A Canadian girl: thoughts on the two sides of the border

I've gotten a lot of hits from a couple of Australian forums recently, and I really want to thank the people who both posted the link to my blog, and who said such nice things about it!  I really appreciate it! :-) Just one thing I wanted to add: I'm Canadian, not American.  Born and raised just outside of the beautiful city of Montreal, in the province of Quebec.

This led me to thinking, and mulling a few things over...  Like the fact, outside of North America, it seems many people consider Canada and America to be practically synonymous (not saying this was the case on the Australian forum - it just made me think of other things I've seen).  I don't know if that's an accurate view on my part, since I've only ever seen this online: I've never been overseas myself!  But it does seem to be an idea out there...

Continuing in a similar vein, it's only in the last year and a half that I've done much real traveling in the States.  Before that all I'd done was go on the occasional day trip into New York state, and go on a road trip to Florida when I was about 10 (something I have fairly foggy memories of...).  I'd never really had any American friends before the last couple of years, either.  Without traveling there, I suppose that's pretty logical!  I should say at this point that whenever I go to a new place, I'm absolutely fascinated by finding the similarities and differences compared to my own home of Montreal.  How are the buildings different?  Do the people speak differently?  What slang terms that I use are understood, and which ones aren't?  I find these things, small as they may seem, to be really interesting.  So I've been very interested as I've met so many Americans in recent times.  The U.S. and Canada are so similar, yet so different!  One thing that I've found slightly odd is how much of a wall many Americans seem to find the border.  I don't know anyone in my area who hasn't been to the U.S., even if it's just for a shopping day-trip!  Yet in the U.S., it's quite common to meet lots of people who have never been to Canada.  And when talking about traveling, many of the Americans I've talked to don't seem to ever consider traveling to Canada! There definitely seem to be different ways of looking at North American travel depending which side of the border you're on. EDIT: Note that *most* (definitely no where near all, but most) of the American peeps I know live relatively close to the border.  I understand quite well why Canada isn't a popular destination for those in the more Southern regions of the U.S. :-P

One other thing that I find interesting: I've been told I seem "very Canadian", and I have no clue what "Canadian" is to the people who have said that.  Canada is a fucking BIG country.  Winnipeg, Manitoba (and the people who come from there) has little resemblance to Montreal, Quebec, or the Northwest Territories, or any other random part of the country.  I know what's generally considered to be "American" here (though I find that to come up with one view of what "American" is makes as little sense as coming up with one version of "Canadian"!), but I've yet to discover what being "really Canadian" is, so if someone can enlighten me, that would be great. ;-)

But anyway, I'm just rambling now, so I think I'll bring this post to a close before I can ramble any more. ;-) Oh, one more thing: for a while I've been planning on writing a post about my home Province of Quebec.  Even compared to the incredible diversity found in Canada, Quebec is VERY different, and has a very interesting culture.  So I want to share a bit of that, whatever I can get across in a few words on a computer screen, anyway, with as many people as I can...  So hopefully I'll get that done soon. :-)

Peace,
Idzie

P.S. The pictures interspersed in this post are just shots from the last time I took my camera with me downtown...

DIY Life Zine now has it's own website!

It's been several weeks since the zine came out, and I've loved getting such great feedback on it! :-) But it's occured to me that the info for it on this blog is very scattered and rather hard to find.  So, I gave it it's own website!  Go check it out here.  Please do.  I'd love to hear your opinions on the site, information you think I should add, and stuff like that.  This also gave me an excuse to play around with Wordpress, something I've been wanting to do for a while!  I've considered moving this blog over to Wordpress, since there are a lot of features missing from Blogger that Wordpress has, but so far I've decided not to.  Either way, I enjoyed setting up the site for DIY Life Zine!  The link to that site can now be found permanently on this blog in the list at the top of the sidebar.

Peace,

Idzie

National Delurker Day

Taken directly from Stella's blog:

All you stalkers who always read, but never comment, today is the day to come clean! Give a little love- comment! It's National Delurking Day! Everybody loves comments! Even if you've never said a peep, I'd love it if you would introduce yourself!

So, yeah, what she said! :-P I encourage you to post this on your blog, and let readers know that it's Delurker Day! :-)


Peace,
Idzie

Emi and I giggle and talk about stuff

You may have heard of the channel SevenAwesomeNBTSCers before, but now there's a new kid on the block!  The YouTube channel AwesomeNBTSCers aims to get as many campers as possible vlogging at some point or other on their channel, instead of having a regular selection of vloggers like SevenAwesomeNBTSCers does.  Both are cool, just different. :-) But anyway, today Emi and I made a vlog for that new channel!  We giggle and talk about stuff.  I invite you to check it out below, or to go here if you want to see it directly on YouTube.



Peace,
Idzie

The worth of mud

I don't understand how some people can think that playing in the mud is somehow less worthy of a child's time than learning to read or do arithmetic.  The whole point of life is to live well, fully, and with joy.  Playing in a mud puddle, with the cool, smooth texture of wet earth squishing between your toes, the feel of mud as it dries on your skin, then cracks of and falls in dusty flakes to the ground...  The things you can make with it, and how good it feels in your hands.  The act of playing in mud is every bit as beautiful, in it's own way, as taking joy in a beautifully constructed story, or the flowing lines of a poem.  People need to get past seeing the world in terms of things that are "useful" and things that are not, and start seeing it as the collection of things, events, places, people, and pursuits that make life wonderful!

I came across a comment someone had made about unschooling not possibly working, because of how you could never learn anything worthy from just playing in mud (as if!), and I just had to write down my own feelings on the topic!

Peace,
Idzie

Going to the UWWG!

It's now official: I, along with my mum and sis, am going to the Unschoolers Winter Waterpark Gathering in Sandusky Ohio at the beginning of February!

I'm doing the whole mixed-feelings thing right now, because last year, I had an okay time, but not a *great* one.  The Kalahari resort itself felt pretty icky to me honestly, with it's tacky decorations, and staff that seemed almost *subservient*.  It felt like I was in the heartland of consumerist privileged America.  It just made me feel icky...  That said, I did meet some awesome people, go to some great talks, and I finally started to really enjoy myself just as we were getting ready to leave. :-P I want to make it clear that my reluctance to go has nothing to do with the actual organization of the conference itself! Just a few issues with the venue...  If you want to find out more about my experiences there last year, you can read my write up, complete with lots of pictures, here.  As to why we're going this year, even though there are some other conferences I might prefer to go to, is that Emi is planning on meeting a friend she's known online for about 7 years now.  This friend is near enough that they can actually manage to get together if we go to the waterpark, which pretty much clinched the decision.

So now I'm switching gears, into one of focusing on the positive, thinking of all the cool people I'm going to meet (there are only a few people whom I've already met who are going to be there, as far as I know!), on the fact that I'm going to get to go to a talk by John Taylor Gatto, and on how much fun the slides and wavepool in the waterpark are. ;-) If you're going to be there, I'd LOVE to meet you!!  So if you recognize me, please do say hi, and if not, well, I just hope we run into each other at a talk or something! :-)

Peace,
Idzie 

P.S. I really appreciated each and every comment on my last post, The Cons of Unschooling, and read them all happily and with interest, but right now, the thought of responding to all 17 comments feels a wee bit overwhelming.  Which is why I haven't yet.  But I'll *try* to in the next few days, and I want to thank everyone for making it such an interesting conversation! :-)

The Cons of Unschooling

I think most people know how much I love unschooling by now.  I will happily wax on about how unschooling is the only type of truly *free* education, how unschooling has made my life better, and allowed me to become a truly authentic person, which I'm not sure I would have managed in school, etc. etc. etc.

But what about the downsides of unschooling (yes, you read that right)?  That isn't talked about much by unschoolers, quite understandably.  When you're trying to convince the rest of the world that unschooling is a good thing, you don't want to bring up the difficulties attached to it.  Because there are some difficulties.  Nowhere near insurmountable ones, but there nonetheless.  Note that this isn't the typical "homeschooling methods pros and cons" list: a balancing of the supposedly *good* and supposedly *bad* elements, so that you can decide whether or not this style is "right for you".  This is simply a few things that I've found especially hard to deal with, as an unschooler.

What I find to be sad is that every single *con* I can think of isn't really to do with unschooling per say: it's to do with how the world, and individual people, view unschooling!

So here are some of the things that I've found to be difficult to deal with, to do with unschooling.  Some of these things hold true for homeschooling as well.

Firstly, the constant questioning.  Constant.  As a young child, it's "do you have a PED day (the teacher's education days in Quebec, where the kids get the day off since the teachers are in class!)?" "why aren't you in school?" "do you know how to read?" and similar annoying things.  As you get older, the questions change.  It's "are you planning on going to school now?" tinged with severe disapproval.  It's ignorant comments like "I once met a homeschooler who had NO social skills!" while scrutinizing you to see if you're about to start exhibiting similar signs of lack-of-socialization.  When I was young, and we still just said we were homeschoolers, I'd simply answer questions as neutrally as possible, just trying to end the conversation as soon as I could.  As I got older and we started using the word unschooler, which was fairly recently, the reactions changed somewhat.  Mostly, the word "unschooling" is met with puzzlement.  After an explanation of what it is, it's often STILL met with puzzlement.  "No, my mom didn't teach me, I taught myself!" repeated patiently, as people struggle to grasp such a foreign concept!  If it is understood, it's often met with extreme skepticism and/or disapproval and/or outright horror.  Sometimes people are supportive, sometimes they're honestly curious and not trying to be judgmental.  But the point of all this is just to say that as an unschooler, you're constantly answering for the educational choices you've made.

Another thing I've found to be difficult is the lack of a support network nearby.  At this point, many, many places have homeschool support groups, homeschool co-ops, and similar things.  Unschooling, however, is still a small enough percentage that most places don't have that support for unschoolers.  Now, unschooling is, after all, basically a type of homeschooling (it's so different from every other type of homeschooling, that I often find myself forgetting that fact, but it is true!), so sometimes the local homeschooling groups can be great for unschoolers as well.  Sometimes, though, they're not.  I know that in my pre-teenage years, we were involved with a lot of local homeschooling groups and activities.  However, the people in these groups were mostly very Christian, and very school-at-home.  I didn't make very many friends through the homeschooling community (a few, but not many) and often felt pretty out of place.  The general mindset was just very different from my family's!

Doubts are also an issue.  Pretty much everyone has them, no matter what type of education you have, but I think it may just be even harder for unschoolers, at times.  When enough of the world doubts how "well" unschooling can work, it's quite easy to fall into the habit of doubting it yourself!

Not having a "graduation" or similar distinction that you're now in *adulthood* can also be difficult.  Some homeschoolers organize graduations, and I'm sure this is great for some unschoolers as well.  But it wouldn't mean anything to me.  What am a graduating from??  I'm still learning, still growing, as I will be until the day I die.  Having someone hand me an embossed piece of paper on a stage doesn't really mean much, for me!  So as an unschooler, it's quite likely you'll have to find that something special for yourself.  For some it will be moving out on their own; for others starting college; for some traveling.  I'm really not sure if I've found that special something for me yet.  I know that this blog has given me *something*.  Previously, the only people who read what I wrote were family and friends: people who were pretty much obligated to *like* what I wrote! ;-)  Getting validation for my writing, and just for *me*, from such a wide base of people has certainly meant a lot to me, and I'm sure has also contributed to my growth in confidence and self-assurance!  Come to think of it, I'm not so sure that this whole point really is a "con" after all.  It's probably better to find your own personal *graduation* than to have nothing more than a piece of paper saying you've "graduated"!

Unschooling often isn't n easy path.  Doing ANYTHING that isn't "normal" or "expected" often isn't easy, and if you're an unschooler, who believes in unschooling, you have no one to blame but yourself.  I think that may be one of the hardest things about unschooling, actually: the fact that you're really and truly the only one in control of your own life.

These are just a few thoughts: some things that have been bouncing around in my head for a while now.  I love unschooling.  I am SO grateful to have lived as free a life as I have, and I don't think any of these things are nearly big enough for someone to decide not to unschool.  But at the same time, I think people often minimize just *how* difficult it can be, at times, to live in a society that is so very far away from the lifestyle that you lead as an unschooler!

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. :-)

Peace,
Idzie

Poetry project

I don't feel that poetry writing is my strong point.  However, I really enjoy it.  And I want to get better!  So I actually made a new years resolution that I really, really want to keep, and that is to write some poetry every day.  It could only be two lines.  The point is to make sure I write SOMETHING!  I have a pretty new notebook, with two pages, from the last two days, filled up already.  And, since I find that posting stuff online can be a tool for keeping me accountable in my personal goals, I'm going to be posting my daily scribblings on my poetry blog.  Now, I hesitated before mentioning it on this blog, because I really feel that most of the poetic stuff I write is crap!  But, well, I finally decided to mention it anyway... 

Now off to bed after a long night spent around lots of people, because I am truly exhausted...

Peace,
Idzie

P.S. While I'm on the subject of blogs, my blog Adventures In The Accumulation of Trash is, as I'm sure you've noticed if you've been over there in the last well, forever, entirely inactive.  I'm not quite ready to delete it, but it looks like it will remain inactive for the foreseeable future.  My book review blog, Frequently Magic has also kind of failed.  I may decide to resurrect it soon, though...  I'll see how I feel.  My photo blog 365 Awkward Angles should have more updates soon, as I attempt to actually complete the 365 photo a day challenge this year!