August 10, 2012

• Report # 909

  Hey everyone, I hope that you’ve all been having a fantastic week. I packed my bag for Calgary on Tuesday afternoon and it was the first time I used my new suitcase. It was actually half empty, but I always bring back a few extra things while I’m here so having all of that extra space will be very helpful. I woke up at 6:30 am on Wednesday morning and a few minutes later Dora surprised me with a call. It was very sweet of her to call and it was great to talk to her before I got going.

  My grandmother picked me up and we drove to the Abbotsford airport. I almost always fly out of Abbotsford when I go to Calgary as it’s such a small airport and very easy to get to. I basically checked-in my bag and was through security in less than 15 minutes. I had a good hour to spend so I just read the paper and paid almost $ 10 for a bottle of orange juice and some egg and ham breakfast sandwich. The airport food is always overpriced and never really that appealing.

  The flight was just an hour and twenty minutes so I just read the paper and watched TV. I actually got to the airport a few minutes before my aunt and grandmother. We headed home and I had some pizza for lunch with lots of small candies and chocolates after. I always eat way too much sweet stuff and food in general when I’m here. Luckily my aunt and I walked about 10 kilometers later in the day. My aunt dropped me off at another park and we were going to walk towards one another to find each other later.

  I walked by a park by the river, through a nice neighbourhood and then by some more river before climbing a steep hill to get to the top. I took a wrong turn from the top of the hill, but my aunt and I stayed in contact with the cellphones and I was able to find her later. We took the long hike back to the car and at this point we were both pretty exhausted. It was close to 30 C (86 F) and there were some areas by the freeway without shade so we probably took in a little too much sun as well.

  We drove home and we had some ham and potatoes for dinner and we played a card game of 31 in the evening. The weather in Calgary is really fascinating at times. The whole day it was humid and there was just no breeze…. the air was literally dead. Then all of a sudden at around 9:00 pm huge gusts of wind started up and some dark clouds were forming in other parts, though where we were the sky remained clear. I walked outside with my aunt for a while to get some fresh air and watch the interesting weather.

  We weren’t the only ones out as some other people were walking and someone was even sitting on their roof. After seeing a rare lightning storm at home on Tuesday night and now seeing this it’s been a very interesting week. I woke up at 8:45 am on Thursday morning and went for a nice run around the golf course before having a shower. Afterwards my grandmother was saying that we had to paint the fence. She really was insisting that it got painted right then as she was worried it would rain later and it would never get done.

  I kind of wished she told me before I had my shower, though it wasn’t a big deal. So I went outside and we painted the fence for about two hours. The whole back yard part got finished, and while there is still a little more to do, the majority of the job got finished. I headed in around 11:15 am and had some lunch and then my aunt and I went for another walk. This time we drove down by the river and I crossed a bridge and walked on a trail along the river. My aunt went back to the car and I eventually ran into her on the trail as she went walking from the other direction.

  It was a really nice day, though it wasn’t really much cooler than it was the day before, it was almost exactly as hot and sunny. Afterwards we stopped at Tim Hortons and picked up Ice Cappuichinos and then we walked around another park and sat underneath the tall trees by the river. We walked a bit more and we could see all of the people floating down the river in their rafts. One young woman said something like “Why aren’t you out on the river ? I’m here enjoying my beer.”

  She was going down the river by herself on an inflatable boat, though she was breaking two rules ! She was not using a life jacket which is a law for anyone boating or tubing down that river, and she was drinking alcohol. Of course I’m not the river police so I couldn’t do anything to stop her rebellious ways. Obviously tons of people really don’t care about the rules and will do what they want. Personally I think if they want to do that just let them do that, but they need to be responsible for their own safety if they choose to ignore laws which are put in place to keep people safe.

  Dora called as we were walking through a picnic area by the river and she told me she had found a perfect place to stay in Lázaro Cárdenas. The rent was going to be super cheap and it had air conditioning and furniture, though the story ended up being too good to be true. Dora talked to the lady again in the evening, and apparently the lady doubled the price. Dora already gave her a 2,000 peso deposit so the lady better give it back. I just can’t stand people who lie and act in such an unprofessional way.

  I won’t actually be in Lázaro for another 17 days so there is still definitely time to find something. Dora has been very helpful with everything and I think things will be ok. My aunt and I weren’t exhausted like we were the previous day as we didn’t walk quite as long and we didn’t stay so long under the sun. We came home and had some lasagna for dinner and had a relaxing evening of card playing, and watching a football game. I also showed my grandmother a bunch of the pictures I had taken.

  Before settling down for the night I walked around a field by the golf course and I saw a group of four jack rabbits running around, and another group of two other jack rabbits. They are very big rabbits, bigger than cats. It’s always enjoyable to be outside and see the animals that are out. Though I was talking to Dora and while there are certainly some very cool animals in Lázaro it sounds like I’ll have to be careful as she told me there are lots of sharks in the water and crocodiles on the beaches !

  Over the weekend I heard the extremely tragic news of another shooting, this one taking place at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin in a suburb of Milwaukee. What a horrible summer it’s been for public shootings. It’s like every couple of weeks there is another shooting tragedy. While the shooter was clearly as messed up as the shooter involved in the movie theatre shooting in Colorado, this was clearly a racially motivated attack.

  First off I have to say its obviously incredibly wrong to attack anyone in any way based on their religion. It’s wrong to make fun of them, its wrong to say racist things, and to go beyond all that and attack and kill someone just because of their race is thoroughly disgusting. Fortunately the shooter was killed, saving families from going through a long and painful trial, though I can only imagine the pain so many people are going through.

  Secondly the shooter and so many other people out there are just plain idiots. Whoever doesn’t know the difference between Muslims and Sikhs obviously has not gotten out much and needs to sit down and do some reading and truly educate themselves. I am thinking the shooter was probably wanting to attack Muslims as he probably developed such sick and twisted ideas about them while he was part of the military.

  Now hopefully people won’t use the fact that the shooter was in the military as a way to think negatively about all of the other people in the military and serving overseas. He was clearly just a very racist person based on his connections to certain white supremacy groups, and really that has nothing to do with the military at all. This story is just so sad knowing that people died basically for no reason just out of pure hatred. Obviously it’s impossible to cure the world of racism completely, but clearly schools need to do a better job of teaching tolerance and equality between all the religions and groups of people.

  And while it’s important that people understand that Sikhs are Sikhs, and Muslims are Muslims, the root of this shooting shows a clear need of solving a much great problem: doing all that can be done to get racism out of this society. Because at the end of the day this story would still be just as tragic had the shooter went into a Mosque and shot people just for being Muslims. If the racism itself isn’t fought, it really doesn’t matter how educated people are into who the different people are.

  I’ve grown up in a city with many Sikh people and I can definitely say they are always doing things to help the community and have brought so much diversity to the city which is a wonderful thing. To think that there are people in this world who want to cause harm on a group of people based only on which faith they identify themselves as is horrendously horrible. We must all come together and fight the racism, hatred and violence that has been happening.

  This is not a problem that will solve itself, though if people can come together, learn more about different types of people and really embrace diversity as a positive thing, there will be a better understanding of people between different faiths, and hearing about stories such as these will become less common. Clearly this world has a long way to come before truly becoming a 100 % equal multicultural society where we can all just get along and appreciate one another regardless of faith or race.

  Unfortunately stories like these just show everyone how much further we have to go to achieve a dream of racial equality and religious acceptance. And while I’m sure things have improved greatly in the last half century, there is still so much further to go. And as sad as these tragedies are we must all keep up the push for a better world else nothing will ever change and more lives will be lost, and that is just not acceptable in any way, shape, or form.

  For the next question:

  What can be done to better the relations between people of different faiths and origins ?

  Today I’ll leave you all with some pictures from my walk with my aunt on Wednesday. Take care and I’ll talk to you all on Monday, bye for now.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  • 12:24 pm
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