HALLOWEEN AND MY 'CURLING' EXPERIENCE

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HALLOWEEN

Halloween is not something that is usually embraced, celebrated, or one of the major cultural experiences you find back in Australia. The only knock on the door I have had back at Christies in the last five years was from my neighbours little fella from down the road just last year. I felt extremely bad because I had nothing, not even a health bar, to give him. I nearly gave him a book just to ease my guilt. Yeah we have the television shows come on, maybe the music played on the radio but not many people would dress up and get into the spirit of it.



I was looking forward to the experience of celebrating it in a place where Halloween is one of the major events of the year, particularly in some Canadian's eyes. Some say its the best festival day of the year. It was actually pretty cool to see houses, with their entire front yard decked out in a variety of 'spooky' decorations. From air inflatable ghosts and black cats, to pumpkins with faces cut out in all kinds of designs, to string used as spider webs. Even the school office was completely decorated with Halloween items. On the radio, nearly every second advertisement mentioned some kind of Halloween party and nearly every kid and adult goes out in search for the costume for the day.



The costumes though had me very intrigued as I expected people to dress up as characters that suited the tradition theme of Halloween. Instead, it appeared more of an excuse to dress up as anything you like: Your deepest desires, movie character or super hero you always wanted to be, and I heard, that particularly with the young females of around university age (and scarily enough senior high age) that dressing up as a 'slutty' nurse was a popular costume. Thankfully we had none of those when Fairview School had Halloween day on the Thursday before Halloween. I felt like I needed to get into the spirit of things and assumed that the best costume had to be something in the spooky or traditional Halloween style. I could dress up in my super hero costume any night!!!! Aaron, a mate of mine from Adelaide who i met on a Contiki tour and I went shopping in Chinook Shopping Centre to find the costumes we desired. I had got a tip that 'Spirit of Halloween' sold cheap costumes and that was the place to go! I thought $20 to $30 would fit me out quite nicely, only to find $20 to $30 in some cases wouldn't even pay for a third of the costume! We debated from Assassin to Robin Hood (Which Arron decided on) but in the end I just felt a connection with Frankenstein. The costume is definitely making the trip back to Adelaide since I paid enough for it and will be worn on Halloween night to get its worth of durability.



The costume seemed to go down quite well with the students, with some having no idea who was under that green mask. Considering our facial features are quite similar I am not sure how they didn't pick it up straight away. The day was a great success with kids coming in all kinds of creative designs. One person made a Vending machine out of a box and when you opened up the shoot to get your candy, it said 'trick' where the bar would be. Another got into a costume where they looked like the were riding an inflatable 'Mother Goose'. We had a sumo wrestler (who looked quite funny because her head was so small but the inflatable costume was so large) super heros, witches, Harry Potter, super heroes, all kinds of weird and wonderful designs. They had a costume prize for the best dressed in each year and one of the highlights was that the leadership students in year 9 had made a haunted house on the main drama stage in the gym. When I was begged to go in with a couple of students I was really impressed with not only the performance of the actors who actually played the scary characters quite well, but the great use of props, artistic design, decoration and lighting to create a pretty cool and scary haunted house! They had made 'Chucky' looking characters sitting on the floor, or tied up in chairs, laughing hysterically, a girl in a cage who pretend to be dead, then scream at a moment you least expect. Students where hiding around corners, and there was even a section where you had to maneuver passed what looked like dead bodies tied up in a bag and hanging from the ceiling. There was a misty look through the use of a smoke machine, and the make up and costumes of the characters was first class. My only really scary experience was trying to go down a set of stairs where there was practically no light (as they used the old change rooms and costume area was built under the stage like a tradition performance space would be designed). Wearing big puffy shoulders made it also difficult to squeeze through some sections of the haunted house creation. I also seemed to trip over a door frame each time (3 in total) I walked into the area which was more annoying and a demonstration of my coordination than anything else.



The Saturday night came and I had been invited to go to a Halloween Party at one of the local pubs nearby. I also went and cheered on the Stampeders against the Rough Riders at McMahon Stadium as well. Even there, people were dressed in their costumes! One guy I saw on the C-Train was dressed up as a cow with a strategic placed milking tit (one lifted around the male special area) being presented for squeezing!!! Others were a bit more tasteful and creative but it gave the game a really cool, friendly and festive vibe! Not to mention the Rough Riders are the craziest and most loyal fans in the CFL! I had been told that they wear watermellons on their heads and other kinds of outifts which would make most normal people feel that they were disturbed in some way, but they love their Grid Iron (can't call it footy as been playing AFL for far to long). Stampeders did win 42-19 which was alot more high scoring than the first game I had seen on Labor Day long week end.



I then rushed home to ensure I was ready for any trick or treaters who came knocking on my door as well as the Halloween Party. Earlier that day I had decided to go candy shopping. Now as a teacher of young kids and buying candy for kids who knock on my door in many cases would also be considered a very inappropriate behaviour and it did feel kind of weird doing this. After some credit card difficulties, no coding for weighing my varied canduy selections, and decided just to get a large fun pack I wasted $12 on candy but was sure I may get a few little rascals coming around! Now my cousin was outraged that he only had 5 kids knock on his door back in Aus! Well I would have hate to think what he would say about me only getting 3 in a place where every kid seems to go out and knock on doors in their costumes preparing their tricks but happy to collect their treats. I had a little girl accompanied by her family which could have even been her first trick or treat experience. Although I couldn't speak three year old, I knew she was very happy to see the candy go in the bucket and I wasn't sure how much I should be giving her just in case she was diabetic, ADHD or reacts very hyperactive when had too much sugar! I then had a five year old (also accompanied by family which I was very pleased to see being the teacher I am) and also gave her some candy. My final door knocker was a boy who was about 12! He was not dressed in a costume and was very snappy with his muffled attempted to say 'Trick or Treat?" In fact he came across more scary than most as I didn't know if he was the kind of kid to pull a knife on you or attack you if you had no candy or if his 'tough guy' persona was to intimidate you into giving out candy. Any way I gave him his quota of Candy and within a blink of an eye he was gone. It was like he was in a race to see how many doors he could knock on before a given time limit. My costume, without the mask also had people thinking I was Jekyll and Hyde, but I proudly explained I would be later in the evening becoming Frankenstein.



Only problem about being Frankenstein at a party is two things: The mask is so hot, and how do you drink your beverages when you don't have air holes other than through the nose? I must say though the mask did seem to attract a bit of female attention until I did take the mask off then found that it went back to the normal no existent interest that seems to occur wherever I go in the world!!! The party was good fun as people were dressed up in many different forms such as Star Wars Characters (I should have really dressed up as Chewy or a Werewolf and probably could have pulled that off with my 'birthday suit' on but thought I may not be accepted into the party if I did that), pirates, and characters from a number of different shows I had either heard of or not seen in my life. The other thing with the mask was trying to dance with it on! The positive was that no one could see who it was pulling out some rather disastrous moves (although at times Franky did get his groove on depending on the song) but within a song, perspiration, a lack of air and a thirst for water was soon required. The music wasn't really your tradition Halloween classics either which was disappointing but the atmosphere was a 'feel good' relaxed and enjoyable vibe.



I must say I enjoyed seeing the build up and experiencing a tradition Halloween over in Canada. It was good fun but can see how people can't not get into it. However, I will say that the number of Aussie posts of friends dressing up their kids and going 'Trick or Treating' was astounding. So many Aussies were out in force with their kids nicely dressed up. It was interesting to see that they had a beautiful, sunny 25 degree day compared to the darkness and freezing temperatures the kids in Calgary had to battle. Some where still out until well past 8:30pm which had me battling the dilemma of teacher and safety verses fun and being kids.



REMEMBRANCE DAY

It is very interesting how big Remembrance Day is over in Alberta. Firstly, they have a public holiday and like our Anzac Day service they have a service at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th Month, where I drove past thousands of people in attendance. They even had 3200 temporary crosses placed near Princes Island on Memorial Drive to represent the men and woman killed during the wars of the past. A number of people flocked to these places of remembrance to pay their respects and to say thank you for their sacrifices that allowed us to have the life we have now. Although with the attacks of Paris now very heavily in the news where 129 people had been killed you feel a bit angered that there is still those who continue to feel the need to resolve or express their opinions with acts of violence.



What I was most impressed with was the way Fairview did their Remembrance Day assembly. They had one for the Grade 5/6's and a later one to begin at 11am for the Grade 7-9's. The moment all the students were in the room, there was a chilling, spin-tingling silence. Every student and teacher was given a poppy to wear and some had been wearing them during Remembrance Week that ran from November 5th to 11th over here. They had a guest speaker who spoke about their involvement with armed forces and spoke about stories of the past. Flanders Fields poems were read in French and in English, all the students in cadets were in their uniform and placed a reef in front of a temporary cross, a student played the last post (although some notes seemed a bit difficult)that was explained by the purpose and reasoning behind it and even had a student played 'Amazing Grace' on the bag pipes. What really impressed me was the dance/drama performance of war where dances dressed in black representing death circled fighting troops and took soldiers who lost their lives in battle by dragging them off stage or casting as spell over them so they were in a deep sleep. They even showed the traumatic experience of the knock on the door, and paying their last respects which was accompanied with very applicable music. As a teacher of Drama I was very impressed with the use of stage space, levels, lighting, movement, and standard of performance.



I'll be honest I have never seen it done better and was completely student run which impressed me even more! Having said that, I saw that my school back home actually did the service outside infront of the flag poles and grassed areas where they decorated the lawn with poppies to resemble Flanders Field. I even heard that all the students wore poppies there as well which is the first time that has ever occurred so to the creative team back home I say 'well done'. One tradition that they do not have over in Canada is the wearing of the herb rosemary which can be seen on Anzac day or Remembrance Day back home. I had an interesting chat with the Principal about how it would sometimes be worn where he further added that herbs have been known to be linked to significant events or celebrations.

CURLING

I had been wanting to check this off the list while I was over here and finally I got the chance to do it. I was luck that one of the members of staff is a curler (a pretty good one at that as well) and she was able to book a rink for a group of us to have a go. It felt like I had walked into a Lawn Bowls club back home, only that the rink was indoor and there was ice instead of grass. The average age of the people in the club would have been 68 or there abouts and there was so much history of when Curling first started to the brooms they used (including the old straw broom you may see in someones backyard) to the legends and major players of the club. I was amazed how easy the older generation made the game look when we walked out on to the ice. The game itself, not only an Olympic Sport but is very strategic as I have mentioned in an earlier blog as I had gone to the annual national championships earlier in the year.

To give you a basic crash course, you must push off a launch pad with as much power and balance as you can, guiding a rock in your preferred hand, while a broom that is face up is tucked under the other arm. You must release the rock before the 'hog' line and adjust the weight you put on the rock in an attempt to place it where the skip at the other end has directed you where to put it. Interestingly enough, the skip will point firstly where they want you to put it the point to where they want you to release it. You get the curl on the rock by adjusting the handle and pointing it the opposite direction ( I think) to which you want it to curl. The fewer rotations the rock has the more it curls! Where the brooming comes in is that prior to a game, the rink is sprayed with water droplets on the ice which instantly freeze making it a rougher and slower surface. To ensure a smoother and gain more distance, the players with the broom will furiously, or gently depending on the command of their skip, sweep the ice infront of the rock top ensure it reaches its target, whether it be to knock and opponents rock out the way, block and protect their own or place on the Button, 4-foot (red), 8-foot(white) or 12-foot circle (blue). The more rocks in play, the more the strategy comes in, just like lawn bowls at home. That's how I understood it to be anyway, but may not be a hundred percent correct.



After a safety instruction and a plug for the club and a quick note about how much club fees would be if we were interested in playing by one of the club patrons, we were told to put a slider (a slipper contraption that went on our takeoff/gliding foot to help us slide further on the ice, since none of us had the customary shoes warn by regular players) on and have a go and working on the rock release. Some of us made the mistake of stepping onto the ice first with our slider foot, one we definitely did not make again. It is amazing the importance of balance, coordination and power from the take off foot that is required. Unless we used a support glide none of us made it only just made it past the playing circle, which is a good 10 feet away from the Hog line. The more we practiced the better we got. We all struggled with the weight and regularly what seemed like a simple push was either too hard or barely made it past the line to get into play. All of us seemed to pick up the knack of curling the rock but not with much control. The sweeping, although we knew what to do, I think we over did because we just wanted to sweep the ice. We learned about the strategy of where to sweep, being careful not to hit the rock otherwise or becomes void or there was a term that Tanilla said beginning with 'B' that escapes my mind and doesn't count, as well as how the opposition can sweep its path once it pasts the 'T' section in the centre of the Button and playing circles to try and get it out of play. When we concentrated we did these quite well I thought, but we were either brushing extremely hard to get it into play or not at all as it was to hard. Trying to get the foot movement coordinated and work as a pair was also not as easy as it was made to look by the veterans on the other rinks but we had fun pretending we knew what we were doing all the same.



Although I spent most of my time on the ice, and wore clothes that looked like they had shrunk in the dryer, it was a good fun day and one I can see being quite addictive once you got the hang of it.

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