panic-buying, etc.) to critically select what’s worth pursuing, and what can be relegated to background “noise”. Now, more than ever, it will be important to consider the criteria by which we choose the things we expose our children to and share with our students. The choices we make in the coming days, weeks and months will set a precedent for whatever comes next. There is no “going back to normal”.

Like never before, we have an opportunity to work together to create something new, something more beautiful than disastrous.

Here’s hoping we get it right!

A friend sent some photos tonight, from the bridge that ties PEI to the rest of Canada. The Mikmaq there are standing with their Indigenous sisters and brothers in BC, as are so many indigenous groups and their Canadian allies, across Turtle island these days.

It’s hard to know where to begin this blog post.  On the one hand, what can I possibly contribute to this story?  On the other hand, it’s important to me that others do not mistake my silence as playing accomplice to a system I have benefitted from in many ways, despite the parts of my identity that are subject to oppression within it.  Some people are saying „it’s not our business“, and yet, as a white, settler Canadian, I believe what’s happening right now is very much our business, and we have a unique opportunity to decide which side of history we will stand on. I feel empathy for those who are severely inconvenienced by the trains being canceled, but rage for white, able-bodied, cis-gender male politicians who demand that it is the protesters who should „check their privilege“, while they themselves continue to support a system that does not provide adequate living conditions for citizens from certain cultural groups, and are selective about which laws to enforce and who to shield from both laws and crimes.

And so, as a Canadian by birth, I want to blog, and I hope you will join me in my discomfort as I bumble my way through what can only be described as a difficult state of affairs in our country right now.

Over the past several weeks, I have been immersing myself in (un)learning.

Now that protests have shut down the railroads across Canada, mainstream media is finally reporting on a story that I‘d become aware of some months ago already, largely because of a promise I’d made to myself to diversify who I follow on social media.  As a result of this promise, I began to follow a white „settler“ who speaks out fiercely and courageously in favour of indigenous folks.  Through her Instagram acct, I happened upon more and more accts that were telling the story of what was unfolding in BC, on land that — as it turns out — is unceded and in fact by Canadian Law itself was never traded to Canada, and therefore technically still under Indigenous law: 22 000 square km of Wet‘suwet‘en territory is not covered by any treaty with the Canadian State, and therefore not really subject to colonial rule (or, as Trudeau likes to call it, rule of law).

Well, depending on who you ask.

To be honest, it‘s a big, complicated mess, one made more complicated by the fact that many Canadians my age are wrestling with the realization that we were taught a history growing up that not only included huge gaps, but also potentially downright untruths.  Incorrect facts.  Corporate lies designed to keep up the myth of the colonialist state of Canada, along with its system of oppression for anyone who might interfere with the machine‘s path forward. So for some of us, it‘s a long, messy road to understanding the various salient details and diverse perspectives that contribute to (or in some cases actively hide) „The Truth“!

As those of us who avail ourselves of the opportunity to unlearn those lies re-educate ourselves through the images and text freely available through an increasing variety of social media and other outlets, we are shocked and appalled at what is unfolding here in our diverse and „inclusive“ country.

We shouldn‘t be shocked, however.  Oppression, as I am learning, is not new in Canada.

While I have known bits and pieces of our „not like in the US“ sham of a history, as 2020 unfolds, I am learning more.  And the details are disturbing.

White people and other „settler“ Canadians: If you haven‘t already done so, I urge you to pick up a copy of Desmond Cole‘s „The Skin We’re In“.  It‘s a must read for any Canadian.  Affirming for Black and Indigenous Canadians, and an important wake up call for those of us who are not.

The challenge is what to do once you know.  Because see, if you do nothing, then you‘re implicated. 

So I‘ve been reaching out to the few indigenous folks I know.  (The photos above are from a passage about people of colour generally, and black people in particular.  But Cole draws lots of connections to the plight of Indigenous people in Canada, and spends a full chapter specifically on that topic.)

Dinner last night with a student pilot friend who is studying at a school located on reserve here in Ontario yielded a reminder that even today, post-secondary institutions of knowledge - if they are geared toward First Nations - may not enjoy the clean water that most of us take for granted when we turn on the tap at home.  Yes, in this day and age in a „first world country“, her school has to provide bottled drinking water, and the poor woman has to shower in toxic stew while she studies here for four years!!!

My general message of support to a friend on PEI, my beloved east coast island, yielded in return a text with photos of the blockade she‘s supporting at the bridge. Confederation Bridge.  Named for something that most Canadians would think of as a unifying symbol.  And yet, we spend millions on bridges and pipelines while indigenous women are disproportionally sexually assaulted, kidnapped and murdered, while many of Canada‘s indigenous population continue to be relegated to insufficient, out of the way reserves with no access to clean drinking water, with crumbling or no schools past elementary, while indigenous people continue to be disproportionately represented in data on unemployment, illiteracy and incarceration. How can we then consider ourselves a „unified“ nation?!

We righteously shake our fists at the injustices we read about around the world, and write cheques to support poor children across the globe, while turning a blind eye to the systemic injustice and careful brainwashing and bias-building our own tax dollars support right here at home!

While the mainstream media is beginning to report on the uprising that has been building now for some months, they are careful to include nice, clean photos of protests, rather than the blood on the snow and heavily armed RCMP with guns in peaceful protester‘s faces that are captured in the photos from people actually on the front lines.

While articles like this one offer a good primer for those still new to the topic, they - like my history classes in elementary school - include lots of gaps! I therefore urge my fellow settler Canadians to check out websites like  Unist‘ot‘en  and It’s Going Down, and follow accts like @gidimten_checkpoint, @decolonizemyself and @settle_in_settlers in Instagram to get a more fulsome picture of what’s actually happening.

I‘ve recently started reposting accts mentioned above to my IG stories, and I worry a little that my friends, family and colleagues might be a little annoyed by the abundance of activism and protest posts. Or perhaps at best, just swipe through.  But I am pleasantly surprised by the refreshing and authentic messages I‘ve been receiving over the past few days, like the one below:

The amount of resistance that even the most activist social justice minded folks among us feel is not to be underestimated. Apart from the usual general apathy and unwillingness to give up our unearned privilege and inconvenience ourselves (and yes, I include myself in this!), there is the more altruistic grief, in a sense, of possibly losing the concept of Canada as this inclusive, diversity minded, hopeful social experiment, for those of us who consider ourselves pretty patriotic (again, me too - I sometimes cry when I hear a particularly moving rendition of our national anthem!)

When matriarchs burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation to be dead earlier this week, a piece of me died inside.  While many settler Canadians had not yet heard about it (it happened a day or two before the mainstream media picked up this story), those of us who had been following from afar already knew that we were entering a new reality, one which could not be navigated by simply rattling off the obligatory land recognition at the beginning of big, important meetings.

There is no going back.

Reconciliation as an official political policy may be dead, but I am hopeful that in this new age of instantaneous information sharing informed by an openness of some Canadians to a new (old!) way of being together, we can forge a new path forward.

Capital R Reconciliation may be dead, but reconciliation as a concept isn‘t. It‘s going to take a shit tonne of work and patience on all sides, especially as we bring along new supporters and gently but firmly leave behind those who refuse to be re-educated. But I am cautiously optimistic that if the Indigenous who continue to protect the important things on this land will also continue to teach those of us who want to be allies, and if we are willing to do the hard work, then there CAN be a beautiful new way ahead, together.

Who‘s in?

I must be getting old. Either that, or I’m suffering from low grade depression or something. When my partner invited me to join her on a layover in New York for New Year’s Eve 2019, all I could think about was how awesome it would be to instead get home from work, change into my jammies and lounge around on the couch.

If Seinfeld had the summer of George, I’m having the NYE of Vera... and so far, it’s awesome!

After a horrible week spent mostly in bed with fever and a resultant loss of appetite on account of having an awful cold/sinus infection, I found my tastebuds slowly regaining their passion this afternoon. Consequently, I elected to order in through Uber Eats, and tried out a new Indian restaurant.

With my partner away at work and my kids away at a party, I had a whole quiet evening to myself. And after getting ripped off with Christmas, being sick and all, I was looking forward to some quality downtime with myself!

Unlike George’s summer, this evening did not disappoint: In addition to devouring my tasty Indian dinner, I reviewed a little math, studied some flight stuff, and started a new music app to learn to play blues chords on the piano.

Afterwards, I spend some time prepping a handout for one of my Airbnb Experiences, “Learn German and Eat Potato Salad”, for which I have a booking tomorrow.

In an effort to add value but reduce paper, I’ve been creating and providing electronic “handouts” for some of my experiences, which I use during the experience itself. Last week I made a plane spotting “bingo card” for my “Discover the Secret World of Aviation” experience, and tonight I made a visual language reference for the “Kartoffelsalat” which we’ll be making and eating tomorrow.

Since it’s new year’s, I’m all alone, and I don’t really drink, I decided to splurge on a bubble tea, delivered directly to my door through Uber Eats. What with the delivery charge, small order surcharge and tip, it was ridiculously expensive, but kind of fun in a naughty sort of way - not the type of thing I would normally do! But, I haven’t had a bubble tea in SO. LONG. And besides, I would have spent way more had I actually hopped on the plane with my partner to New York. So I thought, hey, why not?!

The poor delivery guy got lost of course, as do all folks who trust in Google to get them to our secret, off the beaten path hideout, with with a few custom directions from the convenience of my couch, I soon had my bubble tea in hand.

If I were really on my own, I’d probably wrap up the NYE of Vera shortly, walk the dog, and then head to bed. But being a responsible parent of independent, young teenagers who are attending their first “real” party (their words, not mine), I feel somewhat compelled to stay up and ensure they actually arrive home at the appointed hour. (My colleagues with older kids warned of this stage years ago, when Alex and Simon were babies screaming all the time and wouldn’t sleep, and I was complaining of being tired - they wisely shared that the tired part wouldn’t end when the kids got older, since I would then/now be awake worrying about whether they were okay, and whether they’d get home safely. I guess we’ve finally entered that stage!)

Also I want to talk to my honey when the clock strikes 12 and she calls me in a drunken stupor from her dinner out with the crew at the hotel restaurant in Newark.

So it’s off to the next item on agenda of the Boring Old Person’s Stay-at-Home Guide to NYE: A little Netflix and dog snuggling... still in my jammies!

Good night, y’all, and in case I fall asleep on the couch before midnight, happy new year 2020!

Our night in Hong Kong was never intended to be the focus of our 10-day vacation... Headed for Thailand to do some snorkelling/diving and visit an elephant sanctuary, we were looking for a quick place on route to stop over for one or two nights, mainly to recover from the foreseeably long flights through multiple time zones before settling in at our intended destination for a week.

I knew little to nothing about Hong Kong, and was admittedly ill-prepared for this leg of the adventure. Other than exchanging some Canadian dollars for local currency and looking up a bus route from the airport to our Airbnb before we left Toronto, I’m ashamed to say I knew virtually nothing about this part of the world.

I have been (mostly) pleasantly and embarrassingly surprised throughout our little stopover.

The city offers a fascinating contemporary urban architecture against a backdrop of millennia-old geography, infused with a curious combination of ancient and modern cultural quirks. The view from Victoria Peak at night is unbeatable, and the wide variety of food, entertainment and available tourist accommodations is laudable.

But what really interests me is the “real“ life in a city, not what the tourists come to see, but what happens “behind the scenes”, as an almost invisible yet ubiquitous part of the fabric of a place.

As it turns out, I had the opportunity to catch a small glimpse of this on our second morning here.

Still horrifically jetlagged after our arrival from North America the previous morning, I awoke multiple times throughout the night, and eager not to wake my sleeping travel companions, I quietly dressed myself and snuck out of the apartment around 5 AM.

The streets near our Airbnb at the intersection of Nathan and Jordan Roads downtown were quiet, but nowhere near deserted.

In the distance, the golden arches beckoned, as they do now in virtually every city of every country around the world.

Eager for some free Wi-Fi and curious how their breakfast items compare to those in Canada, I wandered inside.

It’s quiet, but already filling up with early morning meal seekers. Several folks sit sipping their coffees and nibbling on globally recognizable fast food breakfast items at a large central table, their faces buried in their mobile devices.

But a second, shocking “sub-population” makes up the periphery of the restaurant: Every bench of every table booth is filled with what appears to be sleeping street people!

A quick Internet search reveals that the 25 or so homeless folks I count at this McDonald’s are — sadly — not an anomaly. With increasing rent prices, the increase in homelessness has also soared, and a study published in March 2018 indicates that the number of homeless spending the night in 24 hour McDonald’s restaurants has doubled in the past three years!

I’m reminded of how fortunate I am to be a visitor here, and how lucky, irrespective of where “home“ is, to have found a path in life that has afforded me a steady income with regular access to food and a decent apartment, as well as the ability to travel. I’m also intrigued by the reaction of the food-purchasing locals. No one seems to bat an eyelash at their less fortunate neighbours, many of whom are still fast asleep on their benches when I leave an hour later, heads resting on backpacks presumably containing all their worldly possessions. (I consider that in Toronto, where both the climate and the mindsets towards such public integrations seem to be much colder, such sleepers would surely have been evicted from their temporary posts rather than left to find a few hours of relatively safe and peaceful escape from the elements.)

Hong Kong is similar to and yet significantly different from how I imagined it.

As I stumble out from my early morning of blogging at the familiar restaurant-come-homeless shelter and back into the street to wander “home” with the sun finally rising in the distance, my mind turns to our afternoon at Kowloon Park yesterday.

Filled with greenery, Asian “kitsch” and some impressive accessibility features for the visually impaired, this urban park tells the city’s story from a different angle.

And as I return to the older building where we’re staying for the night, I realize again how lucky I am, this time with timing: About 20 police officers are milling about with face masks and hard helmets, commuting with one another by radio. I can’t understand what they’re saying of course, but as more of them pull on their masks, I infer they’re preparing for yet another protest, and I’m grateful to have arrived safely back at my Airbnb before that erupted!

How glad I am that we had the opportunity to spend a day in this bustling metropolis. Like all travel, this experience is one that expands the mind and provides opportunity for reflection, both on life‘s big problems, and ones personal contributions to either the problem or possible solutions.