The Real Role of the Queen

Queen Elizabeth II. She is the Queen of England right? We all know that. But what does she really do? She must have a royal duty or something like that right? Does she just sit there in her throne asking for the heads of disrespectful peasants who dare enter her presence without a proper tribute?

 First of all, Elizabeth is actually Queen of something a little bit more complex. She is the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms. But that doesn’t answer our question. What does she actually do?

Well, to clarify, her role is mainly symbolical, although she is Britain’s head of state but her executive powers are limited by constitutional rules so no heads rolling.

Being the visible face of the country, her role can be fulfilled by doing multiple chores like having audiences with important people like overseas ambassadors. She also meets people who have won prizes or awards in diverse categories.

Being a Queen you would expect some political powers or influence that she may have, and she does, two of them potentially very controversial. First, she may refuse a government's request to dissolve parliament and call an election, if she believes a government can legitimately be formed. Second and last, she has the right to choose the prime minister, ignoring all elections.

Concluding, the Queen is a figure recognized worldwide whose role is mostly symbolical with some remains of what a queen used to be. She still have some power over her country and her realms but recently reduced to a diplomatic role between her European island and the rest of the world and according to the royal website her role “focuses on national unity”. If she accomplishes that is a question we might answer some other time.

Too cold to go out? That does not happen in Canada.

When winter falls and increases the cold in Canada, go outside can be a dangerous adventure. Because of this,  Canada has underground centers, that have wonderful and huge underground cities that connect office buildings, shopping malls, subway stations and rail and even sports grounds. The best known are:

The underground city of Toronto (PATH), consists of 27 km of walking and 1,200 shops that link many important buildings and attractions of downtown with five subway stations. An estimated 100,000 pedestrians frequent the PATH daily. The PATH allows access from the main hotels to the most important and stadiums, basketball and baseball tourist attractions. Also,Toronto has a smaller underground city, which connects several buildings and two subway stations. 

And...The underground city  RESO of montreal over 32 km of tunnels that run underneath the city and are accessible from public buildings and subway stations. It is an ideal way to beat the winter cold, because in them is everything, restaurants, cinemas, more than 2000 shops, and even a university campus. 

But Canada has more underground cities, perhaps not as well known but just as attractive as in Edmonton, there is a small system of tunnels and pedestrian overpasses called "Pedway" connecting the buildings and stations LRT (light rail transit) of the core City, Downtown Halifax in which no point is more than 10 minutes away on foot or Vancouver has a shopping promenade called Pacific Centre that extends almost 3 hectares, which contains within over 200 underground shops. 

So.. you still think that in Canada you don't  go for a walk by cold?

Received Pronunciation? Posh accent? British accents!

Many people think that all British people talk like the Queen –that is, they talk using “Received Pronunciation” (R.P) also known as “Standard English”–, in a very “posh” way. Well, let me tell you that you’re very wrong!

There are a lot of different accents in England and the United Kingdom and each of them is very different from each other, letting you know where the person who’s talking is from the moment you hear them speak.

Most foreigners either like R.P a lot or strongly dislike it, but the thing is that when you’re studying British English you tend to try to learn Received Pronunciation thinking that’s how all Brits talk when in fact only very few people use it nowadays (mostly old people) and it’s not all that very well seen – it can even annoy people sometimes.

In the video above you have some cultural reasons as to why R.P is not the ideal accent you should learn mostly because you will hardly hear it if you ever talk to a British person.

Well now, I bet all of you are curious about how do people in the United Kingdom really sound! In the video below there are examples of 17 different kinds of British accents. Yes, seventeen!

Impressive, right? Some of the most known British accents are the “Queen’s English” (R.P), Liverpool, North England, Birmingham, Newcastle, Scotland and London’s East End dialect called Cockney Rhyming Slang.

If you start to wonder how is it possible for Brits to talk so differently from each other, have in mind that, only in London, 250 languages are spoken, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. Imagine how it is all over the UK and how it influences people’s accents.

An "Ice Hotel" in Canada

When you mention Canada, I can think only of the maple leaf and the funny uniforms. I never imagined that Canada is one of the largest countries in the world and because of this it is very rich in culture. It is a bilingual nation (Anglophone and Francophone population) and is in third place, as one of the coldest countries in the world.

In eastern of Canada, we can find the province of Quebec, one of the largest and oldest in the country. It is the only predominantly Francophone region of the country and North America.

In Quebec we can find many wonderful places, but one of the most impressive is the "Hotel De Glace" (Ice Hotel).

 This hotel is the only one that exists here in America (I mean the continent). And is in operation since 2001 (this year turned 15 years of operation).

They need approximately 11,000 tons of snow and 350 tons of ice to build it and take five weeks.

 It is an each season construction, which of course, is constructed with the first snowflakes of winter. To "melt" in the end of winter. This is roughly between January and the end of March each year.

The hotel has 44 beautiful rooms, a chapel, a huge hall with large chandeliers, two courtyards, a bar and much more.

In the spring, more than 2,500 bricks of ice will be consumed by the awakening of the sun. And that’s mean an end of the year for the Ice hotel.

When I saw this in the thousands of pages that I visited, I could not help thinking that must be thousands of people who build this large hotel. Also I could not help imagining the Castle of the movie Frozen with all its characters, while I was writing this.

I hope if you have the opportunity to travel to Canada, and especially to Quebec, in winter, you have to visit the

 Hotel De Glace, so they can live a unique experience!

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ciiHYmscGY&feature=player_embedded 

The legend of “Stingy Jack"

The legend of the first jack-o'-lantern comes from Ireland and involves a man called Stingy Jack. The legend has it that Stingy Jack had a drink with the Devil. Jack, being stingy, didn't want to pay for the drinks, so he tricked the Devil into turning into a coin. Jack put the coin inside his pocket next to a sliver cross that prohibited the Devil from changing back. Stingy Jack was able to get the Devil to promise him that he would be left alone for a year, and that when Jack died, the Devil would not claim his soul.

The next year, Jack met the Devil again. This time Jack tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a cross into the tree's bark so the Devil could not come down until he promised Jack not to bother him for 10 more years.

Soon after, Jack died. He was too evil to get into heaven, and the Devil could not take him to hell without breaking his word. So the Devil sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has roamed the Earth with it ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as "Jack of the Lantern," then simply as "Jack O'Lantern."

In Ireland and Scotland, people began making their own versions of Jack's lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack.

Immigrants brought the jack-o'-lantern tradition with them to the United States, where they began carving Stingy Jack's face into pumpkins.

Jamaica's Guiness Record

When you heard the word “Jamaica”, what is

the first imaget that comes to your mind? Probably a Rastafari with a three coloured cap singing “Jamming” in a hammock under a palm tree by the sea. A very stereotypical perception of what Jamaica is. Isn’t it? 

Is for that reason that I would like to bring up a phrase that the novelist Chamamanda Adichie said in a remarkable speech :” Stereotypes are not wrong, but incomplete".

                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Having said that ,Jamaica is more than the caricature that we described at the beginning. Can you belive that this country is in the Giness Book of World Records? Believe it or not, Jamaica has more churches per square mile (1600 in total) than in any other country in the world (except the Vatican City itself) 

                              

                               

The reason , is  that the majority of these churches are based in poor communities ,where the Gospel must be preached to the poor for their needs are greater.But uptown people enjoy  going to churches as well ,and all of them have a great time by singing and sharing their faith.This is just one of many interesting facts about Jamaica that can contribute to your idea of what this country and  its beliefs are and thus, to leave behind  this steriotipical image , this  "single story" about a country that has so many things to give and show to the world. What do you think?