Teacher Exchange Participants Share More than Homes and Classrooms

Posted by on February 9, 2012

"Alley by the Lake by Leonid Afremov

Exchanging homes and teaching positions for a year means exchanging local living conditions and experiences as well. Here in Winnipeg, our bitter cold icy winters present challenges to simply starting your car, or walking down the sidewalk. Working abroad means leaving those concerns at home, but also means adopting a new set of challenges.

Wildfires have been ravaging Australia over the past while. Brian Yasui had the chance to sit down with Fiona Tomsic, an Aussie teacher on an exchange program with Winnipeg teacher Tom Roberts, to get her unique perspective on this tragedy. Brian also had the chance to speak with Tom on the phone, and rest assured, he and his family are alive and well!

via Breakfast Television Winnipeg.

I recently spoke with an Aussie teacher here in Winnipeg whose home was lost to fire a couple years ago. He says there are local understandings about how to deal with these things that we learn as we grow up. In Winnipeg, we learn to cover up with hat and mitts, we know to plug in the car on cold days, and how to navigate slippery sidewalks with some speed.

In Australia, you learn to wear your hat in the sunshine to avoid heat stroke, to glove-up when getting fuel from the wood pile to avoid snakes, which spiders are the most dangerous, how to recognize fire dangers based on heat and wind direction.

As visitors to a new place outside the sterile bounds of a tourist hotel, we immerse ourselves in the local environment for an extended period. Sure, learning the lingo, and where the best beaches are is part of the allure, but the depth of the experience, I suspect, comes from understanding the daily nitty-gritty of life in our new land.

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