Welcome to the Year of the Fire Monkey! Before I started working in Richmond, I associated Chinese or Lunar New Year with fireworks, the colour red, and strange timing (New Years was a month ago!). This year, I decided to interview my students and co-workers and ask what they thought
Sou louca por cinema, como grande parte dos brasileiros. Em São Paulo, minha cidade natal, ir ao cinema é um dos programas mais concorridos. Segundo o site Visite São Paulo a cidade possui 282 salas de cinema. Mas ainda assim, principalmente aos finais de semana, é praticamente imposs
The 2015 Vancouver Turkish Film Festival The Vancouver Turkish Film Festival is now 5 years old, and has grown from its modest start in the classrooms of Langara College to its new venue of Vancity Theatre. I remember the inaugural year in 2011, when I caught the great doc, On the Way
The Musqueam Place Names Map In an earlier post about learning one of Vancouver’s local Indigenous languages, hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓, I reflected that if I had learned the original names for the places around me as a child, it might have led to a deeper understanding of our local histor
Os benefícios de um bom papo Se você não é brasileiro, mas está passando um tempo no Brasil, a estudo ou quem sabe a trabalho, nosso papo de hoje pode ser útil sempre que você se deparar com uma pessoa nativa que desperte o seu interesse. Além de poder praticar o português, a companhi
A basic linguistic guide across the “stans” History has marched and galloped back and forth across Central Asia – which guide books tend to describe as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikisitan, and Afghanistan – and to which I’ll add Pakistan bec
Ao aprender uma língua diferente, nos deparamos com algumas palavras e expressões mais difíceis. Por exemplo, as gírias, as expressões idiomáticas, os verbos etc. Outra dificuldade são aquelas palavras que existem em uma língua, mas não existem na outra. Que tal conhecer e treinar alg
“Pa’ todo mal mezcal, pa’ todo bien también” It’s Friday night and our daughter has fallen asleep at dinnertime. She’s had a really persistent flu since Monday and she’s too tired to eat. My wife and I sit down to dinner and she pours us each
Ibrahim is Abarham, but is Serra Sarah? Is Homer Ömer? I was hanging out with a Turkish friend last week and we started talking about names that appear in Christian and Muslim communities. Some are obviously from the same root: Abraham / Ibrahim Joseph / Yusuf Mary / Maryam or Meryem
Street food with a story to tell Itanoní is a restaurant in Oaxaca City’s Colonia Reforma neighbourhood (less than 30 minute walk from the zocalo) that sells street-style food using criollo (what we would call heirloom) corn. When you enter the open air eatery the first thing th
