New York, New York

Getting through customs at Toronto airport was appauling, apparently they were on a 'work to rule' or 'go slow' or whatever but hundreds of travellers delayed. i arrived at the airport two and a half hours before the plane was due to leave and I walked on the plane with five minutes to spare before the scheduled takeoff time. It was then delayed another hour to allow the rest of the passengers to actually get through customs and get on the plane.

Arriving in New York City the energy and hustle and bustle was apparent from the moment I arrived.

The shuttle dropped me off at the Pennsylvania Hotel on 7th Avenue and almost ended up with a taxi up it's bum as it stopped to let me out just after the traffic lights.

The first thing on my agenda was to pick up my New York City Pass I ordered over the net. I had to get it from Planet Hollywood on 42nd St in Times Square and was very surreal to see all these places that have featured in movies and television for real.

The Hotel was on 33rd St and Times Square was on 42nd St, I walked the who way ... what was I thinking, but that was only the beginning of the walking for the day.

Came back to the Hotel and got a bit of a 'plan' together. Dropped into Macy's (which was only one block from the Hotel Penn) just to have a bit of a look. Decided to catch the subway up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as I thought it was the one that would be least interesting to me.

Subway was absolutely packed and in my panic not to stay on so long that I would end up somewhere I didn't know I ended up getting off at 42nd St and walking all the way to the Metropolitan Museum (near 86th St!!) It was great to see the city by foot and also walking along the edges of Central Park.

Noticed one of Hamish and Andy's Police cars ... so they weren't making that up after all!!

Now ... walking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), just the foyer was incredible in the amount of people, the architecture, the Ancient Egyptian statue!


 



The Met just blew me away with the depth of their collection. The first room I walked into was the Ancient Greek section where dozens of clay pots, urns and artifacts were on display.



 






















The next room I think was even better, many kouros figure sculptures. From reading and studying them at school to now seeing one in the flesh, far from disappointing, surreal and the detail gained in light of the tools they had at their disposal was breathtaking.

So many highlights! Boccioni's "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space" was much larger than I had pictured it.

Matisse's "The Young Sailor", can remember it as being in the first "blockbuster" exhibition in AGNSW, must have been in the 70's!

The Inca art was incredible, I've never seen a collection of this art before but it was absolutely amazing. (especially since most of it is gold!)

And the rest of the works! Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Degas just mindblowingly brilliant!

 

An if that wasn't enough there was an Ancient Egyptian section that even had a temple from Egypt reconstructed in the museum and countless other sculptures, paintings, artifacts, and more, only problem was, I arrived at 4pm, I knew the museum was supposed to close at 5.30pm and from what I knew about it previously I thought (wrongly) that this one wouldn't hold much interest (comparatively) for me and they started shooing everyone out at 5.10pm!! so really had to rush ... will need to make another trip another day before I leave.

I walked back from the Museum (Museum was on 86th St, my Hotel was on 33rd St (what was I thinking!) and came across an old friend. A nice young woman saw me looking stupid trying to take a photo of myself in front of it so she took pity and took it for me. This one's for you Jenn!

Finally I got back to the hotel and rested my very weary feet for a couple of hours. I wanted to go to the Empire State Building at night - Shades of "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Affair to Remember" - So there I was on the top of the Empire State at 12pm, not waiting for, but thinking about my love. The view was breathtaking, the city lights dazzling and exciting to look down on this city that never sleeps. (I was beginning to think I'd never sleep as well!)



The final exchange

The last few days of the exchange were busy with going to a workshop on Monday 3rd in Napanee by Jennifer Abrams on "Having the Hard Conversations". She had a really nice style to her presentation and the way she encouraged all participants to script out a difficult conversation that was needed was a good way to maximise the chances of the workshop actually being used to its best effect.

On Tuesday 4th, spent the morning touring around PECI Co-op students and their work placements. Good to see kids engaged in non-school but work preparing in businesses. They all seemed happy and employers seemed to be pleased also.

 

At the end of the day Paul took me over to Belleville and his friend had a small boat and took us out for a sail. The day up to that point was a bit grey and horrible but it brightened for the afternoon and we went out on the water. The winds were very light, but none-the-less had a fantastic afternoon sailing and we docked the boat again just after sunset ... magic.

Last day said my goodbyes to Gayle and Abby and Paul drove me into Toronto for the final LEAP conference. Some good speakers, most particularly Lynette Spence who spoke on Equity in Education.

We had our farewell dinner, said all our goodbyes and hopefully we'll catch up with many of these fine people at some point in the future.

Quiet days and hard conversations

Sunday 2nd, had a quiet day mostly producing the previous few posts with a bit of a drive around the country-side and a stop at the ice cream shop just before they closed. Good thing the girl closing was a student of Paul's and she let us in!

Had my first geo-caching adventure ... well ... fake geo-caching adventure!

Monday 3rd, went to a workshop by US Author/Consultant, Jennifer Abrams, on Having Hard Conversations. This was held in a place called Napanee.

View Larger Map

She was quite an engaging speaker, very down to earth with a well organised structure to the day that incorporated practical elements with her theoretical "musings".

Went for a bit of a walk in the afternoon and took photos and did my first drawing (nothing special!)

Hitting the sights and the heights

On Saturday, first did a little shopping then hit the subway to visit the Royal Onatario Museum (ROM). The station was really impressive the way they'd done it out.

Very unique entrance and today was the day for all the medieval geeks to be out in force with dances, displays and weaponry. There was one particular guy that seemed to be able to play any instrument he laid his hand on. A flute like instrument, bagpipes, stings, the lot!

Particularly looked at the Native Canadian People section, very well laid out and really interesting to see all the displays.

The dinosaur section was really impressive as well. Well laid out, airy, very viewer friendly, even though some of the exhibits had few "real" bones, but on the whole a fantastic experience.





For some reason these fossils really reminded me of John Olsen drawings.



Also visited the National Inuit Museum down near the harbour. Really interesting to read about their history and their culture. The sculptures they many were really lovely and they have a great sense of graphics.

The creature Sedna was very prominent in their culture. She is the goddess of the sea and legand has it that when her hair is wild, she is unmanageable and holds back the sea creatures from man so fish etc can not be caught.

From the Inuit Museum we made our way to CN Tower to take the ride to the top. The tower is 533 metres tall and the observation deck that we were on is 342 metres above the ground. We had to wait for ages before we could go up because there was a wedding up on the glass floored section of the tower.

You really know you've made it when they start putting your name up around the place. Take a look at the sign a little above my head!!

Paul on the glass floor. One woman near us was jumping up and down on it seeing if it would break... Gladly it didn't!

The view from the top

From the Tower, we made our way to the Air Canada Centre where the hockey game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detriot Red Wings was being held.

The commitment of the fans and the atmosphere was pretty special but people! stay in your seats! Three sections of 20 minutes to a game of hockey, 20 minutes between sections. Toronto lost 2-4 :-(

Running away with the circus

Cirque du Soleil show was brilliant. Once again the acts where superb, the sets vibrantly coloured and the production values were brilliant.

Video trailer of the show

I've read some reviews that were critical but I truley couldn't fault it at all. I thought the theme running through it kept a thread that draw together the amazing physical feats of the cirque with very funny comedy routines interspersed throughout.

It started with frogs vaulting and jumping, visually extravagant and breathtaking.

The theme of the native people of North America added a spiritual flavour to the show.

All the performers were just brilliant, the Chinese women with their bowls on their heads, I just don't know how they do it.

Fantastic night!

Some videos of the show:

Totem 1

Totem 2

Totem 3

Totem 4

Totem acrobats

Toronto days

Went to Toronto on 30th September. Had a session on Connective Intelligence which sounded really interesting but the frustrating thing was that us Aussies can't do the full course since it's based in Ontario. Maybe they'd like to come to Australia for a visit!

Connective Intelligence Presentation

After the presentation Paul and I went for a LONG walk around Toronto. It was good to get a feel for the city, though I can't say I really knew where I was for any real length of time. My compass bearings are totally messed up with the Sun in the South at noon ... what goes here? Didn't they learn the Sun just HAS to be North at noon??

Walked past a shop, reminded me of Aden!

City Hall is a bit of an iconic building in Toronto. They have an Ice Rink in its forecourt during winter.

They have quite a few long shopping centres in the centre of Toronto and most of them seem to be connected with underground pathways. I would imagine in the dead of winter that it would be impossible to get around the city otherwise.

Eaton Centre is one of the busiest of these.

Our walk took us to the waterfront and nice to be reminded of home.

We had dinner in a restaurant called Marche where you were given a swipe card when you went in and then there were a lot of food "stations" around where you chose what you wanted and then they swiped your card to register. As you were leaving your card was swiped and you paid the whole bill. Still find it hard to get used to the 12-13% tax added to everything you buy and the 10-15% tipping. The restaurant was in a shopping centre and at dusk the light was streaming in with highly vaulted ceilings, it was beautiful.

Cirque du Soleil for the evening, their "Totem" show. It was absolutely brilliant!

Day at the bay

Spent Thursday 29th mostly at Bayside Secondary School. Gayle drove me over there and they were really welcoming and made me feel at home. They clearly are on the cutting edge of technology and have invested huge amounts of resources into making sure that education is technologically relevant to students to make sure they can connect to them in a contemporary world.

Saw a lesson where a lower ability class was editing/making videos on bullying. Very impressive to see how they were engaged and self directed.

Another teacher was teaching King Lear. He had originally thought I was coming into an earlier lesson but not-with-standing he had the kids eating out of his hands. This was a college level class and the kinds of questions they were asking and the observations they were making in regard to Lear and any "parallels" it may have to their own lives was astounding.

Grant Montgomery, the principal, was one of those people you can be nothing but inspired by. Clearly a strong vision and purpose who brings people with him on the journey. I think he has even convinced me to broaden my networking to twitter to engage with an international educational community and the thoughts he has on student LEARNING networks are brilliant, will have to think carefully about how to pull that one off wihout opening up more opportunities for students to harass each other.

Some interesting webtools: Todays meet; socrative Diigo, Zite (I think he was trying to sell me an Ipad! [joking]), Poll everywhere, Mahara (looks like Live Binder).

Gayle picked me up from Belleville and we stopped of to watch Abigail's Rugby game (they didn't win!) then all returned for dinner.

Went to watch Paul's Hockey game in the night over at Belleville. No win but good to watch.