Chile, Day 14: Bonus day in Chile

Surprise, surprise. We did not fly out of Santiago as planned tonight at 7 pm. We boarded Air Canada flight 93 as expected and sat at the loading bay for a half hour or so. Restlessly. Finally the captain announced that the flight had been cancelled because of the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador. Apparently the volcano erupted and spewed an ash cloud that obscured vision at the precise altitude at which our plane was supposed to fly. So they tried for a while to route us around the ash cloud but couldn't (for some reason), so they cancelled the flight. I won't bore you with details of the extreme confusion which followed. If you have never been in this sort of situation before I will warn you: there are an awful lot of lineups and frayed tempers involved. But Air Canada put us all up in hotels for the night, complete with taxi transportation to & from, and a [late] supper and a breakfast tomorrow as well. So I am staying at the Radisson which is definitely not down to my usual standards. We are supposed to fly out tomorrow morning at 10 am. We'll see. Meanwhile, I get an extra night in Chile, compliments of my good friends at Air Canada. Esta bien.

Chile, Day 13: Copiapo and Caldera

I did not get around to writing as much about yesterday as I had hoped; my last working day was a busy one. Once again we had seminar in the morning with the teacher-curriculum-developers, and it really was a good session. We finally all agreed on a combination, rationale, and sequencing of the program modules. We firmed up the career profile a bit. We decided on next steps. There were some excellent ideas put forward by the group. It was great to be able to leave with a sense of the project moving forward.

I spent the afternoon consolidating my papers and printing out a final copy of everything. Then I locked my office one last time, turned in the key, and said goodbye to the staff at CFT. Later that night, the project people took me out for dinner to a wonderful restaurant. We drank pisco sours and ate fresh cebiche and some kinds of fish I've never tried before. No room for dessert.

And today they took me to Caldera. Caldera is a town on the coast, about an hour's drive to the west. The desert landscape on the way to Caldera is hard to describe because there's absolutely nothing like it in Canada to use for comparison. Parts of it are absolutely barren. Apparently scientists have done a lot of studies on the Atacama desert and found, in some parts, no life AT ALL. These areas are being used to test the equipment that is looking for life on Mars. All the way between Copiapo and Caldera there are hills but at times it's hard to tell whether you're looking at a rocky hill or just a big sand dune. There is a strange sort of mist that blurs the boundaries between hills and sky. When the desert stops and the Pacific Ocean begins, you can't believe your eyes: it looks more like a mirage than a body of water.

Did I mention before that the very first railroad in Chile (maybe in South America?) ran between Copiapo and Caldera? Well, it did, and today there was some sort of celebration in Caldera to commemorate that event. People -- men, women, children -- were dressed up in period costumes from the 1850's. We walked around town, browsed the market stalls (mostly selling jewelry made from local minerals and semi-precious stones), and lingered over a great seafood lunch. We visited the church which was designed by M. Eiffel -- the very same guy who designed the Eiffel tower. We strolled on the wharf and looked at the fishing boats and pelicans. Then we drove around the corner to Bahia Inglesa (English Bay), which is a lovely little beach resort community. It is hard to imagine a beach resort in the Atacama desert but Bahia Inglesa really is very beautiful and I would happily come back.

So now I'm back at the hotel, packing things up and checking my email one last time. Tomorrow (assuming all goes according to plan) I'll fly to Santiago, spend the day there, and then head for Toronto. I really am sorry to be leaving Chile (...but I am looking forward to being able to buy a cup of coffee and be understood). Hasta luego!

Chile, Day 12: Tremblor

So I was having my breakfast this morning, in the hotel's 'complimentary breakfast' area and all around people were stirring their tea, popping bread into the toasters, the low-key conversation of people waking up, when all of a sudden there was a rumble and the room started to shake. Everybody froze in place. The rumbling increased for a few seconds, then subsided. After 5 or 6 seconds it stopped; everybody exchanged nervous little smiles, and the morning continued as it had been.

The earth shakes in Chile a lot. I had wondered about that, but when I had asked Franco last week if Chile got a lot of earthquakes, he said, "No, not really..." But the fact is that Chile gets so much of this kind of thing that they don't even bother to call it an 'earthquake' (terremoto) until it hits at least 5 on the Richter scale. Anything less than that is just a 'tremor' (tremblor).

We were talking about it on the ride into work this morning. One of the women said, "You could tell there was going to be a tremor. We had that big rain, remember? Then 2 warm days. The tremors always follow that pattern." There is a lot of culture around earthquakes, both folklore and fact. Dogs will bark furiously just before an earthquake (maybe one more reason why the dogs are so tolerated). Copiapo suffered a huge earthquake back in the 1920's (?) which virtually flattened the town. The Matta house was one of the few larger homes that was left standing; that's why it's used as the regional museum now. In my hotel information brochure, the very first note under 'in case of emergency' is all about earthquakes. It is translated (badly) into English: 'locate you in a safe place, for example under a solid furniture.'

But the rest of the morning was tremor-free and now I am back at the hotel for lunch.

Oops, look at the time! I've got to get back to work. More later.

Chile, Day 11: Work and Politics

I'm afraid you'll find today's post pretty dull unless you are tuned in to the drama and intrigue of curriculum development work. There was a bit of confusion about my ride to work this morning so I ended up walking the 3 km to the Institute, which was fine with me since it was an absolutely beautiful and WARM morning. Halfway along, I had to remove my outer jacket and stuff it into my briefcase.

I received some answers to my queries about the basis for the program from the folks at Niagara; answers which really helped to clarify the project. Using that information, I spent a good part of the afternoon updating the process document which will form part of my final report. This document will (I hope) lay out the steps that need to be followed in the curriculum development process; will identify which steps have been completed, which ones remain, and the timelines that should frame that completion. Then, on my way out the door at 5:15, I was stopped by one of the teachers who had spent his afternoon re-writing the entire semester plan for the new program. It was difficult for me to follow his diagram exactly (since he doesn't speak English) but it looks like he has moved some things around in order to create a clear exit option at the end of the first year. The lack of a vocational exit point at the end of the first year was, I think, a weakness in the original plan so his schedule makes good sense. I just don't know if Niagara is going to go for it at this stage of the game.

I had an interesting talk about politics earlier in the day, with one of the staff who had been to Canada to attend a conference. She had appreciated the luxuriant lifestyle and order of Canada; I told her how I was enjoying the sensibly scaled-down lifestyle and vibrancy of Chile. She didn't see Chile that way. She felt that in the 15 years or so since Chile had returned to democracy, things had gotten out of hand. When they lived under dictatorship, things were kept in tight check but since the dictatorship had ended there had been a rebound effect. Delinquency, drugs... lots of negative aspects had increased. Strange to say, but under the dictatorship some things were better. I can recall hearing similar opinions from people living in post-Communist East Germany and Russia. It seems that democracy is a system that takes some getting used to.

While I was waiting for my ride this morning, I was doing a little web-surfing, trying to find out what factors have helped to shape Chile into the unique country that it is. Part of the reason is sheer geography. Really, when you think of it... Chile is bounded on the north by the driest desert in the world, on the west by the largest ocean in the world, on the east by [almost] the highest mountain range in the world, and on the south by Antartica. It might as well be an island.

Chile, Day 10: la Plaza

Today was a beautiful but hard-working day. We spent most of the morning in seminar, again discussing the steps required to get this new tourism program off the ground. We talked about the preliminary program planning stages (which, everybody agrees, have been completed) and the secondary stage of curriculum development (we're in the middle of that right now). But we never did get to discussing the third stage -- program coordination and quality control -- because we got side-tracked discussing some basic issues inherent in development of the curriculum. Curriculum development (the way I see it, at least) moves forward best when you can answer two essential questions: 1) what will the students at the end of the program know and be able to do? and 2) who are the students who will enter the program at the beginning? Once you understand those two issues, well... curriculum forms the meat in the middle. I think we have a pretty good handle on who the intake students are but there is still some confusion about what the graduates will be prepared to do. In my experience, this is not uncommon in a program which is brand-new for an area. There is a degree of risk and faith involved. I have been communicating with the folks at Niagara to see if we can clarify some of the issues: then I believe we can move forward more easily.

It was so beautiful and warm today that for an hour or so I actually removed my (outer) jacket for a while during the seminar. You can't believe what it's like here on a fine day. I'm not sure I have ever experienced air more clear. The contrast between the barren hills surrounding the town and the blue sky beyond is almost surreal.

I didn't get back to the hotel until almost 6:30 and by then it was almost dark and I was bushed. So I did what anyone would be tempted to do in such a condition: I cruised the Plaza. Really, I'm not sure how a country like Canada can call itself 'developed' without having incorporated the plaza concept. After visiting Ecuador I figured that maybe the reason we didn't have town plazas in Canada was related somehow to our cold weather (blame it on that, sure) but after experiencing Chile I know that's no excuse. Copiapó's Plaza is wonderful and takes up an entire city block. It is surrounded and crisscrossed by broad paved walkways. I say 'paved' but they are actually covered in some kind of local marble tile which is so smooth that you can easily slide on it if you want to. In between the walkways are grassy areas, benches, trees, and street lights. If you were to close your eyes the first thing that would occur to you is the smell: a combination of cotton-candy, popcorn, roasted walnuts, and deep-fried doughnuts. You would also notice the music: there's some incredible Andean music from one corner, a Chilean opera singer who is selling CDs from another corner, and a sort of 'country' style performer, singing live from another corner. The church, of course, faces the plaza and church bells ring every quarter-hour. There are children riding bikes, elderly people feeding pigeons, dogs meeting and greeting each other, and teenagers competing on skateboards. There's usually a young athletic-looking guy who does balancing tricks with a soccer ball, and a small crowd watching him. There are always a few tables with men playing chess. Down one entire side of the Plaza there is a special kind of market called a 'feria': a series of booths with some fairly high-class handicrafts for sale. The prices are mostly fixed and it seems that bargaining is not so encouraged.

So that was my day. Now I'm back in my hotel room and the heater is STILL working (3 days in a row!) Life is good.

Chile, Day 9: una turista en Copiapó

Today I got picked up for work at the usual time but I could tell right away that we were taking an unusual route to the Institute. It wasn't until the truck stopped that I understood we were going to the museum, not to the Institute. This trip had been promised last week but it just hadn't worked out.

The Regional Museum for Atacama is housed in the original home of la Familia Matta. The Matta brothers were major players in Copiapó 150 or so years ago and the house furnishings reflect their status. But the museum also houses artifacts from far distant times. Chile has been populated for thousands of years and over that period there have been six different major conquests. You wouldn't think that an area with barely 12 mm of rain would be that attractive to foreigners but of course it's all about gold. The Incas, for example, left a well-stamped trail through the desert (still visible today) and lots of artifacts. The Spanish conquistadors swooped down along the same route, for the same purpose, from Peru. Apparently the first railroad in South America ran from Copiapó to Caldera (about 50 km westward on the coast). People have been marching through Copiapó for a very long time.

It's interesting for me to see how Chile has developed a distinct cultural identity out of such a diverse ethnic background. The museum guide, when describing the Spanish invasion, summarized the contribution of the Spaniards: language and religion. "And that's why we speak Spanish", he said. He did not say, "And that's why we are Spanish." There have been six such waves of invaders but all have been absorbed into the population in one way or another and it seems that the resultant people have only become more Chilean.

After the museum trip we went for lunch and I finally got to eat an empanada marisco. It's a deep-fried pastry filled with ... seafood, I guess. I did recognize what could have been a shrimp but the rest was pretty mysterious. Never mind, it tasted very good and I really didn't need to know.

At work in the afternoon, we had an interesting discussion about the vocational focus for the graduates of the tourism program. Will they (or should they be) generalist tourism workers prepared for a variety of entry-level positions? Or could they contribute in a new sort of role, a kind of 'tourism facilitator'? Such a person could provide a first line of contact for visitors to an area and offer essential information about what tourism products and opportunities are available and how they can be accessed. Based on my recent experience in Copiapó, a person like this would indeed be providing an essential service. Such discussions are one of the reasons I love curriculum work. You are not assisting just to maintain the status quo, you have the opportunity to help evolve it. It's also one of the reasons why curriculum development works so much better when local people -- rather than just foreign 'experts' -- are in control of the development process.

Chile, Day 8: Lluvia en Copiapo

While hanging around the hotel door, waiting for my ride to work this morning, I noticed that the sidewalk outside was wet. This, in itself, is not such a big deal because business people wash down the sidewalks in front of their places every morning (what with the dogs and all). But then I noticed that the street was wet too. And that water was still dripping from the hotel roof. It took a while for me to realize that it had actually RAINED. Apparently this monumental event happened between 5:30 and 7:30 this morning and somehow I slept right through it.

At the college, people all over were dealing with the rainfall. All of the furniture in the main office had been moved to one side in order for the staff to deal with a big leak in the roof. The carpeting was soaked. In my little office the water was also dripping steadily into one corner. I went to talk to a colleague down the hall who was checking the news on the internet. "Siete millimetres!" He was shaking his head in disbelief. For a place that barely gets 12 mm of rainfall in a year, 7 mm is a lot of precipitation for one day. (For comparison: any place with less than 250 mm per year is classified as a desert. Cranbrook gets almost 400 mm.) "When was the last time this happened?" I asked. He thought for a few moments but couldn't remember, exactly; maybe about 10 years ago.

I recalled a conversation I'd had with Clayton, the fellow with whom I'd had meetings in Santiago last week. He was telling me that when rain falls in the Atacama, it's a problem for people. Some communities, especially, are simply not set up for rain. There is no drainage. House builders do not worry about making the roofs watertight. Many cars don't have functioning windshield wipers. Why bother? The problem is that when it DOES rain, it virtually immobilizes the community. Something like when it snows in Victoria I suppose.

But although it's a problem for people, it's apparently not a problem for all living things. My colleague was telling me that after a big rain like this morning's, the desert becomes alive with flowers. It's a rare event and it takes some time to materialize, but it's astoundingly beautiful. It turns the area into a world-class destination.

Later, I went for a walk around town to have a look. Sure enough, I noticed that none of the buildings have eaves and the puddles don't really drain from the streets. The electricity was out in the shopping mall across the street and there was no running water for a while. But the air was clean and moist and invigorating. I stopped for some coffee and had a piece of 'tres leches', a kind of special cake made with three different kinds of milk. It was very moist -- almost a pudding -- and very delicious.

Chile, Days 6 & 7: a quiet weekend

If you're looking for something interesting you can skip this post: I spent a very quiet and uneventful weekend. According to my itinerary, I was supposed to go on some sort of sightseeing trip yesterday but it didn't happen. So for the past two days I have been walking around Copiapo, practicing my Spanish a bit more, and doing a little curriculum work.

One of my goals while walking around was to spend a little money. Have I mentioned anything about the Chilean money system? It is really quite sensible from a Canadian's point of view. It is not based on the illogical sterling system, as it is in Kenya or Britain, nor is it almost mathematically impossible to convert as it is with the Swedish crowns. There are almost exactly (at the time of this writing) 500 Chilean pesos to the Canadian dollar so monetary calculations are quite simple. To make it even easier, the Chileans write large numbers in the European way (using a period where we would use a comma) so to translate the cost of something into Canadian funds you only have to double it. So, for example, a price of 1.998 Chilean pesos rounds very quickly to about $4 CAN.

Note that I said only that Chilean prices were easy to get a handle on. They are not so easy to pay. You have to imagine the scenario: you are in a supermarket which is very busy, you are in a cashier's lineup which is moving quickly. Before you know it, your purchases have been totalled and the cashier is saying something to you. You guess that she's telling you the total price but of course you can't understand a word she is saying because Chilean Spanish is incomprehensible. It's not just because of my ignorance of the language but also because of the unique qualities of the Chilean accent: "fast and fluid" is what I believe the travel guides will tell you. So you sneak a peek at the cash register and fumble for your money. You pull out a wad of bills and a handful of coins, all unfamiliar, the cashier is waiting and the lineup behind you is restless. So you select a bill which is sure to more than cover the cost. She stares at your handful of coins and says something else and you guess that she's asking something like: "don't you have 287 pesos to round it up?" But she could be saying 28 or even 913 for all you know. So you mumble (as always) "Lo siento; no hablo espanol" and she goodnaturedly hands you the change. ANOTHER handful of change.

So I really needed to spend some change and lighten my purse. I bought an electrical plug converter for 628 pesos and an ice cream cone for 725 pesos and I gave some pesos to some very worthy-looking beggars. The ice cream, by the way, was delicious. It's hard to imagine but Chileans seem to love ice cream even more than we do. I got a big scoop of blackberry flavour and I donated the remains of the cone to (you guessed it) a dog.

Chile, Day 5: Copiapo supermercado

Today was a cold day. I don't mean just 'cool'. Sunrise started out sunny but within moments, it seemed, a thick fog settled in and held the cold in close. In our seminar room this morning we had the laptop and projector running and people huddled around the equipment trying to warm their hands over the ventilation fans. It was SO cold, in fact, that Cindy left the room and came back with a heater. A space heater! I wasn't sure they existed in Copiapo.

We spent the work day moving the curriculum forward. Some aspects of curriculum development are fairly mechanical and no doubt the same everywhere: how many instructional hours do you have to work with? How many courses? How many hours per course? Maximum, minimum? How should the courses be weighted, time-wise? Is 32 hours of instruction per week enough? Too much? We spent some quality time on scheduling and hardly needed the translator.

My time after work is developing a bit of a routine. I return to the hotel and immediately turn the wall heater up full blast. Did I mention that I discovered a wall heater in my room? It is very thin and almost flush with the wall and painted the same colour so I didn't notice it at first. It doesn't produce much heat but no doubt it helps. Then I go out for a walk around the plaza, around the streets, check out the dogs and browse the shops. Then I go to the supermarket and get a bite to eat.

A lot of people (is it mainly women?) wonder what the supermarkets are like in foreign places. If you were somehow led, blindfolded, and released into a Copiapo supermarket, it might take you a few moments to notice that you were not in Canada. But very soon it would occur to you that this store is busy. It is like a Canadian supermarket on the Saturday before Christmas, except these supermarkets are this crowded ALL THE TIME. And you might soon notice that the booze is mixed right in with the groceries. There are a few aisles of alcoholic beverages but you also find stray bottles of whiskey or wine or whatever discarded among the breakfast cereals or bananas or baby foods. You might wonder why the fresh vegetables are so skimpy in both variety and quantity and don't look so healthy. You might really start to suspect something when you saw the display of fresh fat aloe vera leaves, packaged in onion-bags with directions on how to cook them for food or medicinal purposes. Yogurt is a big thing here and the yogurt aisle is huge. Many flavours are familiar but some are not: there's blackberry (blackberry, it seems, is a very popular flavour for a lot of things), chocolate & orange, walnut, and aloe vera flavours too. I honestly had no idea that aloe vera even had a flavour. And finally you might notice that the food is generally packaged less heavily and in smaller quantities than at home. The cost of food is about half (or less) of what a similar item would cost at home, except for the wine which is cheaper still: it's easy to find something for not much more than $1 per liter. Good stuff, too.

The sun goes down around 6 and it gets dark quite quickly. I return to the hotel room (which, by this time, has warmed up a bit), unpack my food purchases and surf for something in English on the TV. After struggling with Spanish all day I'm grateful to rest my ears.

Chile, Day 4: Los perros de Copiapo

It was another working day and not much to tell, really. In the morning I did my presentation for the teacher-students who are developing the new tourism program for Vallenar. I started out by giving them a bit of background about our region, our institution, our programs. My thought was that such an introduction would help to give our particular curriculum perspective some context. In retrospect, it may or may not have been a good idea. I was explaining at one point why our region is so popular: it's the mountains, the forests, the lakes, the great skiing, and the wildlife. They asked about the wildlife. I described the deer, the elk, the moose, mountain goats, bear... There was a brief pause and then someone spoke out "...and in Copiapo we have dogs."

It really struck me funny. This area has so much going for it, touristically, but of course it can be hard to fully appreciate the attraction that your home town has for others. Copiapo has the innate attraction of having the driest desert on earth, right on its doorstep. And being in the centre of (what did I hear?) 40% of the world's copper deposits. And having Pacific Coast beaches only a half-hour or so away. And then there's the pleasure of just walking among the crowds on the streets. The lack of tourism here is, in itself, an attraction.

But although the student this morning meant to make a joke, he's not completely wrong. The dogs truly are amazing. There are so many! Of such variety, too. They wander around the plaza, licking the crumbs of street food off the tiles. They sleep in every little patch of warm sunlight. They group themselves in little packs of threes and fours and chomp at their fleas together. They cross with everybody else at the street corners. They meet each other, sniff, and drift on again all up and down the sidewalks. At night I am occassionally awakened by dogfights but they don't last long. Perhaps they could draw a certain kind of tourist? I'm sure if Rhia were here she would be keen to photograph them.

Everybody, it seems, complains (or at least jokes) about the dogs but it seems a lukewarm contempt. After all, the dogs probably do help to keep the area free of food-litter and they don't really beg for anything. In fact, I have seen people toss bits of sandwich to the dogs while sitting on plaza benches or in the sidewalk cafes. Today I watched a man whose job it is to supervise a parking lot stop to pat and talk to a stray dog. And not all dogs are strays: there are many little shops selling not only dog food but also dog toys and accessories. In the plaza market there is a stall selling nothing but 'ropas por las mascotas', mostly fancy knitted garments for dogs.

It's been a slow evening tonight. I picked up some food from the supermarket -- can't seem to find a good restaurant close by and the menus are a bit intimidating for someone with my ignorance of the language. Later I watched 'Amelie' all in French but with Spanish sub-titles so I was able to be totally confused in TWO languages at once. Fortunately, I know the story so it doesn't matter.

Chile, Day 3: Copiapo holiday

Today was a holiday. This meant two things for me. First, it was a holiday. I got to sleep in and in fact I forced myself to stay in bed as long as I could and as a result, I think I am pretty much caught up from my travelling fatigue. I realize that I've only actually worked a day since arriving here but I also needed the day to catch up on the notes from my meeting in Santiago and from the assignments of yesterday. I had a fairly serious PowerPoint presentation to prepare and of course it had to be run back and forth (via email) to my translator for his input. So it was genuinely a busy and productive day.

Second, not only was it a holiday but, like many holidays, it was a day off for a reason. July 16 is the feast day for Our Lady of Mount Carmel. And la Virgen del Carmen (her other name) is not just any old saint: she is the patron saint of Chile. While on one of my walks today in between PowerPoint edits, I noticed a sign on the cathedral door informing that there would be a procession for la Virgen del Carmen tonight at 6:00. So around 5:30, after picking up something to eat for supper, I headed for the cathedral and followed a trickle of others inside.

The church was already almost half full. At the front of the church, someone was reciting the Rosary in Spanish. She would recite a few lines and the others would complete the prayer: "Santa Maria, madre de Dios..." As the minutes went by and the church continued to fill up, the chant of the parishioners became louder and louder. It was almost hypnotic. The bells outside started to ring and still people came in, filling the back of the church and the side-aisles. From my seat at the back I could no longer see what was happening at the front but eventually the priest and the bishop arrived, spoke for a few minutes, and then headed regally out of the church. I wondered why so few people followed them: wasn't this supposed to be a procession? Then I noticed what everyone else was watching at the front: a life-size statue of la Virgen appeared, carried high on a platform by about ten strong men. As she headed down the aisle, people stepped up to touch the statue, little kids who could see from their parents' shoulders waved, and women prayed as she passed. When they reached the church door, the men struggled to navigate the statue through the doorway because the statue was so high. By this time, of course, I was completely caught up in the crowd and followed with everybody (as if I had a choice!) out into the street.

The procession was like nothing we have in Canada -- not in our corner of BC, at least. I have no idea how many people were involved because from my vantage somewhere in the middle, the procession looked almost endless. We completely filled the street. Even some of the stray dogs joined us. There was a band at the front and another band at the back, both playing completely different music. There were drums, french horns, and other parade instruments. Someone else had a bullhorn and she led the processioners through a series of prayers and hymns. People leaned out of house windows, waved and cheered, and dogs who were not part of the parade barked as we passed. The men carrying la Virgen navigated her carefully under the incredible maze of power cables that crisscrossed above every intersection.

I had had a notion to gradually negotiate my way to the edge of the procession and then slip out when we passed by my hotel (I still had more PowerPoint work to do) but somehow that was impossible. For one thing, the crowd (especially at first) was quite tight and it was hard to move anywhere except in line with everybody else. For another thing, the experience itself was hard to leave. The music (both sets), the chanting, the swaying of la Virgen de Carmen held up high ahead, the dusk gradually turning to night all around, people lighting and re-lighting candles as the wind blew them out, the dogs moving in and out of the procession... it's something to remember. Once again I'm reminded that the wealth we have in Canada doesn't necessarily extend to cultural wealth, not like you can see in some other places. Like Copiapo.

Chile, Days 1 & 2: Santiago and Copiapo

I am sitting here on the bed in my hotel room in Copiapo with my laptop propped against my knees, much too tired to write anything of significance. But I am hopeful that I can maintain a blog during my time in Chile, even if it is only a modest couple of lines on every (or most) nights.

One good thing about writing (or trying to) is that the laptop is, I believe, the only source of heat in my room and it's nice to be holding it close. I am a little chagrined to admit that it really does feel cold here. After all, as Canadians we know better than anybody what cold weather is. I had been checking the weather reports for northern Chile for the past couple of weeks and the temperatures have been hovering in the low 20's during the days; down to the low 'teens during the night. Twenty-four degrees: THAT'S not cold, surely! But it honestly feels like I have skipped summer and landed straight into early autumn. The air is clear and sharp, the leaves are gone from many of the deciduous trees, there is a tinge of wood-smoke in the air, and people everywhere are bundled in scarves, toques, and heavy winter coats. The warm coats really are a necessity because most buildings are not heated. At the college where I am working, everybody sits in their offices, filing papers and typing away on their computers all from within zipped-up bulky jackets.

Another thing I am chagrined about is the mountains. In Cranbrook, we live right up against the Rocky Mountains and we are used to bragging about them to our less-well-endowed visitors. When I have travelled in the past I have brought a few postcards of the Rockies to show others where I live but this time I will be too embarrassed to take them out of my suitcase. The Andes in this neck of the world seem much bigger and more impressive. The mountains backdropping Santiago just take your breath away.

I've been here in Chile less than a day and a half and (given my fatigue after almost 36 hours of travelling to get here) it's hard to see beyond first impressions at this point. The only other part of Latin America that I've seen is Ecuador and I can say that Chile seems much different. It's cooler, of course, and doesn't feel tropical at all in this winter season. And -- in downtown Santiago and in Copiapo, at least -- the streets are paved, sidewalks and public spaces are tiled and clean, people look properous. Even the stray dogs that seem to wander about everywhere are bigger, fatter, and generally look quite happy.

Tomorrow thank goodness is a national holiday: the feast day for the patron saint of Chile. This means a day off (already!) and a chance to sleep in and catch up from all the travelling. I also have to catch up on a bit of work that's accumulated (THAT didn't take long!) but I can't wait to walk around and explore the streets of Copiapo.

[Note: photos for this blog are here.]

Sweden, Days 15 & 16: Stockholm, Stockholm -- & Canada

We spent our last day in Sweden touring Stockholm. It was marvellous. We rode the public transit, spent lots of time in the Old City (Gamla Stan), watched the Stockholm marathon & even 'participated', in a way, as we sprinted with the runners for 10 seconds in order to cross a street in the marathon route. We went to the amusement park & saw Stockholm from 80 meters up, just before getting dropped in a bladder-emptying free fall ride. We visited a number of museums including one for silk & one for architecture. And we walked around Gamla Stan some more & compared the merits of Belgian & Swedish beers.

On Sunday I headed back to Canada. My flights were uneventful & the worst thing to happen during the trip was the confiscation of the reindeer paté I'd purchased. Very annoying: I'd purchased it in the secure area of Arlanda airport, for heaven's sake, but the security folks in Frankfurt weren't taking any chances.

Not much else to say... I'm back in Canada, desperately trying to catch up on the work that's accumulated since I left for Sweden, & I haven't even started to wade through the stack of papers I brought back. Later.

Sweden, Days 14 & 15: Bollnäs, Söderhamn – and more about Stockholm

It is already more than a week since I returned to Canada & my memory is fading fast. I want to jot down a few notes about our final days in Sweden before I completely forget.

On Thursday, we left Bollnäs to catch the train in Söderhamn & soon we were travelling towards Stockholm. Fast. Unlike the leisurely schedules of the Canadian trains I remember, Swedish trains move quickly. Many of them have internet facilities so that commuters can count their train time as work time.

In Stockholm, we visited a rather unique Swedish-for-Immigrants (SFI) class, a pilot project designed to fast-track foreign engineers into the Swedish work force. The dozen or so students made up a very diverse group but they all had some engineering background. Engineers are in high demand in Sweden so the government was keen to focus on them to pilot this SFI approach. The class is compulsory for the students in the morning but optional in the afternoons; nevertheless, most of them do return to class in the afternoon & they were keen to talk with us. They all LOVE the course. They appreciate the quality of instruction, the flexibility of the program, & the fact that a practicum placement (& inevitably a job in their field) is waiting for them.

It's interesting to think how -- & why – SFI is different from our ESL. Our ESL students are learning English either a) because they need it to survive in anglo-Canada, or b) so that they can return to their home country & use their knowledge of English to advance their careers. SFI students have very different reasons. Most of them are immigrants; many of those are either refugees or asylum-seekers. They cannot return home. A knowledge of Swedish offers no real professional advantage anywhere else in the world except for Sweden. And professional people, like the engineering students we were interviewing, don't even really have to learn Swedish – they would mostly be able to work in English alone (which most of them could already speak).

But one student spoke eloquently about the purpose of learning Swedish. He described it as a courtesy, a duty, and a ticket to social integration. After all, he said, Sweden has been kind enough to take you in and learning the language shows respect; a willingness to repay the favour. And unless you learn Swedish you will never really participate in fika, attend family dinners, be invited to the summer cottage BBQ, or enjoy Midsommer celebrations. If you want to be a part of your new country, you have to learn the language. It's that simple.
Later we met with Per, who is an MP for a region in Hälsingland. It was fascinating to learn a little about how the country is structured at the national level & how culture is expressed in government. We had supper & discovered similarities between the problems faced in rural Hälsingland & rural BC. The next day we got a personal tour of the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) buildings, both above & below the waterline because Stockholm is built on a bunch of little islands & tunnels connect the buildings under the canals.

Finally, we met with a man named Shawn, who works for the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket). Shawn gave us a great overview of the Swedish educational system but what was even more valuable was his unique perspective. Not only is Shawn a former Canadian, he has also lived in the East Kootenay region so he understood exactly where we were coming from, literally & figuratively. He was able to identify & speak to a wide variety of issues that a Canadian visitor to Sweden would find especially interesting. He explained how the high level of 'social trust' in Sweden undergirds attitudes towards education in general; how the incredible mobility of professions throughout Europe affects apprenticeship; and how widespread acceptance of credentials doesn't necessarily translate into a trust in the quality of outside credentials.

Sweden, Days 14 & 15: Stockholm & more Stockholm

Stockholm is marvellous.

I don't have any more time to write at the moment.

More later.

Sweden, Day 13: Bollnäs & Växbo

I really must be quick about blogging tonight. Did I mention that this computer has some problems with malware? It is only a matter of time before some incredibly inappropriate window pops up with extremely obnoxious sound effects. I haven't been able to figure out how to turn down the volume so the whole sleeping household will suspect that I am (once again) visiting porn sites.

Another reason to be quick is that it is already past 11 pm & I must be up at 5:30 am to catch the train to Stockholm. Our time in Hälsingland is pretty well over (far too soon) & the next stage of our exchange trip includes 3 days in Stockholm. We will be attending some meetings & doing a little sightseeing.

We didn't knock ourselves out working today. We started off with a visit at the Gymnasiet (high school) where we met Elisabet, one of the headmasters. Like Canada, Sweden suffers from a shortage of health care professionals & they have devised some innovative programs to address the problem. Elisabet looks after the healthcare programs (we would probably call them Practical Nursing programs) at both the high school & Komvux centres. Students at the high school can take Healthcare as one of their program options for (senior) high school completion. Adults can take the comprehensive Healthcare program at Komvux. For the Gymnasiet students, the program is 3 years long & includes all the other necessary high school courses. For the adults, the program is 1.5 years long & is concentrated solely on nursing. It is definitely a different kind of high school - postsecondary partnership than we are used to, & I can imagine the arguments. Do students at the Grade 10 level even KNOW what they want to do yet? Isn't 18 a bit young to tackle the realism of nursing...? It seems to be working for our Swedish partners.

Afterwards, we met with one of the Gymnasiet nursing instructors who is a self-proclaimed techie. Like our friend Per in Söderhamn, she uses the SMARTboard to teach her students. However, her focus seems to be less on the preparation of comprehensive lectures & more on immediate, on-the-fly interaction with her students. We found it a bit funny to be learning about SMARTboards here, on the other side of the world from Canada, when the SMARTboards are actually made just over the border from us in Alberta.

In the afternoon we all went to Växbo to visit the linen mill there. For a fibre junkie like me, it was like a pilgrimage. We saw how the fibres were treated & saw a mechanical loom in action. Then I had a chance to handle all the finished materials -- both yard goods & finished products -- & finally bought a few items, mostly as gifts. Ewa also bought me a beautiful table runner which has to be seen (& felt) to be believed.

But the best was yet to come. In the evening Ewa's mother-in-law, Kaisa, took us on a tour of the immediate neighbourhood. We went into the kyrk (church) & viewed some of the ancient statues & bas-reliefs. Then we went to the 'weaving house' (vävstugen) where we saw 15 - 20 looms, each one in the process of weaving some fantastic linen article. The pieces varied from delicate curtains to sturdy woven linen hotpads to modern wall hangings to traditional Bollnäs weaving patterns to rag rugs. Again, for a fibre junkie it was the treat of a lifetime. Finally, we went to the old building (gården) which has been the town hall for Bollnäs for maybe 500 years & looked at the furnishings which have been used by families in the community, continuously up until the 1940's or '50s. We are talking about furniture, cloth, cooking materials etc. etc., some of which are hundreds of years old, & they are sitting around as if the family just left for a week's vacation. We could touch stuff, open drawers, look under the covers on the beds, leaf the pages of books. Of course, this is a super-lucky treat because Kaisa was, & still is very active in the community & has keys to all of these buildings. I have touched so many incredible things today I'm reluctant to wash my hands.

But that's what I've got to do: wash up & go to bed. Did I say this was going to be short entry???

Sweden, Day 12: Bollnäs, Bollnäs, & Kilafors

My head is full. And if Ewa hadn't poured for me a very helpful glass of wine, it would feel even fuller. My memory is already numbed a little but I do have 7 solid pages of notes to remind me of our meetings today. We met with Peter, Jonny & Jan & between the 3 of them received a very thorough overview of how the Swedish governmental system is arranged, especially as it relates to education.

Really, it is quite fascinating. Peter's presentation has gone a long way to reduce the confusion I had about how things work here. It seems that there are 4 main levels: the Kommun (municipality), the Län (county), the State (country) -- & now a 4th level created by participation in the European Union. There is a sort of 1.5 level, too: the informally defined cultural, historic regional identity inherited from times past. For Bollnäs & Söderhamn, this historical region is Hälsingland.

For the purposes of this blog, I won't go into the ways in which educational programming fits into all of this. It is really quite complicated & involves many different levels, distinctions, funding sources, organizational charts etc. But there were some points that especially caught my attention:

• adult education is primarily funded at the level of the municipality. This means that teachers etc. are hired by the municipality & that educational programming must be directly responsive to municipal needs. People we've talked to see both the positive & negative aspects of this approach.
• this Län has a very good reputation nationally for proficiency in distance education.
• the EU funds all sorts of projects at both the national/regional level & at sectorial levels. It seems that Gävleborg region receives the usual sorts of education funding according to its geographical 'entitlement' but has not been so successful at obtaining sectorial funding. They are working on this. It means that they are especially open to considering projects & partnerships that transcend regional boundaries but they are not so accustomed to thinking in that way.
• the research conducted on the efficacy of Swedish 'study centres' (centres like those we have seen in Söderhamn & Bollnäs that support distance learning for higher education in non-urban communities) is extremely convincing. They really do work. The study centres not only enable adults from non-academic families to complete higher education programs, they enable rural communities to retain these highly-educated individuals. What's not to like???

I could go on & on but like I said, I don't want to replicate the entire 7 pages of notes here.

The only other thing that really stands out for me is the incredible difference it makes when the government pays for higher education. The similarities between Hälsingland communities & Kootnenay communities are striking, but the differences between our communities' participation in adult education are equally striking. How much can we realistically hope to achieve in Canada when education is regarded as a luxury consumer item? Makes you wonder.

This evening we went to a lovely theatrical dinner presented by Ewa's son's school. The dinner was served at a beautiful restaurant in Kilafors (pronounced something like 'shillafosh'). The theatrical pieces were of course all in Swedish so I couldn't understand more than one word in every 20 or so but the exuberance of the young performers translates well regardless of language.

Sweden, Day 10: Bollnäs & Axmar

Blogger is acting funny or is it this computer? I am using the computer of a digitally sophisticated teenager & the browser is badly infected with malware. Never mind: I am very grateful for having such marvellous access to the internet. But I think I will keep this short.

Today was our first official 'working day' in Bollnäs. We didn't work hard. We spent the morning with our Swedish colleagues Åke & Anneli, comparing learning management systems. Anneli uses a platform called theducation. It's hard for me to report much about it since it's a Swedish product & most of the google hits on it are in Swedish. Nevertheless, Anneli showed us what she is doing with it -- she is using it a lot -- so we did get a fairly good look around. It seems to do all of the same basic functions as Moodle. From what I could tell, it is missing some of Moodle's more sophisticated features but has a few of its own. One nice feature is an automatic 'reminder' system: when the student is 3 days late with a critical assignment, theducation sends an email reminder to encourage the student to get the assignment in. It continues to send reminders on a regular basis until 30 days have gone by, at which point the student is withdrawn from the system & the instructor is notified. I'm sure these settings can be modified all over the place. The feature is especially important in Sweden where the student receives government funding as long as he or she is actively studying. Of course, the folks at Komvux must keep track of all this.

Åke then showed us a learning management system that he has designed himself. He uses a system of web pages etc. for content sharing, & then uses First Class for communication. It's a bit primative but certainly meets the needs of him & his students. Actually I've been surprised at how much variety exists in learning management systems here. Perhaps it's yet another expression of that 'try everything' approach that I've seen in other applications. On the one hand, I have wondered why on earth they don't adopt a common platform & benefit from the strength in numbers but on the other hand I've admired the high tolerance for individually configured systems. Sometimes the software seems a bit limiting but when you look at the systems as a whole, some of them provide very effective solutions.

Later, we showed Anneli how we use Moodle & set her up with a classroom on our server. The more the merrier!

In the afternoon, I went for a walk around Bollnäs & had a quick look at the Folkhögskola (Folk High School). I found out that although the Folkhögskola competes a bit with Komvux, for the most part they appeal to different audiences. Komvux is a credit-granting organization appealing more to those with academic or career goals, while the Folkhögskola reaches a more culturally focussed group. The Folkhögskola in Bollnäs specializes in music & attracts students from all over Sweden. I had heard about the Swedish Folkhögskola movement when I was studying adult education at St. F-X so it was very satisfying to meet one in person.

And in the evening we were taken out once again for an incredible meal: this time to the locally-famous seafood restaurant at Axmar. I had baltic herring with lingonberries & mashed potatoes. It was delicious. We were able to watch seabirds on the water & swallows fishing the air for flies just outside our window.

The browser is still acting very strange. After half an hour, I still can't access my work email. What a pity! No more work tonight.

Sweden, Day 9: Bollnäs, Gävle, & all points between

Today was a holiday in every sense of the word. Our Swedish colleague, Åke, picked me up at 9 & we headed first up a 'mountain' (not exactly what we would call it in BC but everything is relative). Somewhere near the top we went for coffee at a sort of lodge, which looked like it could have been situated (except for all the signs in Swedish) anywhere in rural/remote Canada. There was chain saw art, rustic furniture, stuffed owls, various types of fur traps, & the inevitable candy that looks like moose droppings. Upstairs the coffee bar menu was so incredible that I took a picture. I can't check the camera at this moment but I can remember off the top of my head that the list included roast beaver, bear sausage, & something to do with reindeer. Åke & I split a sandwich that included smoked moose heart. I am not making this up!

I have been quite surprised at just how 'wild' Sweden can be. All of the animals listed on the café menu (& many more) are found in the Swedish bush. The lodge had a couple of maps with differently-coloured pushpins to indicate sightings of the various species. It was amazing to see not only how many bears have been sighted in the area but also how significantly the sightings have increased in recent years. Apparently one can also see wolverines, wolves, foxes, lynx, & some sort of grouse that looks as big as a wild turkey.

After fika we headed back down the hill & took the highway to Gävle. Gävle is a city of about 120,000 & is the economic centre for the province of Hälsingland. We checked out the museum, walked around town a bit, & went for lunch. Afterwards, we idled back to Bollnäs on the old highway which follows the coastline more closely. Later we took a quick (quick!!!) spin around the Ljusnan area & in the evening our whole Bollnäs group met at Annalise's place for supper.

I can't remember the last time I played the part of the tourist like this. It really was fun. Tomorrow we head to the Komvux in Bollnäs so it should be a bit more like work.

Sweden, Days 7 & 8: Söderhamn - Bergsjö - Bollnäs

Yesterday was our day of transition. I started the day in Söderhamn & spent the morning conducting a workshop about Moodle for the interested teachers at CFL. It was fun to be once again on familiar territory, talking about something I know (in English, no less!) to an enthusiastic small group. We left Söderhamn after lunch & headed north leisurely towards Bergsjö, where Ronny lives. On the way we visited all sorts of geographical, historical & cultural landmarks. We drove along the beautiful Ljusdal river, visited a handicraft & cultural centre at Stellengården (not necessarily the correct spelling!), drove up a mountain overlooking the Dellen lakes, & stopped for coffee in a village historical centre. Eventually we came to Bergsjö & enjoyed a wonderful supper with just about everybody who has been involved with our college's Canada-Swedish exchange project. Because I have met so many project people over the past 4 years, it really felt more like a homecoming than anything else. Priceless.

After the dinner at Bergsjö, we were traded over to our Bollnäs contacts & so headed back home with them. It was at least 11:30 pm when Ewa-Marianne & I arrived in Bollnäs but it was, of course, still somewhat light outside. I have a dim recollection of being introduced to her family & then crashed into sleep.

Today, a Saturday, I was able to first catch up a bit on sleep. Since morning, Ewa has treated me to a wonderful day driving around the area in her 1973? Pontiac Firebird. We circled the Ljusdal lake region, we saw the area (Djupa) where she grew up, had fika with her parents (a highlight of the trip), picked some wildflowers, & visited a handicrafts shop. In the afternoon, we attended a birthday party for a colleague who was, & technically still is, a Canadian.

To be honest, the day is a bit of a blur. I will try to find a decent map of the area so I can at least understand where I've been. Google maps does NOT do it justice!

Sweden, Day 6: Söderhamn, Falun & Sundborn

It's quarter past ten in the evening & I'm exhausted but sleep still feels hours away. For one thing, it is still so light outside, maybe like 8 pm would be at home; & for another thing, my head is just too full to sleep. So I'm glad for a commitment to blog duty.

We started off the morning with a 2-hour drive to the town of Falun where we were set to visit some people at the Högskolan Dalarna. The Swedish names for educational institutions are a bit confusing for us Canadians. Although the word 'Högskolan' translates literally as 'High School' it actually means 'higher education' & in fact Högskolan Dalarna is a university. (When you mean 'high school,' you say 'gymnasiet').

Our two hosts at the university, Joakim & Ragnar, do the same work that I do. But with a university population of over 10,000 students -- 40% of them doing online courses -- the volume & complexity of their work is an order of magnitude bigger than mine. They use essentially 3 complete systems to reach their students: a collection of streamed & recorded videos to deliver lectures, a web conferencing application called Marratech for synchronous small group work, & 2 learning management systems (Fronter, & to a lesser extent - Moodle) for the content. We saw the recording studio in which professors can go to compose their lectures & the classrooms in which they can deliver simultaneously to campus-based & distance students. We had a detailed look at Marratech (a Swedish tool that was so good it was acquired by Google!) & discussed at length the pros & cons of various web conferencing applications. And we had a look at Fronter & discussed learning management systems. We had coffee (fika!) & lunch & spoke with a couple of distance teachers but basically talked shop all day. Really, it was an e-learning specialist's dream come true.

On the way back to Söderhamn, we stopped at Sundborn to see Carl Larsson's 'garden' (home/yard). We had the guided tour -- in English, no less! -- & so were treated to yet another rich educational experience. I really knew very little about Carl Larsson before, except that he was Swedish & painted lovely, happy family scenes. Turns out that he had come to this (now famous) little Swedish cottage with his family with the intention of doing some landscape painting. However, the weather was not cooperative & rained for 6 weeks & in desperation he started to paint the activities of his children in the cottage. The paintings speak volumes about his joy in family life. But they are also celebrations of the incredible decorative sense & textile artistry of his wife, Karin. Carl Larsson's paintings launched an interior design style for Sweden which persists today, almost 100 years after his death.

It will be another early morning tomorrow, our last day in Söderhamn. We will then head to another host family in Bollnäs & I am not at all sure what my internet access will be so this may be the last 'daily' entry for a while.

Sweden, Day 5: Söderhamn & parts unknown

It's been another interesting day in Söderhamn. We started off in a session with Pär, who uses a SMARTboard to deliver some of his history lectures. If you are not familiar with the SMARTboard, it's an electronic device that looks like a typical whiteboard except that it's connected directly to the computer. So it displays whatever you have running on your computer but can also be used with its own software for a number of interesting applications. For example, if you write on the SMARTboard using the special markers that come with it, the special software can recognize your handwriting & turn it into standard digitized text. You can use your hand to tap on the whiteboard just as you would use a mouse to click & drag items around the computer screen. In this way, the SMARTboard is a highly-interactive vertical surface that marries the best of both worlds -- the computer & the whiteboard -- to let the teacher interact in a very natural way with the students.

To show off the best features of the SMARTboard, Pär showed us one of his prepared presentations (a lecture about 'Imperialism'). As he explained, "first you start off with your stories": your notes or your storyboard or the main points that you are hoping to get across. Then you prepare a PowerPoint-like sequence of slides that link to websites, notes & other documents that support your story. Pär supplemented with Google Earth so that he could use those maps to illustrate the story about the colonization of Africa. The SMARTboard let him stay at the front of the class rather than popping up & down: now to navigate the computer, now to make notes or draw diagrams on the board.

I am pondering whether the SMARTboard would be useful for us back home. It would cost more than $1000 so it is beyond the 'sweet spot' for easy purchasing at the college. The great multimedia lectures can be recorded but the file size is apparently exorbitant. It looks like it could be very good for distance delivery of math or for simultaneous delivery of both f2f & online class groups. But can it do that much more than a good graphics tablet & a motivated instructor? It's something to think about.

After that, we met with a small group of students who are studying at a distance from the Policy Academy just outside of Stockholm. This distance program was set up originally to address the problem of so few police graduates choosing to serve in small rural communities. The educational delivery setup is very similar to that of the Social Work students I described earlier: the students attend f2f sessions every once in a while but mostly work through their coursework using what appears to be a Moodle-like portal interface. They also practice practical skills with the local police department. Apparently the results show that these distance students score better on the practical skills evaluations than do the academy-only students in Stockholm: it's hypothesized that they get more realistic practice working with the department. Makes sense.

Our afternoon session was cancelled so I took a long walk instead. You wouldn't think it's possible to get lost in a place so small as Söderhamn but I managed. I finally had to stop & ask for directions back to CFL.

In the evening we took a wonderful boat trip down the Söderhamn inlet (or whatever it's called) & enjoyed a shrimp dinner on board. It was cold out on deck but cosy in the hull restaurant, & it was delightful to view the islands & Swedish summer cottages while munching on rye bread & brie cheese & washing it down with Hälsingland local beer. That's a long sentence, isn't it? Life is good.

Sweden, Day 4: Söderhamn - Trönö - Löftjården

It's been another busy & interesting day. We started off with an explanation of a new type of trades program in Söderhamn. The Kvalificerad Yrkesutbildning (KY) is a pan-Europe program with a strong workplace component. This, it seems, is something quite new & revolutionary in European trades training. Besides the workplace component (which usually comprises one-third of the educational experience), participation in KY offers the student extreme educational mobility, credential recognition throughout the EU, & a variety of financial aid options. The KY program is offered for many vocations (not just trades) but the one in Söderhamn is focussed on welding. It's a 60 week program with 20 weeks in the workplace. They have 25 - 30 students but 80 applicants.

In the afternoon we heard about how CFL is thinking about e-portfolios. They looked at the software product called ELGG (as we did in BC) but gave up the idea when they saw how complicated it was (as we also did in BC). They decided to use First Class -- their e-learning standby -- & just add a module to extend its capabilities to e-portfolio use. It seems that that solution, too, is less than ideal. I am going to show them Moodle on Friday & maybe we can talk about Moodle' integrated portfolio at that time.

After work, we took a drive out to Trönö where we looked at an old church. I mean a REALLY old church. The church we saw was built around 1200 & was, without a doubt, the oldest structure I have ever seen. However (& this is the really cool part), we did more than just look at it: we went inside, rubbed our hands along the woodwork, examined the alter, had a close-up look at how the very old paint still shows in places from underneath the old paint; and we could have climbed up the ancient stave bell tower if we had wanted. There was no-one else there: no restrictive fences, no roped-off areas, no curator, & not even a sign telling us not to. And it's not that this is one of hundreds of very old churches in Sweden: this is the oldest.

In the evening we drove south for half an hour to a very rural area along the protected Baltic coast, to have a barbeque supper at the summer cottage of one of the teachers from CFL. The area doesn't seem to have a name & in fact requires quite complicated driving directions to locate. The part of the bay seems to be called Löftjården so that's what I'm going with. I was amazed that the Baltic Sea has no visible tide & no exuberant sealife so it feels much more like a lake. It was cold so we ate inside the cottage which, although it was tiny & had no electricity & no real plumbing, was fitted out better than Martha Stewart could ever hope for. Really! I would have taken pictures to prove it but my camera batteries died in the middle of the visit to the church.

Fresh batteries tomorrow.

Sweden, Day 3: Söderhamn & Växhuset

It amazes me that it can be so light, so late. Driving home tonight from Växhuset I felt so tired, unreasonably tired (I thought) given the earliness of the hour. After all, it was still light enough outside to read a newspaper easily. But when I looked at the clock, it was almost 10 o'clock. I keep forgetting that we are above the 60th parallel, further north than the BC-Yukon border. So I will write quickly & go to bed.

Today was a full day at the Centrum för Flexibilt Lärande (which translates unsurprisingly as Centre for Flexible Learning - CFL). Pauline & I got a very thorough tour of the facility, then a demonstration from an instructor who uses a complicated but very efficient & effective process to digitize his math lectures. Lunch was in the centre cafeteria, then I got to interview 2 middle-aged students who are completing a degree in social work by distance education.

The net effect is that I am feeling a bit in awe of the whole thing. If there is a better facility in the world for meeting the adult education needs of a rural community, I cannot imagine it. The building is large, bright, welcoming, clean. Original art graces every corridor. The interest & support for educational technology is impressive. There are all kinds of learning spaces, from a large lecture theatre designed for videoconferencing, to regular classrooms, to many comfortable corners with tables & chairs designed to support informal learning in groups. Every possible type of adult learning is supported.

The 2 students I interviewed were especially interesting. With only 3 weeks to go, they are at the very end of a 3.5 year social work degree program. The program is delivered from a mid-Sweden university & utilizes an online portal to deliver student services, WebCT for course content delivery & discussion forums, twice-monthly visits from a social worker mentor, & optional videoconferenced lectures. It seems that ~90% of their cohort will be graduating -- a success rate that I wanted to understand. According to the 2 women, the most important contributor to student persistence is the support provided by informal small study groups at learning centre sites such as CFL.

After supper, we went to a very interesting ecological project called Växhuset. The project is located 20? km out of town, "in the middle of nowhere" according to our Swedish hosts (although a Canadian would not describe it that way!) The owner, a man named Ralf, paraphrased something that Einstein had said: that the problems for the earth were not a result of not enough knowledge, but of not enough fantasy. He has applied his fantasy (& quite a bit of knowledge too!) to constructing a number of buildings which incorporate as many ecological, green, and alternative energy strategies as can be imagined. There are composting toilets & thermal mass walls of many kinds & pipes distributing water warmed on the roof & a house-in-the-making with walls of sand-filled car tires. There are windmills & 12-volt electrical systems & a satellite-dish solar oven & a garden "tractored" by chickens & many more applications than I can think of in my sorry jet-lagged state.

Perhaps this is the Swedish way? When faced with a problem (adult education, energy conservation), try everything! Forget about stopping with the first marginally acceptable solution that presents itself. And be positive.

Sweden, Day 2: Söderhamn & Skärså

This is a record for me: two blog posts in 2 consecutive days!

We spent a quiet day relaxing in Söderhamn. In the morning we attended the Pingst (pentecostal) church service which was conducted in an interesting combination of Swedish & English. The congregation includes so many refugees & asylum-seekers that the translation has become a necessary courtesy in order to meet the needs of attendees. In the afternoon, my host Aanette & I took a long leisurely walk around a little lake. After 2 days of sitting around in airplanes & airport lounges I badly needed the activity.

If we were able to burn off a few calories on our walk, we certainly put them back on over supper! We were taken out for dinner to a seafood restaurant in the tiny fishing community of Skärså. Incidently, the word 'Skärså' is virtually unpronounceable by English speakers. It's the 'sk' sound that gives so much trouble: there is absolutely no equivalent in English. I got a brief lesson while we were waiting for supper to arrive. You have to make a very deep exhale, right from the bottom of your diaphram, while your tongue sits tightly against the bottom of your mouth. My little Swedish phrasebook describes it as the 'ch' sound as in the Scottish 'loch' only made much further back in the throat. Maybe.

Anyway, supper consisted of [atlantic] salmon prepared 4 different ways, including smoked with pepper, raw, pickled & then smoked, & perhaps baked? All were delicious. We had some sort of pudding with cloudberries for dessert. Cloudberries was a new flavour for me. Apparently they are served sparingly because they are so hard to get: grown only in the north, on little bushes, one single tiny berry per cluster (i.e. there are no clusters) so they are very hard to collect en masse. The colour is like apricots & the flavour is possibly a bit like blueberries or saskatoons but much more subtle.

It will be an early day at work tomorrow, I must get to bed.

Sweden, Day 1: Stockholm - Söderhamn

There is really not much to say, partly because the first day in Sweden was so short: my flight didn't touch down on the Arlanda runway until 5:40 pm & we weren't on the road, heading past Stockholm, until almost an hour later. And partly because I was so tired (less than an hour's sleep in the past 30 hours) that I was simply unaware. Ronny, our Swedish host, was there with Pauline (my colleague who had arrived a few hours earlier) and the 3 of us hussled north along the freeway towards Söderhamn. It was windy, wet & cold & shortly before Gävle it started to snow! We made a very short pit stop in Gävle, which was made memorable for me in 2 ways: 1) we watched a woman at the gas station who was bottle-feeding a very small (collie-sized) horse, & 2) another woman, who had been speaking to me in rapid Swedish, understood me when I told her "Jag talar inte svenska" (I don't speak Swedish). But no doubt she would have figured that out no matter what I said.

My host family is just wonderful.

[photos for this blog are here.]

first post!

Ah, the first post in a new blog! It reminds me of that 'fresh new start' feeling after getting a new pair of shoes in elementary school. But I have started blogs in the past (how many? Never mind.) & drifted out of the discipline of writing far too early. This time it will be different.

What is 'sansfrontierisme'? It's the French term for the quality of being without borders. More on that later.