Newfoundland

While in Korea I met an amazing girl from a small town in Newfoundland. She quickly became one of my best friends and an amazing support system for me in Korea. She met a boy from Missouri, they fell in love and eventually got engaged. This girl, Krista, had promised her mom years ago that if she got married she'd come back to her home town, Port Saunders, to have the wedding. I was asked to stand for them at the wedding, so I bought a ticket for middle-of-nowhere-Canada. To be honest I had hoped that the wedding would be somewhere just a little bit cooler, with more things to see and do....like New York or Florida. I had been to Newfoundland once and I didn't exactly have a good time. (that's another story that doesn't really matter now) So I wasn't exactly as excited as I should have been to go there.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I had a fantastic time!

Port Saunders is a little town of about 500 people on a beautiful little bay on the west cost of Newfoundland. The place was beautiful with water all around and luscious trees for miles. Krista is related to about half of the people and everyone knows everyone. We'd be driving along and Krista would be like "oh there's my cousin so-and-so" and "that's where uncle ____ lives". There are two other little towns (Port au Choix and Hawke's Bay) about a 10 min drive on either side of Port Saunders. Between those 3 towns there was a few restaurants, small gas stations, grocery stores, a bar, a few hair salons etc. Other than that there were houses and boats, lots of boats. Clearly I could never live there. I need the city, I need the excitement and things to do. Visiting for a week was perfect.

Everyone was busy getting stuff ready for the wedding. Aunts, uncles, cousins, friends etc were driving, flying, boating in from all over the place for the wedding. Another bride's maid, Candace drove all the way from Parry Sound, Ontario. She's originally from New Bruswick so she was used to the ways of the East Coast. I had to get used to a lot of things that were a little different from what I'm used to.

Here are a few things about the language I found interesting/funny:

- the accents. Some of them were more difficult for me to understand than others. At first I estimated that I could understand about 20% of what Krista's brother Curtis was saying. By the end of the week my ear adjusted and I think I got up to 80%.

- reversing north/south with up/down. For some reason they would say something like "I'm going down to St. Anthony's". or "I'm going up to Hawke's Bay". But you see St. Anthony is north and Hawke's Bay is south. I asked them why they do that and Krista just said "We know it's not right, but that's just the way we say it here. I can't say something different from everyone else or they'll wonder about what I'm talking about!"

- ending sentences with prepositions "at, to and by"

For example someone is on the phone and wants to know the location of where someone is at the moment. They'd say "Where you to?"

They can put the word "by" at the end of anything. Krista said that it doesn't mean anything at all. They don't really use "eh" as much as we do in Ontario, but they say "by" so much more. I've been told that that's not the correct spelling of "by", but that's ok because I'm not a real Newfie. Here are some examples of using "by"....

"The dinner is good by". "How was the exam by?"

Then I got to thinking about it and I asked "so if someone went to the store and they came home and someone would ask them 'what did you buy by'?" Krista laughed and said "no no we'd say 'what did you git by'"! haha.

- they also have a thing for dropping H's. For example: three becomes tree. His becomes is. Heart becomes art.

- to make up for all those dropped H's they add S's. I mainly noticed that with the first person singular "I". So instead of saying "I love him." They might say "I loves him." "I goes to school everyday."

-another ting (that's "thing" in Newf) that confused me was dinner/supper. Krista's parents said that we'd be going over to her Nan's for Jig's dinner. I thought that meant that we'd be going over there around 5 or 6. Then around lunch time we start to get ready to go over to Nan's for what I quickly learned is dinner there.

I didn't know what Jig's dinner was. At first I thought we were going to a place called Jig's to eat dinner. So I asked what exactly it was. Krista explained it as this disgusting red and white meat that comes from the pig. (she's a vegetarian so she really doesn't know anything about meat.) Everyone was quick to correct her. "No Krista, it's salt beef. Beef comes from a cow!...and it's really delicious!"

So as we were sitting around the dinner table with a full Jig's dinner prepared (It included salt beef, cabbage, carrots, turnips, potatoes, gravy, dough boys (kind of like a steamed dumpling)) I told them that I really didn't know what to expect when they called it Jig's dinner. I thought that once way back there was a dog named Jig and the family would feed their dog the leftovers of their Sunday dinner and that's how it got the name. Everyone thought that was pretty funny and kept making fun of me for it. However, when I asked where the name came from none of them could answer. Later Candace googled it and found out that there used to be this comic strip called "Jigs and Maggie" and Jig would eat a Sunday dinner of corned beef and cabbage and over time everyone just started calling it Jig's dinner.

Two other things that are staples in a Newfie's diet is tea and dessert. They drink black tea (aka orange peekoe) with every meal. I like tea and I don't need coffee to function so I was alright, however Krista and Candace nearly died without their multiple cups of coffee each day. There were no coffee makers in the houses and there were definitely no coffee shops anywhere near Port Saunders. I asked Krista's aunt Kay (who we were staying with) how young people start drinking tea. She said that kids usually like to have tea and toast for breakfast before school. I guess there is no worry about stunting a child's growth at an early age...Dessert is eaten after dinner and supper and it is usually something homemade. Chris, Krista's dad was so disappointed that Nan didn't have time to make dessert after preparing the huge Jig's dinner for 10 people and we had to have flakies instead. It seemed like the women were always baking bread, cakes, cookies, squares, you name it. There was no way that I'd go hungry while I was there!

Newfoundland might just be the friendliest place I've ever been. People were so loving and excited that we were there and happy that they could let us stay at their place and be a part of their culture. When we were leaving they were all about telling us that we are now a part of the family and we're welcome back anytime. I really felt loved by those people. It was interesting to be in such a laid-back place. Usually around a wedding everyone is stressed to the max. Don't get me wrong, there were moments when things weren't calm and collected, but for the most part everyone worked together to get everything done. Maybe it was that everyone around wasn't working. The people standing in the wedding had come long distances to be there and the family seemed to take the week off from work.

The wedding ceremony, reception, pictures...everything went perfectly. There were little to no problems. It truly is amazing to get to be there with friends who you know are meant to be together. They had been though a lot of ups and downs and I got to be a friend to Krista through it all. So to be there when they committed their lives to each other it was just amazing.

If I ever get married I know that I'm going to make sure that I get a good photographer. I've been to weddings where they didn't have a good photographer. I don't just mean by them not knowing what they're doing with the equipment, but also I think it's important that they're willing to get creative with the pictures, have fun with the wedding party and do something unique! Krista hired a husband and wife duo. She took the pictures and he took a video. They were all over the place getting the perfect pictures and getting us to do fun things. I'm sure they're going to look amazing since we had amazing scenery all around us. I can't say I'll ever climb down rocky cliffs to the ocean in heels again, but I guess we had to do it for the perfect picture. Krista knows how much I love jumping pictures so she got everyone to jump on the rocks heading into the bay. ouch.

The reception was fun. I caught the bouquet! I also became an honorary Newfie with all of Darrick's family who came from the states and the rest of the bridal party who weren't from those parts. They had us line up and drink some Newfie drink, eat taffy-like candy, say some sort of chant and then we kissed a salmon (traditionally they're supposed to kiss a cod, but they said that the salmon was slimier and scalier so it was better). I got to tell the story of how Krista and Darrick got together and how it took them so long and how they were in denial for so long.

I try not to think about how I'm not going back to Korea or how we probably will never get to spend a lot of time together again. I guess that's what happens when you travel all over the place and meet new people every year. I do know, however that she is one of those friends that it won't matter if we don't see each other for years, we will always be able to come together like no time had passed.

Overall, it was an amazing trip, week, wedding. I'm so thankful for them and for being able to be a part of it.

Something I was thinking about while I was there was how diverse Canada is. Everyone seems to know that there are people from all over the world who come to Canada and become Canadians and they believe that that is what makes this country diverse. While I was there I realized that it's diverse not only in that way, but also that there can be area of the country that aren't like that. They had their own way of life, traditions and culture that people in the rest of the country don't even really know about. I know that the same can be said for each province. That's cool. I spent the first part of my time back in Canada on the West coast and now the East coast. It's amazing how different they are. The landscape, the way of life, the accents, the food...it's all so diverse. I really do love this country. I know I'm always leaving, but I've really developed an appreciation for this place.