Newfoundland - The new skills we learned

While we are visiting with our nephew, niece, and their family in Newfoundland, we are also learning new skills. One of our new skills is how to solve a rubik's cube. Brian and Camden were very patient with a couple of old-timers learning a new skill. We took a picture of Mark's first solved cube.

After that, it just takes practice and learning what to do in every cube situation. Here's evidence that we got better at it, as we kept solving their cubes plus the rubik's cube they gave Denisa for her birthday present. We were quite slow compared to Brian and Camden's less-than-one-minute solve times, but it was a fun new skill to learn in Newfoundland.

We also learned Newfoundland history skills. On a trip around the city of St. John's, we visited the Cabot Tower on the top of Signal Hill. This is the site of Guglielmo Marconi's first trans-Atlantic wireless signal all the way from England in 1901. Cabot Tower was constructed in 1898, celebrating the 400th anniversary of John Cabot's discovery of this island. Until last year, this province has celebrated "Discovery Day" in June to commemorate Cabot's discovery. It's interesting that this year, "Discovery Day" is now called "June Holiday" as an act of reconciliation with the island's indigenous population who have been here even before Cabot.

Also this year, Newfoundland is celebrating a new holiday. We were there for the first-ever "National Day for Truth and Reconciliation." For years, the children of indigenous people were taken away from their parents and forced to live at government residential schools that didn't allow their native culture. Because of this new official holiday, school children all over Canada had the day off to "recognize the pain, trauma and suffering that has been caused by residential schools" and "learn more about indigenous people."  We often drove by this fence where each piece of colored paper symbolized a victim of the residential school system.

We are also honing our geography skills while we are in Newfoundland. We didn't know that the most easterly point in North America was on this island. Here we are at Cape Spear where one could see the earliest sunrise on this continent.

We learned yet another geography skill during our visit. Our hosts taught us how to memorize the 195 countries of the world. If anyone is interested, please feel free to call us and we'll recite all 195 for you over the phone. It uses a technique known as a "memory palace" which is a great new skill for us! The following picture doesn't have anything to do with our memorization skills, but it is a beautiful picture of more of Newfoundland's geography. If you look closely, you can see Mark and Camden sitting together in the center of that picture.

In a previous blog we described learning cinnamon roll skills from Camden, and Tres Leche skills from Katrina. 

Cole was trying out for a special choir at his school, and needed to learn a song for the audition. So Denisa learned the new song so she could teach him. That's actually an old skill she rekindled, since she has prepared our son for auditions as well. We're proud to report that Cole was successful, and earned his way into that special choir!

We also developed our skills for using up the wild berries that we picked. We made a big batch of wild blueberry pancakes, and another batch of wild blueberry muffins. They both had more than the usual amount of berries because the harvest is bountiful here in Newfoundland.

We learned a lot of skills while we were wandering about Newfoundland. Thanks to this family that is so generous with sharing their home and their knowledge with wanderers like us!