Melina

Wow. I just want to say that I am thrilled to be a part of this and that it is such a great idea and a wonderful way to stay in touch. I’m not sure where to begin or how much I will write, so please be patient as I ramble on. I think that I may not be alone in feeling that this task is ridiculously huge, to give everyone a glimpse into my life after this time apart. I know that I have always taken friendship for granted in some way, because it’s always been easy to remain in contact with people at the same school, when you see each other nearly every day, but now I’m realizing what effort it takes to maintain a true contact with those who are physically farther away.

So, to keep some sort of order, I will attempt to keep this chronological. My summer was spent working for my father’s aerial photography company, based out of Toronto, but travelling around to various job sites in Quebec, Ontario and then Ecuador. My parents sold their house this spring, and moved into a one-bedroom apartment in May. I stayed in the partly converted sun room, with a makeshift bed cut to fit, with most of my things in a storage room, but spent so much time away from home due to work, it mostly worked out. It’s interesting because I’ve never felt a strong connection to Toronto, and this summer I was hardly there, but I now think that maybe I could end up there at some point.

At the end of July I headed down to Ecuador, flying down in the tiny twin engine airplane that we were going to be using for our work down there. We (my pilot and I) took four days to get from Toronto to Guayaquil, and most of our delays were due to customs issues. Our first day took us down to Fort Lauderdale, where we had to pick up a new GPS system for the airplane because the built-in system only had precise information up until Panama. The next day, after picking up the system, and after organizing an over-flight permit for Cuba, we flew into Kingston, Jamaica. We were planning on going straight through that same day to Panama, but ended up being held up by island time. It took a few hours to clear through customs and immigration, and by the time we started getting our fuel, we were told that they couldn’t accept credit card payment and that all of the banks, in which we could change travelers’ cheques, were closed. So we spent the night, leaving around the middle of the following day, and going down to Panama. We arrived in the heart of a huge thunderstorm, and luckily the clouds cleared just enough in the minute before our landing so that we could see the runway. Our flights always took us nearly to the end of our fuel reserves.

In Panama, we were suddenly immersed in Spanish, which neither my pilot or I spoke properly; our month of being lost in translation had begun. We arrived and were whisked away by a trio of men from an agency that assists foreign aircraft and crew, and were given muddled Spanglish instructions on what to do the following morning. All that we understood was that we would likely be picked up in the morning from the hotel where they brought us, and that they would organize our flight to Ecuador. The following morning, sure enough, we got a phone call from someone in their organization, and I tried to use what little Spanish I knew to communicate our intentions, and we waited in the lobby of the hotel to try to determine the best plan of action on how we could fly out with all of the storms around. At the airport we were assured that everything was taken care of for our flight to Ecuador, the most terrifying stretch of the journey because it was almost all over open-ocean.

Halfway through the flight, we got a radio call from Cali, Colombia, over whose airspace we were flying. They stated that we did not have the requisite permits and that we had to turn back to Panama and wait for the permits – for Colombian airspace as well as for Ecuadorian landing – to go through. Not only did we not have enough fuel to legally fly the distance back to Panama, there were such storms in Panama that we didn’t dare to do it on such short fuel reserves. Eventually we convinced Cali that we were in fact allowed to land in Ecuador, and that we didn’t really have any choice anyway, and continued on our way, but it was a very stressful twenty minutes in the air over Colombia. We had no idea what the Colombians would do to us if we didn’t comply, but also knew that we had to keep going in order to land safely.

Guayaquil was an interesting experience. Because we were always on call, waiting for sunny weather (which hardly ever came), we didn’t ever get a chance to see any more of the country than that one city. And because I was there with my pilot who refused to do any cultural activities, and I was not allowed to go out on my own, I didn’t really even see much of what the city had to offer. Nevertheless, it was an exciting opportunity to attempt to learn rudimentary Spanish, and the city itself seems like it could be a really cool place to be. All the same, life on the road wore me down, and by the end of August I was desperate to go home.

I spent two weeks in Toronto, mostly saying goodbye and packing everything that I owned into boxes and bringing them to a storage room, trying to wrap my head around how I felt about my now-familiar feeling of homelessness. I had planned an extensive trip to Europe for this year, allowing myself to believe that I wanted to move to Berlin, or somewhere equally exciting, but really having no idea what I would be doing after the beginning of October, my cousin’s wedding.

My trip began with two weeks in Rotterdam, visiting my sister and winding down after the stress of the summer. Most of that time was spent figuring out where to go next, in terms of my travels but also in terms of real plans for the future. I began for the first time to realize how King’s never taught us where we could go next, but rather just left us with the vague feeling that we could go anywhere. And Anywhere is a pretty huge place to start looking for a future.

Since the beginning of October, I have been spending my time trying to get to know my family in Vienna and in Innsbruck, trying to pay attention to photos and stories that have always seemed so far away. My father moved to Canada with his family when he was two years old, and now his siblings have almost all moved out west; with the exception of one sister in Niagara Falls and his mother in Mississauga, my immediate family has hardly any tangible connection with this far-flung family. My mother moved to Toronto when she was 19 years old and had gotten married to my father (that is a long story in itself, but they met in Austria, had a two-year long correspondence in which they “dated”, and then were married in Austria as she was finishing her high school exams), leaving the rest of her family over here. It was interesting to read Orion’s comment about roots and rootedness, and the desire for community, because I have often felt uprooted, without home, without a stable starting point. My father’s parents moved their entire family to Canada in an attempt to escape the burden of history, and then my mother also emigrated and left everything behind. I feel like these decisions came out of a willingness to erase the family, erase all ties, and those are the threads which I am now attempting to gather together into some sort of tapestry, however patchwork and bare.

In Vienna, my paternal grandfather was born the youngest of five. His grandfather had emigrated from Italy, and had found employment as the accountant for the Habsburg family. Religiously speaking, he was from the Greek Orthodox church (some generations back I have roots in Greece), and was furious when his son decided to marry an Austrian catholic. My grandfather’s older brother, Gilbert, had three daughters, one of whom I stayed with, my father’s cousin Monika. My father’s immediate family, however, are the only Giannelias left in the world. I feel a kind of responsibility to the name and to the history, this family of wanderers who had moved on, changed names, changed citizenship, changed religion, and hardly ever stayed put.

Monika told me about the family gossip and intrigue from the 20th century, the Viennese century: the distant uncle who had three children through an affair with a woman, who he then set up in a house which his “legitimate” children were supposed otherwise to inherit; the great-grandmother who would stand in the doorway of their downtown tobacco shop screaming about the Nazis in 1940 Vienna; another distant uncle who had found a way to give Greek citizenship to a Jewish family, and then later fled to France, leaving behind a wife and four children; Hans (my grandfather) meeting my grandmother, who 10 years later would decide to move the entire family to Canada; the gambling problems of the two Giannelia brothers who never could hold on to their money, &c, &c. I would look at the distant photographs, the old portraits of the Giannelias with their crazy monarchist beards, and begin to get a glimmer of understanding that this was my family, the family who had been left behind in the search for peace and a future in the new world. I am now also starting to realize the power of the concept “new world,” a place not so darkened by the shadows of death and war and human catastrophe.

I left Vienna at the end of October, making it to Innsbruck for Halloween – not a tradition – and Alle Heiligen, or “All Saint’s Day”, which is very much a tradition. On the first of November, all the cemeteries hold a service to remember the dead. It is a national holiday, everything is closed, and all you can hear are the bells. The times of the services are staggered, to allow each person the opportunity to go to all of the different cemeteries where their families lie. I went with my Oma (my mother’s mother) to two different cemeteries, one for my grandfather and his brother, and the other where the rest of her family rests. We met with different distant relatives in both cemeteries, and the roads were filled with people all on their way somewhere. This holiday is something that I can’t remember ever hearing about, a method of remembrance that lies so far outside of my immediate family experience, and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to spend the time here.

Every year on the first of November, my grandmother makes a “Kugelhupf”, a delicious cake with almonds, as well as a simple meal, and invites everyone over for coffee and cake after the cemeteries. The entire experience is a whole day long affair, because many people go to different places and spend time with different parts of their families (such as my cousins with their long-term girlfriends who have become family by now), and Oma and I just stayed at her apartment as the other relatives came and went. I heard stories about my Czechish great-grandmother and her three sisters, about my grandfather and his family, and tried to take it all in.

Since then, I’ve been spending most of my days with my Oma, probing her for more stories and spending hours poring over photo albums. I’ve now seen photos of her kindergarten class, photos of her climbing mountains with an aunt at the age of 8, the wedding photo of my great-grandparents, and baby photos of my mother and her brothers. I’ve heard about my great-grandmother’s sisters, none of whom had any children and hardly any luck, and about my grandfather trying to convince his parents that he should be allowed to go to art school. All around this apartment are examples of his work, clay sculptures and ceramics mostly, but also paintings, miniature books, jewelry, tinwork and more, although he never did get to follow his dreams as an art student. My mother has told me how every night when he got home from work (he worked as a city official of some sort, I’m not sure of the details, but I know that he organized wedding certificates and did some work with food quality control), he would spread out all of his art supplies and begin to work.

My Oma and I talk every day, about politics, the state of today’s youth, the idea of marriage and motherhood, and how to live well in the world. She laughs about how she is so old fashioned, and I assure her that she is supposed to be old fashioned at the age of 85. We speak in German (she learned English in school, but never spoke it since), and I struggle to keep up with the complexity of the stories. I kick myself everyday for never having taken a German language course, for not being able to better understand my family. I’m trying to write down the stories, to keep them fresh, but it almost feels fresher when they are not written on a page. My ideas about language, writing and translation are becoming stronger, truly taking shape as I try to understand my personal roots through the sometimes-hilarious process of misunderstanding. Every day I feel my German becoming stronger, and I’ve even started to understand a few jokes!

I am now more than halfway through my trip, and the slow pace of my life is starting to feel normal. Most of my time is spent chatting with my Oma or some cousins, and then I do some reading or writing when I feel motivated. I try to go on a walk every day, attempting to take advantage of the glorious mountains that surround me on all sides. I am looking forward to going back to Canada in January, but I feel like the unknown that faces me in Europe now (where to go next, who to stay with, what to see, &c) is somehow more bearable than that which I am going to hurtle into in the new year. Grad school? A job? A new apartment? So-called “real life”? So, as I venture into the unknown, I gather strength from all that I read here, and am aware that travelling has a knack for illuminating the ordinary. Now that I am becoming closer to my roots, I am also feeling more confident in my ability to bring something important to life, over in the new world.

Best wishes from across the ocean,

Melina

Sebastian

I love hanging out in Motels all alone! I am totally jonesin’ around all over the place in room 11 of the Last Port Motel in Canso, Nova Scotia. You don’t know where that is? Canso is at the pee hole of the Northern Nova Scotia peninsula. I drove here in the dark, talking to myself to stay awake. This was out of necessity because the Tim Horton’s coffee product doesn’t have enough caffeine. I had to drink Tim Dog’s because there isn’t much of a market for the fresh roasted, grinded and brewed beans in rural Nova Scotia in November. Isn’t the drive through line just so much more appealing then being served some by a groovy hippy? Did you know Slim Horton doesn’t even brew real coffee anymore? Earlier this year they switched to the instant stuff without telling anyone. Well, no one noticed, so after a few months they spilled the beans. Anyway, back to what you really want to hear about - me. I was driving along, all tired like. Just when I needed it most, my good buddy Caleb calls me up. Boy, was he excited.
“Seb! Have you heard about EARTHSHIPS?”
I’m happy to be on the same team as Caleb. Especially now that he is excited about earthships. GOOGLE. Earthships are low impact, high efficiency homes built mostly from recycled and natural materials. They are the coolest. Most of them are off the grid, use very little energy and produce most or all of the energy they do use themselves. The most common type seems to be built half below ground, half above, using old tires and mud. Caleb wants to build one. I want to help build one and then build at least twelve more.
Maybe you’ve heard some conversing about acquiring some land as a group. Some people seem to be interested, and it’s great to hear the excitement. Land in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick is cheap. It’s really cheap, and it is also beautiful and fertile. With a little bit of effort and one less cup of Tim’s a day, in a few years we could be digging our very own earthship holes. Seriously though, in the near-distant future (?) we could all be kicking back in futuristic mud huts. Let that process while I spin some groovy tales:



In October, over Thanksgiving, I spent some time in New Mexico for the Balloon Fiesta. Coincidentally, at the same time my cousin Caitlyn was getting married to Steve, who just so happens to be one of the best dudes. They met at Middlebury where they were both studied fine arts. They love each other so much they decided to get married. The wedding was beautiful and simple. My grandfather presided over the non-denominational ceremony, which was awkward because Steve’s parents are fundamentalist Christians (his Dad is one of the boss men).
It was great to spend time with family and friends during such a festive love party, but I was just happy to be back in New Mexico. I was born there, in Albuquerque, where my family lived until I was 5. I don’t remember much from those days, and I don’t get to spend much time there. When I am lucky enough to be back in “The Land of Enchantment” (state nickname) do I feel a strong connection with the landscape, the people, the art, and maybe most importantly, the food. The red chile ristras are hanging anywhere anything can be hung. The green chile roasters are roastin’ in most of the vacant lots, where the smell is sure to gather in your good weather clothes.
New Mexican cuisine is unlike Texican food in that it is less greasy, less fried, but still sort of greasy and sort of fried, and it should always be smothered in red or green chile sauce. Much of it is meaty, but I spent most of the trip with my vegetarian brother and sister in (sort of) law, Elijah and Moorea, and they were never unsatisfied. Even my vegan cousin Sarah was happy, but she’s been known to cheat the cheese rules.
I also mentioned art. Albuquerque is where my dad studied fine art and where he began his career painting and doing graphic design. It is where the newly wed couple moved to pursue careers in art. When I spent a summer there a few years ago, I found work with an artist named Allan who only paid me in cash, disappeared for a few hours at a time every afternoon, and had a tear-drop birthmark/tattoo (?) below his left eye. What I’m getting at is that there are all kinds artists all over the place, and that might sound like the worst, but it is amazing because people really appreciate art. Art art art art. Public art is everywhere: on the highways, parks, buildings, street corners, etc. Most of it is reminiscent of the ideas that stem from the people of New Mexico’s roots. It’s a fine blend of Peublo Indian, Mexican and American. Earthy with a hint of turquoise. I guess it is the same aesthetic behind the Adobe style architecture that is everywhere.




One of the greatest parts of being in New Mexico is getting to know the friends my parents had when they were my age. My brother and I decided it would be worthwhile to pursue a career in time travel in order to be able to hang out with them our-age parents in the 70’s. One of them was my dad’s old roommate Ken, now living in Taos. In a gas-mobile, you can get to Taos from Albuquerque in three hours. The driving is nothing, though, because the landscapes are so hot! New Mexico isn’t all deserts, although if you ask me, the desert is some of the best scenery.

Beyond the billboards littered along most highways (My dad was proud to point out that the now-metal sings are the solution to the relentless war that he fought - with axe and saw - against what used to be wooden bill-board posts) are vast stretches of open, empty land covered with sagebrush. I couldn’t stop humming THIS. In fact, you should probably let that play as you continue reading. There are also mesas and plateaus, beyond those are mountains. Lots of mountain ranges: the Jemez, Sandia, Zuni, even the Rockies. Between the mountains are these lush valleys that are fed by rivers like the Rio Grande. There are also a few incredible canyons and gorges. Geologically, the place is fucked. There is a continental rift running through the state, so when the continental plates are bumpin’ and grindin’, the vibes are amplified. I think that is why the landscape is so cool, but another reason is because it is really dry. Only the toughest plants can survive, plants that you don’t see in the moist soils of Nova Scotia. People get really creative in their landscaping. Only the crazies have grassy lawns, because in draught times, the lawn watering types are heckled. The lawnscaping you do see is called xeriscaping: using only indigenous plants that can survive without being hose fed like little babies. Having a gravely backyard full of cacti and shrubs is a reality for a lot of people, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. It looks great with adobe houses. Ok, back on the topic of Adobe. I mentioned Ken earlier; we visited him in Taos. Besides fighting forest fires, teaching skiing and white water rafting, Ken makes a living building and selling Adobe houses. He cuts and mills his own wood, sources his own gypsum from the local mine and uses it to build houses that he designs. They are nice. When the climate is hot and dry, the doors really open up in terms of how you can build a house. Wood doesn’t rot, first of all. You don’t even need to pressure treat wood with chemicals that turn it green. There were three houses that Ken built within a few minutes walk, so we went to check them out. All I’ve wanted to do since then is learn to build these Adobe houses. They are sort of what gave rise to the earthships that Caleb called me to talk about. YES, ok, back on earthships. Now, here is the plan: when I am done school I am probably going to eventually find my self back in New Mexico, at least for a year or two. So now you understand that all of that ramblin’ was mostly a ploy to get all of you thinking about how cool New Mexico is so you will come hang out with my while I live there. Caleb is coming, he already signed up to come learn how to build earthships / adobes with me. My cousin is planning on starting an organic farm to provide all the produce for a hot restaurant in Albuquerque that friends of our parents run. So while we aren’t building, we can farm! Won’t that just be a time?
After a stint in NM though, I fully plan on coming back to the Maritimes. In fact, I might not even leave. Either way, pretty soon we’ll be ready to buy up a pretty little (100+ acres) piece with a lake, forest and farmland. I got to drive 1100 kms around the province last week, and oh my!





We’ll build ultra sustainable eco homes, grow our own food and generate our own electricity. Our green houses heated by Nick’s wood gas stoves will be producing Avocados in January! This kind of land is easier to secure in really rural areas, but I think that is just great. Our electric vehicles will have just enough range to get around, if necessary. I’ll probably run whatever business I will have started by then out of a lab/workshop/garage/office that I will have also created by then in my earthship, so no need for a commute. No need for a mortgage either, because your house cost less than $50,000 to build and there will never be electricity bills. Or expensive plane tickets to visit old friends, because they will live just behind the peach orchard, or around the herb (weed) garden, or across the root vegetable field, near the chicken coop. I think some of them will be living in tree houses as well.
See what I mean?



Thanks for reading.
Love, Sebastian


P.S. In case you were wondering why I am in the Last Port Motel in Canso, and why I drove a thousand kilometers around the province, it was for work. I work for Efficiency Nova Scotia, which used to be the Conservation and Energy Efficiency Dept. of Nova Scotia Power. My job is to help Commercial and Industrial customers reduce energy usage by retrofitting their facilities to become more energy efficient. The projects we do could include switching out lighting (incandescent to high efficiency fluorescent), installing new motors or pumps, switching resistance heating for heat pumps, even installing solar thermal panels. We help by providing incentives and financing for projects to make them economically feasible. It’s a good program. It is funded entirely by you and all the other NSPI customers.

Monica - Bonjour mes amis

Bonjour toute le monde,
Sorry my poste is a little late. Also, as an EMSP grad I have to disagree with the statement that we have never been modern, but laisse tomber. I am in the south of France in a town of 40 thousand called Ales, a 45 minute train ride from Nimes or an hour from Montpellier. I have the best roommates ever (except of course for those of you I lived with in Halifax). I'm living with a German girl Mareike who is also working as a language assistant in primary schools and three french guys. One, Kenji, is doing a work placement in Ales until the end of November and then he is going back to Grenoble. Manu is finishing his last year of high school and is pretty much always high. Clement is a physchologist and just started working in Ales, and despite better judgement of not dating roommates, on est ensemble. Ales is not the prettiest town, and it is funny when we decide to go to one of the two bars in town because as there's no university it's all high school students or real grown ups. We have a huge garden and a veranda which was really nice when it was warm and sunny we would eat outside but it is getting cold now and most of the leaves are gone. Cold relatively speaking, light jacket and scarf weather. I am working in three schools teaching kids from age 6-11 and for the most part the kids have been great, really enthousiastic about learning english which is nice. I know for a fact though that I do not want to be a teacher after this. I work about 12 hours a week, and the rest of the time I plan lessons, drink coffee and eat a whole lot of baguette with Mareike. Last week we were on holiday and went to Barcelona for a few days. I still can't believe that you can get on a bus and six hours later be in Barcelona. From Toronto you would be in Montreal. I like Montreal, but no comparison. For the most part I really like it here. I told my mom that I was dating one of my roommates and she said "fine, just come home at the end of it. and don't start smoking." Bon. On verra bien. I miss the wonderful world that was King's, but France is pretty great too. and if any of you want to come visit me please do! et, c'est tout. A bientot.
Monica