Slightly Homesick

Perhaps it's the early stages of homesickness. Perhaps it's the language difficulties. Whatever it is, a feeling of being uncomfortable and self-conscious has crept over me the past few days.

I was fully prepared for some homesickness to set in once the shock of travel had worn off, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon. In my experience it takes a couple of months to begin and then drags on for several more months. When I first arrived in South Korea in September 2003 I didn't get hit with the first pangs of homesickness until close to Christmas, and it didn't wear off until the following summer.

Of course, Korea is so much more foreign than Russia. The food is vastly different, whereas Russian food is basically the same as it is in the west. The people and the geography and the culture in Korea is very north-east Asian and unlike anything else in the world, whereas those things in Russia are somewhat similar to back home. That's not to say that Russian people and culture are the same, but there are some similarities.

I don't stand out too much in Russia; if I don't open my mouth and I keep a stern look on my face, I can blend in here without much trouble. In Korea, the genetics behind my racial make-up made me stand out no matter where I went! In Russia there is a strong love for individualism while in Korea there was a strong love for being a clone. Also, in Russia, there are lots of trees and parks and European architecture whereas Korea was a land encased in concrete and quickly constructed buildings that all looked alike.

Russia is different than the west in many ways as well. For starters there are the crowds of large macho men in leather jackets who hang out and get pissed in parks, on sidewalks, in dark alleyways, etc all throughout the night. The women here are incredibly beautiful and wear weird combinations of high-heeled boots over tight designer jeans and fur coats. Traffic is near-suicidal here in Russia and one must be vigilant when crossing the street. Russians don't make eye-contact on the streets, and stare off into space with scowls on their face as they walk, seemingly lost in deep thought about how crappy everything is. Russian beef sucks.

Strangely enough it is the partial lack of foreigness that has helped to prematurely bring on the first pangs of homesickness. Having experienced it before I know what to expect and how to deal, but it is not a comfortable process. Right now I'm going through a period of insecurity, a reaction I have to strong emotional shocks. This makes it more difficult for me to venture out on my own, bond closely with other people and also to completely relax and sleep well.

I recognize it as homesickness and not culture shock because for the past week or so I've been thinking of how relaxed and comfortable I would be were I back in Owen Sound or British Columbia, and I've been daydreaming of what my life will be like when I go home. That's a bad cycle to get into and thinking like that will only prolong homesickness.

To defeat homesickness and settle comfortably into the new circumstances one must grab the bull by the horns, so to speak. I must constantly force myself to take trips on my own and navigate the impossible communication problems I deal with on a day-to-day basis. I must force myself to relax when alone and in the company of new friends. I must devote time and energy to learning the language and, finally, I must dream of what my life will look like here in Russia in a month or two, rather than what life back home will look like in a year or two. That's the only way to break the homesick fever.

A lot of alcohol helps, too.

Owen Sound Video

I made this video in an attempt to capture the Summer of Beer (which was actually only 1 month but made up for the rest of the summer).



I have other videos on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/user/atethepaint

Summer of Beer: Tents

Ah, Owen Sound in the summer. Big sun, cool breezes off the bay, green trees and lots of beer. Lots. I mean A LOT of beer.

Every year in August Owen Sound puts on the Summerfolk festival. It's a mini-woodstock that's in it's 31st year. Folk bands play music while hippie chicks shop at homemade jewellery kiosks and I drink at the beer tent.

If you volunteer for set-up construction a week before the festival you get in free for the weekend, so for a fourth Summerfolk in my lifetime I helped set up the site, including lots of fencing and painting stages and kiosks and drinking beer.

During the festival my old friends (some of whom I haven't seen in years) and I hung out at the volunteer campgrounds or the beer tent and...drank beer. Thankfully, as opposed to a couple of years ago when I last went to Summerfolk, nobody brought their kids! So we drank more beer.

I think I spent about 20 minutes at the main stage and the rest of the weekend drinking beer. One night I smoked a little somethin-somethin that was rolled in tobacco leaves and was the size of a cuban cigar and ended up stumbling home at 3 am. My friend S***e, missing somewhere at Summerfolk, sent me a text that read "Help." I replied "With what?" to which he responded "I don't know where I am." Turns out he had wandered to the marina, puked and then passed out under a dry-docked boat.

The Summerfolk bar tent has its own stage where the livelier bands play. Don't get me wrong; the main stage had a few good bands (or so I heard) but there's no dancing or standing or smiling or looking at the stage with your head on an angle to the left. The bar stage had a few great bands, and one of them was a Celtic band from Nova Scotia that was the hit of the weekend.

There were about 8 guys in this band. In addition to the regular drums, bass and guitars they had a couple of fiddlers, a flute-like-thingy, and even a bag-piper! They were lively! I had wandered in to the beer tent when I heard them playing and stumbled upon some of my friends who were dancing so I joined them but, being able to barely stumble around let alone walk upright, I almost fell over a couple of times.

Man, this band was great! You really can't beat lively Celtic music.

Being too drunk does, on occasion, have its drawbacks. There was this beautiful, beautiful brunette in a light-blue dress and a cowboy hat that I started chatting up. We were hitting it off and she touched my arm a couple of times as we laughed and I was thinking "Sweet!" But then I had that prodigal 'one-beer-too-many', and in the way an accident occurs with no warning, I was suddenly too drunk to pass as a human.

As I was trying to look into those incredibly sexy big brown eyes of hers I found I couldn't focus, and her face looked like an out-of-focus picture, and I was aware of the rotation of the earth (except I wasn't keeping up).

I've made a fool of myself in this situation when I was younger and continued to pursue, but now I know that there's no point in reinforcing a defeat, so I stood up suddenly and said "Wow. I'm too loaded to pick you up. Have a great night!" and walked back to the campgrounds.

I never said I was smooth.

Summer of Beer: Beer

Owen Sound is a town of about 20,000 situated at the south-east base of the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario. Georgian Bay turns into an estuary and then a river at Owen Sound. Grains and minerals from the Canadian prairies and northern Ontario are shipped across Lake Superior and Lake Huron to Owen Sound, and from there they are transported to the U.S. and other markets.

But that's all the boring stuff.

I had one of the best summers in a long time last month. I stayed with my high-school friend Mr. GMC, who, since his divorce last year, has a 4-bedroom home. He rented one of the rooms out to me for the month.

In addition to hanging with Mr. GMC, I travelled to Hanover (1 hour south of Owen Sound) to visit my friend and Mr. GMC's younger sister Ms. Pickles and her husband Pie. They have a nice house with a big patio and a hot tub in their backyard. I was there at least once a week during the month. Ms. Pickles and Pie are fun, generous hosts and nobody was ever without a beer in their hand and food in the belly. They are vegetarians but they went out of their way to buy a couple of juicy steaks for me at a barbecue they were hosting.

I also went to Kitchener-Waterloo once a week to visit my friends Ms. Q and Mr. Dutch, who are always fun. Ms. Q and I always have a lot of laughs and, like her sister Ms. Pickles and brother Mr. GMC, is generous but in a dry, sarcastic way.

More in the next post.

The Summer Before I Went To Korea

The summer before I went to Korea I stayed with my ex at her parent's place in Mabou, Nova Scotia. Man, what a summer that was!

Mabou is a small town of about 500 people on the west side of Cape Breton Island and it is one of my favorite places on this planet. The food is good, the Celtic music is great and the little pub on the highway, The Red Shoe Tavern, is one of the best pubs I've ever been to (and I've been to a lot).

Mabou is home to the Rankin Family and a very lively Celtic scene. But that's not why I loved that summer so much.

The summer was great because I had so much fun! My ex and I went out of our way to be unemployed for two months, which turned out to be hard work as job opportunities kept coming our way and we had to make up excuses as to why we couldn't take them. That was pre-meditated, by the way. We had actually said to each other "Let's not work at all this summer" and laughed.

Instead of work we drank copious amounts of beer, camped on the beach, drove around Cape Breton, mowed her parent's lawn and helped her father paint a barn, went crab fishing on a boat and made many trips to Halifax. Friends came out to Nova Scotia from Ontario to visit us. We would zip around the coast on her father's 4-wheeler and hike over small mountains to pick berries on the other side. It was peaceful there, with no traffic. The trees and bushes and grass were bright green and the gravel roads would kick up little dust devils in the wind. The weather was sunny and breezy with the occasional spectacular Atlantic thunderstorm, which we would watch rolling in off the water from the large patio at the front of her parent's house.

We knew that we were going to Korea; we had signed the contracts and bought the tickets and were just waiting for the ball to get rolling.

It is similar to right now, I suppose, with the exception that I am single and in Ottawa.

But the similarities can't be overlooked. I'm off to Russia in September with the contract signed and I'm...well, okay the similarities end there. Nevertheless, six years ago I was waiting to go overseas and here I am doing it again.

Which is why I was thinking it would be such a shame if I didn't enjoy this summer.

This past weekend I went to Wiarton, on the Bruce Peninsula, to see Sam Roberts and The Tragically Hip play, and I had memories of Mabou. Very similar geography, with small towns, gravel roads, bright green all around, sunny and a cool breeze coming off Lake Huron and Georgian Bay.

Perhaps I'll go camp out in Owen Sound for the summer. I have friends there and life is cheaper and more relaxed. Of course that means ditching the lease on my apartment in Ottawa but what the hell, I'll be ditching it anyways!

Sounds good to me!