February 2004

Hello friends,

January was even colder than last year. There was less snow than last year, but on two days there was so much of this white form of water that the university canceled all classes after 17:00. It was so cold that one of the water pipes in my house froze for few days. It was so cold that I started to doubt the common belief that the earth has only two poles. I suspect that a third pole exists near Toronto, and somehow it disappears in the summer.

An advantage of this weather is that they have winter sports. Although I had no previous experience, I thought that while I am here I must learn something about ski. Canada has plenty of ski resorts. The problem is that except few hills, Ontario is relatively flat. But these hills were good enough for me. The serious skiers go to Quebec or the Rocky Mountains at British Columbia (on the west coast). It is a bit surprising that they are using machine made snow.
I took a 45 minutes crash course. Ski was a bit odd to me since the "V" positioning of the legs is opposite to the positioning in roller skating (they call it "pizza", which shows you how much respect they have for pizza). Even stranger is the idea that in ski going up is easier than going down.
On the slopes, I could see four years old children learning ski. At elementary school, they have ski trips, and after that age teenagers are skiing like in a motorcycle race, with spectacular jumps in the air and even more spectacular falls. Expect to see these guys in the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympic Games.

Another interesting event we had on campus was the Israeli festival. There are many clubs of international students at U of T, and some of them produce cultural events. Small countries like Iran or China do one day celebrations for their new year. A country which generates 10% of worldwide foreign news does it for one week.



The program included, among other things, talks about Israeli archeology and technology (the latter given by a speaker from Weizmann's office in Toronto), a backgammon tournament, and even a self-defense lesson for women. Most impressive for me was the Beduwi tent. They set this "authentic" tent inside a university hall. This attraction here is the same as if Canadians would set up an igloo in Israel. Just to remind you, the temperature outside was -15. That's why they couldn't find a camel who would agree to come.



For the readers who waited for the story about the symphonic band, here it is: After a month of negotiations and pressures, including an article in the university's newspaper, the conductor was rehired and we had the concert. A week before the concert my lips froze while I was outside, and I couldn't play a sound for three days. The concert was reasonable, though I think we played better on rehearsals. There is a recording , which didn't catch all instruments equally. It is hard to believe there were 15 flutes there, but it reflects the band's level on the concert's freezing night.


Ady.