culture
Twins Parade
Jul 30th
Ha ha ha!
The Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal just ended last weekend. I was lucky enough to stumble upon the Twins Parade. I had heard of it before but I had never attended. It was super interesting and fun to watch!
The concept for the Twins Parade is very simple – Lots of twins walking down the street together. This year the theme was a ball, which is a fancy, formal evening dance party, so the twins were dressed up. You can find out more about it here at their website.
There were twins dancing around and twins being driven around. There were twin (and triplet) babies.There was also a set of twins in carriage who were said to be 100 years old. Every once in awhile you might meet someone who is a twin, but is was strangely fun to see so many at once!
Here is some footage from the Twins Parade shot by my friend who was also there!
Dragon’s Beard Candy in Chinatown
Jun 26th
Hi everybody!
It’s summertime in the Northern Hemisphere and in Montreal that means that it’s time for all kinds of festivals and outdoor events like sidewalk sales. A sidewalk sale is a special event where all the stores and restaurants on a certain street or in a certain area move outside and sell their things in front of their stores, on the sidewalk.
I had a neat cultural experience this afternoon in Montreal’s Chinatown (an area where many Chinese and East Asian immigrants and families live). There was a big sidewalk sale happening in Chinatown, so my boyfriend and I went to explore the neighbourhood a little and to see what interesting things we could discover.
One of the most interesting things we saw was a little shop selling a special kind of candy called dragon’s beard candy. It’s called “dragon’s beard” candy because the sugary candy is pulled and stretched again and again until it’s thin and wispy like the hairs of a long white beard. Then the thin strands are wrapped around a yummy mixture of peanuts, sesame seeds, chocolate, and coconut.
Photo by Ryan King
Photo by Ryan King
The owner of the shop and his assistants make the candy right there in front of you, so in addition to getting to eat some really interesting, delicious candy, you also get to see how it’s made, which is really entertaining!
If you’d like to read more about dragon’s beard candy, here’s an article about the shop we visited in Montreal’s Chinatown: Dragon Beard Candy in Montreal and around the World.
Photo by Ryan King
What kinds of festivals and events happen in your town in the summer? We’d love to hear about them!
Jessie
PostSecret
Jun 2nd
Hello everyone,
If you ever read this blog you may have noticed that one of my favourite things to do in my spare time is listen and watch for expressions we’ve looked at in Culips’ episodes! But seriously — I was surfing the net, looking at a site I like to check out from time to time called PostSecret. It is an ongoing art project where people mail in their secrets on postcards anonymously. It started in 2005 and was created by American Frank Warren. At his website www.postsecret.com new postcards are updated every Sunday. Sometimes the secrets are very specific and sometimes the secrets are very general. The cards are always beautiful and interesting.
If you like art and you are learning English this could be a fun site to check out. The English is always simple and there is an image that helps or adds to the written part. This week there is a card that reads “it makes me happy that none of us get a how-to guide/we’re all just kind of winging it.” We looked at this expression on Culips at the end of 2009. Here is a link to this episode if you are curious.
And are you wondering what that postsecret means? The person writing seems to be talking about life and that no one knows exactly what we are supposed to do with our lives, in other words, “none of us get a how-to guide.” We don’t have any big long term plans we are just acting in the moment of life or “winging it.” Here is a direct link to this postcard.
If you check out PostSecret let me know what you think! Does a similar project exist in any other languages?
Stuck in my head
Mar 13th
Do you ever get a song stuck in your head? You keep singing it over and over in your mind.
Last weekend I edited the Catch Word episode about the word wannabe. In it, Jessie and Maura talk about the singer Lady Gaga and how someone might be a Lady Gaga wannabe and dress like her and say provocative things like she does. It’s an interesting episode so check it out here if you want to know what a wannabe is.
Well, ever since I listened to that episode I’ve had Lady Gaga’s song Poker Face stuck in my head. Here’s a short clip of the song. If you’re interested in learning more about what a poker face is, check out our Catch Word episode titled Stone, where Maura and I discuss the idiom poker face.
When a song is stuck in my head, I often find myself humming it out loud too. To hum a song is to make the tune of the song without opening your lips and singing the words. I’m really bad at singing (and actually even at humming), so people can never recognize what song it is.
What song is stuck in your head?
Harp
Snowshoeing!
Mar 5th
Hey all!
I went snowshoeing a couple weeks ago and wanted to share some photos with you. You can see in the picture where we are standing that my two friends are wearing some funny things on their feet. These are snowshoes! They are like shoes for snow. But actually, they are just attachments that go on the bottom of your boots. When you wear snowshoes you can walk in the forest in deep snow and these special attachments help keep you above the snow.
Check out the frozen waterfall behind us.
They actually have snowshoes all over the world and we don’t know exactly when or where they were invented. Here is a link to a little interesting article about the history of snowshoes.
Snowshoe is a noun, but can also be used as a verb.
I had to upload these pictures now, because it seems like it is almost spring in our part of Canada. We have been having temperatures above 0 with lots of sun lately. Hopefully spring has come early this year!
We're taking a break!
Olympic Fever
Feb 18th
I love the Olympics, I always have and I always will. As a young girl, I remember being excited whenever the Olympics were happening. I was about 7 years old when the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics happened and I remember watching many of the different events. I love both the Summer and Winter Olympics and have my favourite events for each. In the Summer Olympics, I love watching swimming and track. In Winter Olympics, I love speed skating, figure skating, snowboarding, bob-sledding; OK, really, I love them all!
I have been very excited about Vancouver 2010 for the last couple months. Before the Olympics started the Olympic flame was carried across Canada by thousands of people, some famous athletes but mainly by ordinary Canadians. I wish I could have been one of the lucky torch bearers. When the Olympic Flame was in Montreal I went to the Old Port of Montreal to celebrate. It was a very cold night but it was very exciting to see the flame so close and to see the excitement of the crowd and of the torch bearers. I have added some pictures that I took that night.
I think that most Canadians have Olympic Fever right now. At work, at school, with friends or even on the bus, everyone is talking about the Olympics. It was exciting when Canada finally won its first Olympic gold medal on home soil. Canada has won many gold medals at Olympics in different countries but never before in Canada .
The best part of the Olympics is hearing the stories about different athletes and their struggles to become an Olympic athlete. I always cheer for Canada but I also love hearing the stories about athletes from different parts of the world and cheering for them too.
Are you watching the Olympics? How many medals does your country have? What is your favorite sport to watch?
Also if you want to hear more about the city of Vancouver here is a link to the episode that Maura and I did last year.
Hat Head!
Jan 13th
Hey everyone!
Today (like most days in winter) I was thinking about hat head. I have hat head pretty much every day in winter…and I don’t like it!
Hat head is an expression we use in Canada (and the U.S.) to describe what hair looks like after someone has worn a hat for some time. After wearing a hat for a few hours, the hair is often flat underneath. If you have straight hair normally, the hair underneath may have a line in it. If you have curly hair (like me) when you take off a hat, some of your hair is flat and some is curly.
It is not usually a problem for me in the summer because I don’t wear hats but in the winter most people wear hats because it is so cold. At least others have hat head too and it’s not just me! Lots of Canadians have hat head.
Do you get hat head often?
Do you want to see my hat head? 
And do you know the Canadian word for winter hat? It’s toque (sometimes spelled tuque or touque)!
Culips declared ESL Site of the Year 2009 by EnglishClub!!!
Jan 8th
ESL Site of the Year 2009
Culips declared ESL Site of the Year 2009 by EnglishClub!!!
This week the Culips team learned that we are being honoured by EnglishClub as ESL Site of the Year for 2009!!!. We are very excited by this news as EnglishClub is a leader in the ESL world. The EnglishClub website is wonderful for both teachers and students of English. If you have never been to the EnglishClub website, go check it out! It’s a great site. If you are visiting us here from EnglishClub, thanks for checking out our site, we hope you like what you see and hear!
Culips was also the ESL Site of the Month in June 2009 – check out what Jessie said about the award here.
Harp
Montreal Music TV!
Aug 5th
Summer in Montreal is the time for festivals. We have already had our biggest festivals, the International Jazz festival and the Just for Laughs Comedy festival. Right now the festival for French music, Francofolies, is taking place in the streets of downtown Montreal. There are also many smaller festivals happening all the time in Montreal!
Recently we also had a festival for African music! My friends at Montrealmusic.tv asked me to help interview some of the English-speaking musicians playing the festival. You can see me in some of the videos on their site (click here: Montrealmusic.tv), including FreshlyGround, a popular group from South Africa, and Neev, a local Montreal musician.
Thanks Montrealmusic.TV!
Gala
Jun 20th
Normally when Maura and I hang out or go to parties we wear jeans and t-shirts. But last week Maura and I attended a gala. A gala is a fancy party, so instead of our normal jeans and t-shirts we had to dress a bit fancier.
I love galas because I think it’s fun to dress up every once in a while. Neither of us knew what to expect but we were very excited. We didn’t know if it was going to be a sit-down dinner or a cocktail (only drinks). It turned out to be a cocktail and so there were no seats, everyone stood and mingled. Mingling is talking to people about simple topics (not something heavy like politics but maybe the weather) and you usually do this with people you don’t know at all or only a little bit.
There were some delicious appetizers that servers (waiter/waitresses) brought around, as well as some nice wine. We both had a great time but we were both a bit nervous. We wanted to mingle but we didn’t know if people spoke French or English or both. For me mingling in English is not a problem because it’s my native language and I am not very shy. I am a bit shy when I speak in French though, because my French is not perfect and I have an accent. But I have learned that most people are very patient and willing to talk even if you make grammatical mistakes. I spoke to a couple of different people in French and it was good, I practiced my French and I felt happy that I was brave enough to talk to people.
So if you are invited to a party where people are speaking in English, don’t be shy, try to mingle!
Of all the podcasts with 'real world' English examples, I like yours the best. Maybe its the fun you put into the lessons. The students can here that in your voices. And they also feel your dedication to what you are doing - it's just not a job you do, but a gift you give to everyone who listens. And while the students like the Lipservice PDFs for all the information it contains, as a teacher I am impressed by the professional effort put into making them. I give the Culips podcast and the Culips crew my highest recommendation, both as a teacher, and a listener. 
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