ESL Volunteer Opportunity for Advanced Students Who Speak Mandarin or Tamil

A LINC school conveniently located next to Finch Subway Station is looking for advanced ESL students who speak Mandarin or Tamil to help their lower-level students along. In return, the volunteer gets many opportunities to use the English language and relate it meaningfully to his or her first language, all of which amount to more "Canadian experience." 

The LINC school has contacted me to see if anyone might be interested.

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Please let me know if you'd like to volunteer in a LINC school, and I'll put you in touch with them.

Today's Field Trip

It's 10 o'clock at College Park Food Court. Where's José?


Stragglers ... don't impress Waldi. C'mon, time to hit them streetcars!


Donald points the way forward.


Let's go south from College to Dundas!


The weather's perfectly cooperative. Keep following the white toupee, willya?


Arriving at Old Chinatown, tempting sights galore!


Someone spotted broccoli, two bunches for a dollar. More fell for it.


Entering Kensington Market.




Can't ignore the staff of life!




One for the road, eh?


Don't say cheese!


George Dubya Bush, for young and old, always a crowd pleaser!


Artsy pencils of the Ontario College of Art & Design


At the Grange: a stairway to heaven?


What a fine, fine day--here's where the field trip winds up.


Viorica, Cathy, Joan, José (lost 'n' found, there he is), and Hossein (his rescuer). Where's Tanya?


Last pose--Ariane's already got her naughty pic.

Field Trip Friday to Kensington Market, Old Chinatown, and Wherever Else Donald Leads

Meeting Place: College Park Food Court--get there from College Subway Station on the Yonge line.
Time: 10 a.m. (Some of your classmates may be leaving from Don Mills Station at 9 a.m..)
Hang on to your TTC transfers--we'll be riding on the streetcar and getting token reimbursements from Tanya.
Wear walking shoes and bring water and snacks.


A picture of College Park Food Court off the Internet

Kensington Market: off the Internet


Old Chinatown: off the Internet

See you all there!

Victoria Day at Colonel Danforth Park

It was fun for us to be together on Victoria Day, mostly Singaporean and Malaysian Canadians, at Colonel Danforth Park. Getting there was difficult. For some reason, the GPS directed us to Wanita Park, and we wasted about 30 minutes hunting all over for the place (I'm even dubious about the google map below). We got close once but turned away as we didn't see the park sign; so it was another runaround before finally getting there around 10:30 a.m.


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But it was so worth the trip.




First at the trough: Who's that swine in shorts?

All the favourite fare was there: Nonya laksa, Siamese kueh, pulot hitam, beehoon goreng, etc. There were egg and ham sandwiches and cut fruits for our Canadian-Canadian friends. We sat around for three hours reminiscing about our lives, discussing the Bible, and making plans for the summer.



I'd have to say the best thing about the park is the trail that runs by a creek right down to Lake Ontario. Looking out at the expanse of water, on the left looms the Pickering nuclear plant, and over to the right the beach stretches on towards Toronto's downtown, which wasn't visible. On the sandy beach itself was a bunch of bone-white driftwood. What a stunning sight.

It also helped that I'd looked up the history of the park and of the "colonel" the night before.

Bumper Attendance Yesterday: 21

Thanks, Sveta, for the above!




Thanks to Viorica for these pix!

So, who can add the names under Comments?
(Maybe clockwise, starting from Hossein at the extreme right?)

Six Years to Professional Job -- Worth It?

RICHARD LAUTENS/TORONTO STAR

Zardasht Gaf, pictured with his fiancee, Cynthia Leung, arrived in Canada from Kurdistan, Iraq, in 2003, seeking refuge from Saddam Hussein's tyranny.

This Kurdish doctor volunteers at a hospital and flips his dictionaries and pizza on the way to becoming a Canadian doctor. Check out his story here:



More stories here.

Taking Attendance

The Stroller Squad.


Follow the Leader!


Awaiting Part 2 ...


Jose and Hossein with the leader.


Big cheese!


Yorkville!


Having crossed the Red Sea, Moses takes us through the Yorkwilderness.


This civil engineer thought the fire station was cool.


Can the English dance? A May Day moment in Yorkville.


Yes ... they ... can!


The founder of the U of T. How do you say this guy's last name? Stra ... Stra ...


The U of T war dead, from WWII.


Didn't stay too long here in this too-hot room.


One for the road ... a class photo.

Here's me as the mean teacher who takes attendance from basement of the Toronto Reference Library. Here's those who showed up today:

1. Hossein
2. Siwen
3. Cindy
4. Joan
5. Vivian

Did I miss out anybody? Where's the rest of you?

Thanks to Siwen for that bottle of water, which was probably the spare for her baby, and to Joan for the Redoxon tablet, without which I probably wouldn't have been able to make it through the day!

Well, we got to see the top (5th) floor, beginning with a briefing by the Audio/ESL staff, continuing through the languages section, and finishing with the performing arts section and view over the Don Valley.

Next was the second level--we had to take the elevators with strollers in tow--where we saw the great OED (what's that?) and other reference resources. It was a little too difficult for the kids to keep up; so the stroller delegation headed for the main lobby to keep the little people amused.

Joan and I continued looking at the main stacks of the second level before heading for the basement--the newspaper section. Joan's quietly reading her paper while I'm driving the person watching youtube next to me crazy with this tap-a-tapping off a noisy keyboard.

So far so good ... we met up with everybody at 11:30 a.m. at the lobby, took our group photos, and then followed Donald to historic Yorkville and his alma mater, the University of Toronto. For the rest, we'll let the pictures tell a thousand words each.