Another cultural observation

I'm pretty sure Canadians (or at least British Columbians) care a lot more about Halloween in general than do most Americans with whom I am familiar. I'm used to elementary school-aged kids dressing up and going trick-or-treating or going to a harvest festival, and I'm used to carving jack-o-lanterns and all that. But up here, it seems like a whole lot more: store clerks were almost all dressed up, and people in our neighborhood went all-out decorating their houses for Halloween - some more tackily than others! And all the radio announcers (except maybe on the Christian station) were wishing their listeners happy Halloween, and playing appropriate music - such as the theme from "Ghostbusters", and Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Back in Washington, radio stations might mention the holiday once or twice on the actual day (not several days leading up to it), and might play a few Halloween-ish songs.

Also, on the news on Halloween night, the news anchors mentioned that police would be out in force to make sure that fireworks/firecrackers (?!) didn't get out of hand, and that there had already been an incident. I mean, I guess sometimes teenagers go overboard on the whole "trick" side of "trick-or-treat" back home - and probably moreso in other cities than my home city - but not so much that it's generally mentioned on the news as a state-wide thing.

And of course, since Canadians have already had their Thanksgiving, they start thinking about Christmas early on in November to an even greater extent than most Americans, I think. I know that stores start putting out their Christmas decorations quite early in the States, too, but since there is still a holiday for us between Halloween and Christmas, we might still be slightly more delayed on switching to the Christmas season than our neighbors to the north.

Mmmm...

In today's elicitation session, our LRP brought us a special Filipino dessert, made with sticky rice mixed with coconut milk and condensed milk, then brown sugar, then coconut strings and more condensed milk on top, before it's baked in the oven. It was delicious, though very rich. Then we recorded her telling us how to make a dish called chicken adobo, in both Ilocano and English (our task was to record a 2 to 3 minute text). That sounds delicious, as well. I'm looking forward to a future group cultural elicitation session where we'll all make Filipino food together.

And as a last food-related note, Mackenzie and I are going to try to make a pumpkin pie to take to our friend's house on Friday for her Thanksgiving celebration. It's the first time we've made one by ourselves, so we'll see how it works. If it ends up looking not fit to take to a friend's house, maybe we'll bring it home. ;)

A Cross-Cultural Experience of Sorts

Today's chapel speaker was a woman who helped found Healing the Culture. She spoke extremely well and extremely passionately, but I'll get back to more on that in a bit. When Mackenzie and I heard last week that the speaker was going to be someone from a pro-life organization, we experienced some culture shock. See, even though we've been raised in a family and church environment that are definitely pro-life, we've also only gone to public schools. And especially at UW, the state school in the middle of ultra-liberal Seattle, that meant constant exposure to pro-choice sentiment... so to have a pro-life speaker at school - even though it's a Christian school - took us a while to get used to. Also, unfortunately, most of our prior exposure to pro-life activists/activism has come in the form of people ranting about it or holding signs with pictures of dead babies, which doesn't inspire confidence in a movement dedicated to "promote a culture of life," as the Healing the Culture website says.

However, as I mentioned, Camille Pauley - who is actually based in Seattle! - spoke very well, simply, and with a great deal of passion (but not ranting, by any stretch). I found myself agreeing with just about everything she said - except a very small section where her Catholic beliefs diverge from my Protestant beliefs. All in all, it was a very valuable thing to hear. I wish she'd had more time to speak, and I think this organization is definitely going about it in the right way. As a plus, when I looked at the website, none of their endorsements are from ultra-right wing fundamentalists (or at least not the one in particular I was fearing).

On another topic, some more cultural observations about Canada:
1) Canadians often celebrate their Thanksgiving earlier in the weekend, and then leave the actual Monday that is a holiday as a time to relax. Interesting!
2) I am still not used to this construction, which not all Canadians use but is obviously acceptable grammar here: "When you're done the workbook, we'll move on to... etc." It's just so strange to me that they don't think it's necessary to have a "with" in there! I think this also possibly occurs in some areas of the States, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, things are still going well. It's getting to the point in the semester that all of my classmates and I do really want a break, though - good thing it's almost (Canadian) Thanksgiving!