Need a Vacation

University is extremely stressful right now. Looking back at all these carnivals, I realized that I need a vacation. Somewhere hot and tropical, laying on a beach, listening to the sound of waves...

How perfect would that be right now?! Instead, I am stuck here studying. All I can do right now is look at beautiful pictures of mine from Mexico. I would do anything right now to end up there again. As soon as you land at the airport you feel carefree and ten times happier. It is so nice to get away from a noisy city life to somewhere so wonderful and peaceful. 

Holland Carnival

The Holland Carnival happens in the south part of Holland. The carnival takes place in February and many people from the northern part of Holland travel to the south.

During that time people in the south party for as long as 3 days during days and nights. The partying happens on the streets where everyone goes out and meets each other. A bunch of drinking happens during these three days. People go from pub to pub dancing and celebrating the old tradition.

The old tradition is that the Carnival celebrations start after the mayor symbolically hands over the key to the city to Prince Carnival. For three days, the Carnival Prince has control of the city and, together with his subjects, celebrates the temporary establishment of their Kingdom of Fools. Merrymakers make their way from pub to pub and greet Prince Carnival with three cheers of “Alaaf”.  

I mean, who doesn't want to forget about work for three days and all of the current responsibilities?! That would be awesome! Dressing up in the most colourful and crazy clothes and drinking beer all day and night. Using your dancing skills as your exercise for three days. Life would be heavenly! 

Now let's all pack our bags and somehow end up in Holland in February 2014.  

Notting Hill Carnival

The Notting Hill Carnival is the biggest carnival in all of Europe! It happens every Bank Holiday in London. The tradition began with Afro-caribbean communities who celebrated their traditional holidays on the streets of London. The holidays were much about being let free from slavery.

The carnival has many traditional caribbean foods that anyone can enjoy.

I love Caribbean culture and always wanted to learn more about it. I feel like making a trip to this carnival will be a huge learning experience that I would remember for a lifetime! Being a part of Caribbean culture for couple days will be a dream come true. The people are so welcoming and nice that it is impossible not to fall in love with them and their culture.

This is another carnival that is on my bucket list that I want to visit!

All of the above info was taken from: http://www.thenottinghillcarnival.com/

Rio Carnival

Rio Carnival happens in Brazil. It usually takes place 4 days before Easter, which happens to be summer season in Brazil. A person can sum up the Rio Carnival as a big parade involving thousands of people each year dancing and partying on the streets. On the streets, there are many different kinds of entertainers for people to watch. The carnival's highlight is the Samba Parade, a competition between Rio's samba schools, of which there are nearly 200. These schools are being judged by their costumes, their dances, their choreography and make up etc. 

The carnival attracts a lot of tourists and celebrities. Many internationally known celebrities perform at the Rio Carnival. Thousands jobs are created in Brazil during this time of the year. 

The reason why I want to visit this carnival is because it looks super fun and exciting. You can party for four days straight with locals and tourists. I love dancing and to me it just looks like it is a four day dancing party for anyone to join! To understand how HUGE this parade is you guys MUST watch the video below!

P.S.; All of the facts about the carnival were taken from http://www.trinidadexpress.com/sunday-mix/Twenty_Facts_About_Rio_Carnival-190556011.html

The Venice Carnival

As you might have already guessed this carnival occurs in Venice, Italy! The carnival was originally viewed as the opportunity for everyone to be equal, people could not see each other's faces and bodies because they had to wear masks and covering clothing. In 2014, according to the official website, the carnival will be held from February 15th to March 4th. The Venice carnival became a huge attraction for tourists and it is now one of the oldest carnivals in the world!

I definitely want to make this one of the destinations I absolutely have to visit. The whole mystery about not knowing who is the person you are meeting or how do they look is very intriguing. I feel that this carnival is very spiritual because if we take away all of the material components in our life and only focus on our spirit, we will realize that we are all equal. This carnival emphasizes that absolutely everyone is equal and that there are no exceptions.

Now vs. Then

It is very different to hand write rather than type on a computer keyboard. Our generation is now so used to typing, that we constantly question ourselves if we are making any errors when we spell certain words. To be honest, the confidence that I have when I type vanishes and it is harder to concentrate on my current thought. My mind is filled with questions about my grammar and my spelling.

I find it to be very different than the older times. When Helen Keller was born, all they did was hand write and maybe a few privileged ones had a typewriters, however the typewriters were very uncommon back then. I do think that back then people were in better shape when it came to writing, more specifically handwriting. This is because they had no other choice than to do so. If you try and give a person a computer who was born back in those times, then it would take them just as long to get used to it and figure out how to type on it. That person as well will not be able to concentrate on the paper itself, but instead their mind will be occupied with finding way to work the keyboard. 

Our generation has lost grammatical skills people had in previous centuries. Now, we are dependent on auto-corrects, spell checks and grammar checks. We do not give it a second thought if we spelled a word right or not, we just rely on our good old friend, Microsoft Word. 

I don't even doubt it that in the future, our kids won't even be taught on hand writing. They will be taught how to type on the keyboard starting as early as grade one, if not earlier. There is a chance that our generation and perhaps the next one will be the last ones to know how to hand write. Even right now it is already happening/ How many people our age do you know who can freely, without any challenge, write in cursive? From my own group of friends I know maybe only one person.

In conclusion, I would like to say that people back in those days were a lot better at grammar and hand writing than our current generation. 

True Character

            I would like to consider myself an observer. I am not a huge talker. Same thing applies to the Internet. I tend to never comment, but only read the comments and eventually come to my own conclusions. Most of the time the conversations I get to read are very interesting and I get to experience different opinions. But there have been times when the comments that I read would be absolutely rude and discriminating.

            I feel like the Internet adds excessive confidence to individuals that do not have it in real life.  All of the sudden, such individuals start being racist, sexist, and mean to others who’s opinions did not math theirs or for some other reason. No matter what anyone says, I am a 100% sure that people who say such horrible things to others would not be confident enough to say it in person. The Internet adds anonymity to people. Therefore, many of us do not know whom we are interacting with over the web. Little do we know, it might be a six-years-old boy who has read someone else say bad things and all he does is repeat them.

            So is the web considered good or bad? According to Leslie R, who made a post about the effects that Internet can have on racism, it can be a “double edged sword.” She argues that “The internet can both help andharm racism discrimination in today's society".  Leslie supports the point I stated above that the Internet does give individuals more confidence and carries fewer consequences for verbalizing an opinion, which is less acceptable by the society.  But on the other hand, it is also used to educate people about races and therefore can also be used to eliminate discrimination.  I believe that previous statement applies not only to racism, but also all other forms of discrimination as well.

            As I mentioned before, Internet discrimination and bullying is a lot easier to spot. Could it be only because it is out in the open? Has a lot really changed? How can we blame the Internet for the nasty character that one can have? To be honest, I do not think that the Internet has made discrimination to be any worse. It is just now in the open, for everyone to see and for everyone to be able to comment anonymously.

           

            Before the Internet, all of the bullying and discrimination used to be done in person; places such as work, school and somewhere else. The difference is, the only people who could experience it and take action in it were the ones directly affected at that certain moment. Not many people then went to their friends, colleagues or family and shared such an awful experience. Most people would just want to forget about it and pretend it never happened.  This cartoon explains the point I am trying to make here.

            In conclusion, I would like to say that yes, the internet has made the discrimination global and made the society to be more aware of what is going on in the world, but it does not mean it increased the number of people who participate in it.  Everything comes down to human character, if a person does not support discrimination, he or she will not discriminate no matter if it is real life or the web and vice versa.

Customer Service

I love working with people. I love making great friendships with my co-workers and customers that come by and that is why I chose customer service as my part-time job while I am getting my degree at school. But the one thing that absolutely drives me crazy are customers that come to my kiosk or even any other store and start YELLING at the employees. Listen, I know that you perhaps had a bad day, or your boyfriend/girlfriend broke up with you (in this case I won't argue with them because you do seem crazy), but who gave you a right to randomly start being rude and raising your voice?! Take your anger out on the person that made you mad and not the innocent people that are trying to help you solve your problem.

I do understand that to work in customer service people need to have an endless amount of patience, but we are people too. I don't go to work to get yelled at for something ridiculous that isn't worth getting mad over just because it was your last drop for the day. I don't get paid to listen to you complain like there is no tomorrow. There are people that do though. They go to school for it and they are called psychiatrists! I can even be kind enough and Google you the closest one to this kiosk. That way there is less of a chance that on your way there you will yell at some more innocent people.

Here let me explain with an example of what I mean when I talk about this. This one evening when I was working, this woman came up to me. She asked me a question, but her accent was so strong that I only understood some of the words. I asked her kindly to repeat her question and there it started. She started screaming at me for disrespecting her background, telling me how I am young and have no morals because I live in Canada and everyone who lives here always gives her a hard time. She kept going on on how everybody, including myself, judges her. She even went far enough to call me racist!!! She called up my manager who was helping another customer at the moment and complained about me. Finally, my manager listened to the whole story and asked that woman to leave the kiosk. She furiously walked away as she was yelling to everyone in the mall to not go to our kiosk because we are "the rudest human beings she has ever encountered".

Do you understand what I mean now?! If you have a legitimate complaint, then fine you have the right to tell me about it. And make sure to tell me about it in a normal, mature way instead of yelling and making yourself look crazy.   But if you absolutely have no reason to yell at me and show me your attitude then keep it to your freaking self! I absolutely cannot stand it when people think they are better or smarter than me. If you were actually better or smarter than me then you wouldn't be yelling your point across just so I would listen to you and maybe get "scared" enough to do what you have told me to do.

Moral of the story is: If someone made your day go bad, please do not blame other innocent people for it! We are human too!

My First Friend

It is very hard moving to a new school as a child. It is extremely hard when that new school is in a different country, where people speak a different language than you do. I even had a different style than most of the kids, which I got made fun for and looked weirdly at.

My first class was a history class. Back home, we were supposed to stand up as the teacher walked into a classroom to show the teacher respect and greet them. We could not sit down before the teacher gave us permission to. In my first history class I ended up doing the exact same thing, which I figured out was not normal in this country. I noticed this girl looking at me with a sad expression on her face while everyone else was staring at me with confusion. I got really upset that I did not fit in into the new culture and left the classroom crying. When I was walking towards exiting the school, I turned around and saw that same girl running after me. She came up to me and hugged me and told me her name as well as gave me her number. After that I think she said that she had to run back to the classroom, I couldn't really understand because of the language barrier.

When I got home, I stared at the number and kept thinking if I should make a phone call to her or not. But even if I did, what would I say to her without knowing the language? I put the paper with her number and name in my drawer and left it there.

After that, I saw her at school everyday and she always smiled at me and I smiled back. Couple months later, she stopped coming to my history class. It has been a week since I last saw her. I started to get worried and when the school day ended I rushed home to my drawer to get that paper she gave me. I called the number just to find out that it was now disconnected. I got very upset that I never had the courage to come up and talk to her and thank her for her comfort.

Up until now I regret not giving her a call when she tried to help me out on my first day. I wonder what happened to her...whatever it is though, I hope she is okay.

Even today I still think of her as one of my closest friends and I really hope that one day I will see her again and thank her for everything she has done.

Hi!

Good morning everyone!