French filmmaker Mathieu Le Lay grew up and lives in France. Although his native land is beautiful and diverse, it lacks what only North america can provide: wide open spaces.
The American West is where Le Lay decided to seek solitude and fulfill his love for the great outdoors. During his six-week backpacking adventure across Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Washington, he captured the beauty and uniqueness of these places in the following images and one film: American Loneliness.
EVER THOUGHT YOUR LIFE is too expensive? Well, if you’re living in the western world, it probably is, but it’s probably not as expensive as life in Switzerland. Movehub, an international moving company, put together this incredible infographic to show you where the cheapest places in the world are, and where the most expensive are, with a bit of info on every country in between as well.
MATADOR PROUDLY PUBLISHED an eye-opening article by Turner Barr on his experiences volunteering at Tiger Temple, and it has since helped raise awareness for what goes on at this popular attraction in Thailand. We are happy to learn that forest authorities and policemen in the Kanchanaburi province have raided Wat Pa Luang Ta Bua, sending over 35 exotic birds to a nearby wildlife rehabilitation facilty, and are looking in to the safety and well being of over 100 tigers on the property. Hopefully this is one step closer to getting these endangered animals the care they deserve, and educating travelers on the benefits of responsible tourism .
You can read more about the raid from these sources: Bangkok Post, Thai PBS, The Sun Daily.
Photo: John Hoey
Indians are the masters of reusing and recycling all forms of paper products, metals, and plastics. As an American living in India, I threw out soda bottles, empty paper towel rolls, used plastic bags, and a plethora of other articles that would promptly be plucked from my garbage bags and sold in the streets.
It is said that there are four or five layers of recycling in India. Someone would go through my trash and read my old newspapers, take my empty bottles, and whatever else they found to be of value. Then three or four other people would follow them, doing precisely the same thing.
Plastic bags and bottles became containers for screws, while nails and fabrics were made into decorative ribbons for auto rickshaws.
India has some of the best street food in the world, from vegetarian chickpea dishes to tandoori shish kabobs to pani puri — one of the most famous street meals, made up of a small wheat shell filled with a mixture of potato, peas, and spices. The shell is then dipped in spicy water and eaten 8 to 15 at a time. For breakfast or an afternoon snack, jalebi is fried to the point of looking like an American funnel cake.
North India is mostly desert, so the temperatures range drastically from hot to cold. Women wear saris throughout the warm months of March to October, while men wear light clothing and turban-like headwear. Saris look deceiving — three layers of clothing and a head wrap — but they are the coolest thing you could wear because of all the air flow you get. Winter calls for heavy blankets and scarves made from pashmina.
India celebrates multiple holidays throughout the year and each one is celebrated profusely. Throwing colors and drinking bhang (a drink made from milk, marijuana, and Indian spices) goes with Holi. Lighting up the cities goes with Diwali. And sweets like barfi (made from sugar and milk) are always given on birthdays.
Because Hindus worship gods of fertility, wealth, heroism and seasons, there are literally holidays almost every day of the year. The people take these times to visit their neighbors, make food, and enjoy life together.
There are men on every street corner in India with carts brimming over with fresh pomegranates, oranges, bananas, and pineapples. They use little blenders for juicing the fruit and serve it in flimsy plastic cups. When in season, fruit can be bought by the kilo for under the equivalent of one US dollar. Stopping by for a mango smoothie or some pomegranate juice is an everyday occurrence for many. Lassi stands are also prevalent, serving up a delicious drink of blended yogurt and spices in clay cups.
From the Taj Mahal to the many forts and palaces of cities like Jaipur, India is well known for its architectural masterpieces. Marble is used in many buildings, adding an air of dignity even to regular homes. Brilliant blue and green colors are abundant and different cities are known by names such as the Pink City (Jaipur) or the Blue City (Jodhpur).
Family and elders are the most important people in India. Once educated and married, the children will start taking care of their parents. The oldest son will marry and move his new family into his parents’ home in order to take care of the entire family. Family pride is so important that the children will study as hard as possible in order to make their parents happy. In India, family relationships are the only relationships that will last a lifetime.
Indians are famous for many dishes: tikka masala with a tomato sauce base, madras curry with chili powder, biryani with rice, meats, and vegetables, and of course tandoori. One of the few foods not eaten in a broth or sauce base, tandoori chicken, goat, and lamb gets roasted in a large clay oven that gives the food an unforgettable Indian flavor. India is famous for these beautiful ovens, and rarely are they seen anywhere else in the world.
SOME global parenting styles might make American parents cringe, but others could definitely use a close study. Read on for a sampling of parenting lessons from around the world.
Photo: cglosli
In Norway, childhood is very institutionalized. When a kid turns 1 year old, he or she starts going to Barnehage (Norwegian for “children’s garden”), which is basically state-subsidized daycare. Parents pay a few hundred dollars a month and their kids are taken care of from 8 am to 5 pm. Toddlers spend a ton of time outside at Barnehage, even in extremely cold temperatures. It’s not uncommon to see kids bundled up outside during a Scandinavian winter, taking a nap in their strollers.
Even with the obvious benefits provided by the government in Norway, some parents complain about the lack of creativity in people’s approaches to parenting. One American mother adjusting to raising kids in Norway wrote, “There’s a sense that there’s just one right way to do things. And everyone does it that way. In America there are different parenting styles — co-sleeping, attachment parenting, etc. Here there is just one way, more or less: all kids go to bed at 7, all attend the same style of preschool, all wear boots, all eat the same lunch…that’s the Norwegian way.”
Photo: ePi.Longo
Here’s a good one. In Vietnam, mom and dads teach their babies to pee at the sound of a whistle. Kind of like Pavlov with his salivating dogs. Except this is moms and dads with peeing babies. The Chinese do it too apparently. Parents start by noticing when their baby starts peeing and making a little whistle sound. Soon enough, the baby starts to associate the whistle with peeing and voila!
Think this sounds a little odd? Or a little like someone is conflating a kid with a pet Schnauzer? Well, researchers say Vietnamese babies are usually out of diapers by nine months. What do you think now?
Photo: love2dreamfish
Hat tip to Cracked for finding this one: Kisii, or Gussii, moms in Kenya carry their babies everywhere, but they don’t indulge a baby’s cooing. Rather when their babies start babbling, moms <a href="http://ift.tt/x1Zraj?
id=hmjO2VqMNIMC&pg=PA221&dq=%22tend+to+avert+their+gaze%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=v3oBUos7wouQBeXDgRg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22tend%20to%20avert%20their%20gaze%22&f=false”>avert their eyes. It’s likely to sound harsh to a Western sensibility, but within the context of Kisii culture, it makes more sense. Eye contact is an act bestowed with a lot of power. It’s like saying, “you’re in charge,” which isn’t the message parents want to send their kids. Researchers say Kisii kids are less attention-seeking as a result, so that’s something.
Photo: Miss Copenhagen
In Denmark, writes Mei-Ling Hopgood in How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm, “children are frequently left outside to get frisk luft, or fresh air — something parents think is essential for health and hearty development — while caregivers dine and shop.”
As you might imagine, this idea sends shivers down the spines of many parents in the United States. In New York, a couple (one of whom was Danish) was arrested for leaving their child outside a BBQ restaurant while they went inside to eat. ”I was just in Denmark and that’s exactly what they do,” Mariom Adler, a New Yorker out walking with her 2 1/2-year-old son, told the New York Times. ”We would see babies all over unattended. We were stunned, frankly. But Denmark also struck us as exceptionally civilized.”
Photo: amhuxham
We’re not talking any old big brother babysitting little sister here. We’re talking organized kid collective.
Hopgood writes in her book that adults take the lead on caring for babies in Polynesia, but as soon as a child can walk, he or she is turned over to the care of other children. “Preschool-aged children learned to calm babies,” she wrote, “and toddlers became self-reliant because they were taught that that was the only way they could hang out with the big kids.”
Jane and James Ritchie, a husband and wife anthropology team, observed a similar phenomenon over decades in New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands. But they don’t think it would fly in the United States. “Indeed in Western societies, the degree of child caretaking that seems to apply in most of Polynesia would probably be regarded as child neglect and viewed with some horror,” they wrote in Growing Up in Polynesia.
Photo: W2 Beard & Shorty
Parents in Japan allow their kids a lot of independence after a certain age. It isn’t uncommon for 7-year-olds and even 4-year-olds to ride the subway by themselves.
Christine Gross-Loh, author of Parenting Without Borders, lives in Japan for part of each year, and when she’s there she lets her kids run errands without her, taking the subway and wandering around town as they may. But she wouldn’t dare do the same back in the United States. “If I let them out on their own like that in the US, I wouldn’t just get strange looks,” she told TED. “Somebody would call Child Protective Services.”
Photo: Loli Jackson
Spanish families are focused on the social and interpersonal aspects of child development, according to Sara Harkness, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Connecticut.
The idea of a child going to bed at 6:30 pm is totally alien to Spanish parents, Harkness told TED. “They were horrified at the concept,” she said. “Their kids were going to bed at 10 pm.” so they could participate in family life in the evenings. The same is true in Argentina, according to Hopgood.
For the Aka people in central Africa, the male and female roles are virtually interchangeable. While the women hunt, the men mind the children. And vice versa.
Therein lies the rub, according to Professor Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist. “There’s a level of flexibility that’s virtually unknown in our society,” Hewlett told The Guardian. “Aka fathers will slip into roles usually occupied by mothers without a second thought and without, more importantly, any loss of status — there’s no stigma involved in the different jobs.”
This flexibility, apparently, extends to men suckling their children. Ever wonder why men have nipples? That’s why.
Photo: Wellington College
Set mealtimes; no snacking whatsoever; the expectation that if you try something enough times, you’ll like it. These are among the “food rules” in France that are taken as given. The result is French kids who eat what adults eat, from foie gras to stinky cheese. Tell that to my nephew.
By: Emily Lodish, GlobalPost
This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.
Photo: Lotus Carroll
THESE DAYS, people often ask if I’m experiencing culture shock. It’s a legitimate question. Just a few months ago, my family and I moved from Boston to Helsinki, Finland. To be honest, the culture shock isn’t so dramatic — especially since my wife is a Finn.
But I’m definitely experiencing classroom shock — a shifting of my pedagogical mindset — as I settle into my new job as a 5th grade teacher at a Finnish public school.
My family and I plan on living in Finland permanently, but I can’t help but think about what I’d do differently if I returned to an American classroom. Talk about reverse-classroom shock! I’ve already identified three big shifts I’d make right away.
Finnish schools often schedule lessons into hour-long blocks: 45 minutes of instruction, 15 minutes of break. Students rarely have back-to-back lessons without breaks — and at the elementary level, it’s expected that children will spend their breaks playing outside, rain or shine.
During the first week of school, I didn’t get it. I designed back-to-back lessons so my students could have fewer but longer breaks. In the midst of a double lesson, one of my students confessed, “I think I’m going to explode. When are we going to get a break?”
This was a turning point for me. I shifted my approach, and began to notice that the students were more refreshed when they returned to the classroom after frequent but short breaks. The breaks helped children pace themselves.
Back in the States, I remember days when I pushed young students to produce work even when they were clearly dragging their feet. The idea of allowing a break away from the classroom didn’t cross my mind. Now I’m convinced that regular breaks help students to stay balanced and sharp throughout the day.
Back in an American classroom, I would plan brain and body breaks for my students as part of our classroom rhythm. If possible, I would find a way to get the children outside during these breaks.
At first, I was reluctant to make my way to the teachers’ lounge during breaks. I saw these 15-minute chunks as “bonus prep time” and would stay inside my classroom, fretting about the next lesson. Totally normal behavior in an American school, right? But a few of my Finnish colleagues noticed this habit and worried that I might burn out. They challenged me to spend more time in the lounge, drinking coffee and catching up with colleagues. I took their advice and found that, lo and behold, breaks not only refreshed my students but also invigorated me.
Of course, most American teaching schedules don’t allow 15-minute breaks throughout the day. I’m not recommending that teachers demand these breaks from their administrators. I’m suggesting that they adopt a different mindset.
Finnish colleagues have taught me that breaks help me to be a more effective teacher. They’ve shown me that teaching is more like a marathon than a sprint. It’s important to slow down often so that one can successfully complete the race of each school year.
Back in an American classroom, I would set aside time to decompress every day. Rather than working through lunch or trying to be productive with every spare moment as I have in the past, I would put down the to-do list and focus on the simple task of getting refreshed. Perhaps I’d join colleagues for lunch? Maybe I’d eat alone in the classroom while listening to music? Or maybe I’d go for a walk, enjoying fresh air and sunlight?
In short, I’d take advantage of any opportunities I might have—however meager they might be—to refresh myself. Regularly pulling away from work has helped me to be a better teacher in Finland.
In the past, my start-of-the-year philosophy as an elementary teacher has been this: take kids by the hand and don’t let them go until they show that they’re ready to be independent. I typically have begun each year by teaching students a long list of routines and procedures.
This year, things didn’t go as planned. For example, I intended to teach my Finnish 5th graders how to walk in a straight, quiet line. But what I learned during the first week of school is that my students have been moving independently from class to class since first grade. Furthermore, most children in my Finnish public school (grades 1-9) commute to school on their own. Teaching them how to walk in a straight, quiet line would have been unnecessary and even a bit insulting.
Although Finnish children appear to be much more independent than American children, they don’t have an “independence gene,” of course. But they do have (at school and at home) many opportunities to do things on their own without handholding.
My Finnish 5th graders wanted to arrange a school-wide bake sale this year as a fundraiser. Honestly, I wasn’t crazy about the idea at first. It sounded like another thing that I’d need to manage. I made a decision to release my grip on the bake sale and they blew me away! They designed advertisements, created a class sign-up sheet, and brought in heaps of baked goods. All of these things were done without my direction. I supervised, but I didn’t handhold.
If I ever returned to the States, I think I could provide my American students with more opportunities to work without scaffolds. Don’t get me wrong. Some students need structure — especially given America’s cultural differences — but they all could benefit from low-stakes chances to dive in.
Teaching in Finland has helped me to identify hidden American principles that have guided my thinking about teaching. For example, I used to think that students and teachers need to be productive at all times. (False. We can be more productive when we set aside time to recharge.)
We have a lot to learn when our long-held beliefs are confronted by different ones. Critically evaluating my teaching mindset and making changes has made me a stronger teacher.
This piece was originally posted on Education Week Teacher and Taught by Finland, and has been re-published here with permission.
Photo: Jon Fravel
1. You can open a beer bottle with an oyster shell.
2. You’ve run into Byron The Bum on your way to Burris Liquor store, and traded him a mini bottle for a neck massage.
3. When partying out of town, you’re disappointed when the bartender refuses to split one shot three ways.
4. Despite living in “The Holy City,” your Sunday mornings are spent getting wasted at Mad River.
5. You only know what month it is by the beer special at AC’s.
6. After one too many shots of Grandma at Big John’s Tavern, you’ve been issued a drunk-in-public ticket by a police officer on a horse.
7. You’ve gotten hammered while shucking oysters on a 300-year old plantation at the Lowcountry Oyster Festival.
8. You know someone who got a DUI on a bicycle.
9. You’ve smoked a cigarette inside The Griffon while being served a bourbon and coke out of a mini-bottle.
10. After several hours of boating, you’ve drunk enough liquid courage to climb the 30-ft. ladder and jump into the water from the Ben Sawyer Bridge.
11. You’ve popped bottles of champagne and watched fireworks on the WWII Battleship, USS Yorktown, on NYE.
12. You’ve grubbed down on Dave’s Seafood or Gilroys Pizza at 4am.
13. You’ve bought 40s with a fake ID at the T n L corner store on Spring Street.
14. You know that the best way to cut the salty taste of the ocean is Firefly Sweet Tea vodka, mixed with water and lemonade.
15. While drinking on Folly, you’ve had to return to Bert’s multiple times in one day for more beer.
16. You can ride out a wave, jump in a creek, or fall off a boat, without spilling your beer.
17. You know that the weekend starts on Thursday, with $1 beers at the River Dog’s game, before heading to James Island County Park to dance to live reggae music.
18. Despite having no memory of the previous night, judging by the sand in your bed, a palmetto rose on your dresser, and a serious case of “Charleston Black Foot,” you know that you must have gone barhopping downtown after leaving Folly.
19. You’ve gotten funny looks from Sunday morning churchgoers, as you rock the haggard stagger down King Street during your walk of shame.
20. While partyhopping, you’ve stopped at the fire station on Coming Street and slid down the pole.
21. You’ve partied in Gnarnia.
22. You’ve sipped on Bloody Marys while cruising along the Charleston Harbor with dozens of boats all decked out in Xmas decorations.
23. You know Labradors who are trained to open up a cooler, and retrieve beers.
24. After turning the wrong way down a one way street and nearly hitting a horse and carriage full of tourists, you realize that bar crawling on a bicycles is not such a good idea.
25. You’ve been to a bikini contest at the Wind Jammer in Isle of Palms.
26. You’ve watched world records being set while getting drunk at a Ski and Wakeboarding Competition at Trophy Lakes.
27. You’ve spotted Bill Murray across the bar, and possibly even taken a shot with him.
28. You’ve gotten so wasted at Shem Creek Bar and Grill after taking way too many oyster shooters from Big Al that you run aground as you try to boat away.
29. You carry a large purse with you when partying to hold keg cups for house parties, and a pair of sandals you can change into when you’re too drunk to walk in heels.
30. When partying out of town, you’re pleasantly surprised to learn that the liquor stores stay open past 7, and that you can buy liquor on Sundays.
31. You’ve swung into the Wando River on the secret rope swing right after slapping a bag of Franzia.
32. You’ve kicked it with Tin Tin, heard him rap, and paid him $5 to clean up your yard after a house party.
33. You’ve returned keg shells on a bicycle.
34. You know that the best happy hour is always on a boat.
35. Booty Shaking Competition. 4th of July.
36. You’ve buried kegs in the sand and gotten blackout-drunk at The Washout while doing keg stands in your bathing suit.
37. You own an absurd amount of costumes because you know that in Charleston, Halloween is “Hallo-week.” You’ve been to the epic Skin-ful Halloween parties.
38. You’ve been on several art walks, not because you like art, but for the free wine at each gallery.
39. You know that the best cure for a hangover is the beach.
It’s never easy watching a plane go down. This is raw footage from a TransAsia Airways flight that crashed yesterday shortly after takeoff in Taipei, Taiwan. Here’s the latest from the BBC:
The plane, carrying 58 people, has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged in the Keelung River. Rescue efforts are ongoing. At least 15 people have been pulled out alive, with 20 still missing…
Emergency teams have cut the plane open to gain access, attempting to reach the remaining passengers trapped in the front section of the fuselage.
“At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei fire department official coordinating the rescue effort, told reporters.
The dead and missing passengers and their loved ones are in our thoughts today.
Photo: Mait Jüriado
Here are the nine drinkiest countries, by annual liters of alcohol consumption per capita.
People in the Czech republic seem to exist in a sort of boozy middle ground — only 2.6 percent are alcohol dependent, but only 2.6 percent have never had a drink. They just drink steadily, and sometimes they drink a lot — 38.9 percent of the population had binged in the last 30 days, including more than half of men. This might be because the Czech Republic has some of the cheapest beer in the world — the equivalent of 70 cents for half a liter. (Not surprisingly, more than half the alcohol consumed in the Czech Republic comes in beer form.)
Slovakia is relatively tame as these things go — a full 16.3 percent of the population are lifelong teetotallers. Only 5.5 percent are alcohol-dependent, and 28.6 percent binge drink. Slovakia makes a lot of fruit liquors — pear, plum, apple, cherry, apricot — and maybe those just aren’t enough to tempt people to drink. Or rather, they’re not enough to tempt people to drink more than the top seven boozy nations.
About a quarter of Hungarians had binged in the last 30 days, and 9.4 percent are alcohol dependent. And if you get tired of drinking, it’s also one of the cheapest countries to get MDMA!
This Catalan principality is doing its co-prince, the president of France, proud — it outstripped both France and Spain, which Andorra also borders, despite both countries’ reputations for good-time booziness. The 42.1 grams of alcohol that Andorrans consume each day doesn’t even count drinking from the principality’s tourist industry.
It’s possible that after the year Ukraine has had, we’ll soon start to see numbers higher than 2.2 percent alcoholic and 22.6 percent binge drinkers. Either way, Ukraine is one of the cheapest places to get beer or wine — $4.50 for a bottle of mid-range wine, 67 cents for a half-liter of beer — but one of the most expensive countries to buy cocaine. So, keep drinking, I guess, guys.
The Russian Federation is trying to get its drinking under control — a 2011 federal amendment restricted the availability and marketing of alcohol, strengthened penalties for providing alcohol to minors, cracked down on illegal alcohol production and trafficking, and established some consumer restrictions. They’re still plugging away at the booze, though — only 19.1 percent binge, but 9.3 percent are alcoholic, and drinkers put away 48.3 grams of pure alcohol per day.
A full 16.8 percent of Lithuanians are lifelong abstainers, but those who drink account for 51 grams of alcohol a day on average. The legal blood alcohol limit for driving is an unusually high 0.04 percent, which may be why nearly 50 percent of road accident deaths are due to booze. MDMA is way cheap there, too — $4.60 per tablet, versus $35 in the United States.
Almost half of Moldovan men reported an episode of binge drinking in the previous 30 days — 32.2 percent of the population as a whole were bingers. All the high-alcohol-use countries are big into liquor, rather than wine and beer, but especially Moldova; 65 percent of the alcohol Moldovans drank took this form. Only 3.3 percent of the population is alcohol dependent, but that might depend how you define “alcohol dependent”; Moldova is also supposed to be the least happy country in the world, and residents may need their 55.1 grams of alcohol just to get through the day. Luckily, you can get mid-range wine for the equivalent of just $2.97, though it’s one of the most expensive places to buy cocaine.
Imagine nine two-liter bottles of soda. Each person in Belarus drinks nearly that much pure alcohol every year — which is serious business, since even strong liquor is usually no more than 50 percent alcohol. Eleven percent of Belarusians, and almost 20 percent of the men there, have an alcohol dependency, and nearly 50 percent of men report binge drinking. And more than half of deaths from road accidents are attributable to alcohol.
By Jess Zimmerman, GlobalPost
This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.
Sig Nordal 