The Park At the End of the Bridge

At the end of the Provencher Bridge here in my downtown Winnipeg neighborhood is the Joseph Royal Park. It has become known as a place where homeless people hang out. In fact, there was a brutal beating incident reported in the news in this park in June of 2010. Today however it was covered in sparkling white snow and the only creatures hanging out there were some birds.

 

A plaque behind the giant stone arch describes the man the park was named after. 

Joseph Royal was born in Quebec in 1837 one of eight children of Edouard and Marcelin, a poor, illiterate and devout Catholic couple. Joseph was clever and quick-witted and so a priest, seeing his promise, paid for his schooling at a Jesuit College in Montreal.  

Joseph Royal

He became a journalist and worked for six different French Canadian newspapers as an editor. He married Agnes Bruyere and they had seven children. He also found time to article with famed lawyer George Cartier and was called to the Quebec bar in 1864. 

While editor of the newspaper Le Nouveau Monde he published more articles and letters than any other Canadian newspaper in favor of Louis Riel, a Metis who was leading a resistance movement against the Canadian government in Manitoba.

In 1870 his news instincts made him decide to get the real story on what was happening in Manitoba and so he went there on a fact-finding mission. He met Louis Riel and became convinced the cause of Metis land possession was a just one. He felt God was calling him to a special mission in Manitoba and moved there to start a newspaper called Le Metis. He couldn’t afford to move his family from Montreal and he went into huge debt to set up his printing press in Manitoba.

He also practiced law in Manitoba and defended Lepin and Nault– two men associated with Louis Riel who were accused of ordering the execution of Thomas Scott, a member of the anglophone group that opposed Riel and promoted joining Red River to Canada. Later Joseph Royal argued for complete amnesty and a stay of execution for Louis Riel.

Joseph Royal had a distinguished career as a civil servant and politician. He was elected to the Manitoba Legislature and served as the Speaker of the House and the Attorney General. He was also elected to the federal House of Commons. He was the first mayor of St. Boniface, the first education Superintendent in Manitoba and was appointed the lieutenant governor of the North West Territories. 

Although I’m sure Joseph Royal would be happy to know Winnipeg has a park named after him, he was hoping for a little more lucrative and honorable recognition. He wanted to be appointed a senator at the end of his political career. But he was not. There were no big pensions for civil servants and politicians in those days, so Joseph had to move back to Montreal and take a newspaper job. He ended his life a poor man financially, living in a boarding house and dying after a lengthy illness in 1902. 

Joseph Royal Park is a scenic resting place. It has a fountain surrounded by benches at its center. 

The park also contains a statue that pays tribute to St. Boniface writer Gabrielle Roy and a plaque with a quote from one of her novels. 

There are two other historical markers in the park. One describes the Provencher Bridge which I have done a post about in the past. The other describes the St. Boniface Woolen Mills which used to be located nearby. 

Across the street from the park is Place Joseph Royal a building of high-end condominiums. We looked at condos in that building before buying ours in the Ashdown Warehouse. They are handsomely appointed and pricey. How ironic that a man who died a pauper in a rooming house now has a ritzy condominium complex named after him. 

Would I Get A Tattoo?

I noticed when we attended a couple NBA basketball games in Phoenix, Arizona that many of the players had tattoos.

Some of the movie stars at the Oscars on Sunday night were sporting tattoos as well and a movie about a woman with a dragon tattoo was nominated for quite a number of Academy Awards.

Tattoos are everywhere. Waitresses, hairdressers and electricians sport them. I see a nice variety displayed every morning at the gym when I’m working out.

I found out recently Winston Churchill had a tattoo. He had an anchor inked onto his arm. 

It all leads me to think about whether or not I would get a tattoo.  The Mayo Clinic does not recommend tattoos. They outline the possible health related problems that can occur by breaching the skin with permanent ink. They claim some of the risks are blood borne diseases, infections, allergic reactions, scarring and skin disorders. Doesn’t sound like a tattoo would be worth the risk. None of the methods they describe for removing a tattoo – sanding, cutting or intense heat sounded particularly appealing either.
Cost is certainly another factor. A good tattoo artist will probably charge several hundred dollars for his or her services. One website warns people not to argue with a tattoo designer about price. Since they are injecting needles into your skin you want to stay on their good side.

Deciding what I would want for a tattoo would just be too hard.  Apparently names of lovers or spouses are dicey choices since they can change. After being married for nearly 40 years I don’t plan to enter any new romantic relationships so my husband’s name might be an option. After all, during a foray into cattle ranching many years ago my husband in a burst of romance branded the buttocks of all his cows with my initials. I might return the favor by putting his monogram on the same area of my own body.

The names of my children would be other options. In a flea market in Mesa, Arizona I met  a mother whose daughter died and she had the young woman’s name tattooed on her ankle as a lasting reminder of her child. Since my sons are still living however I have plenty of opportunity to let them know I love them in other ways. Getting their names tattooed on my body isn’t really necessary.

I think that probably I would answer in a similar way to President Barak Obama when he was asked in an interview, “If you had a tattoo, what would it be, and where would you put it?” The President of the United States answered quite emphatically…… “I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would get a tattoo.”

 

The Street Where I Live

I live in a condo on Bannatyne Avenue in Winnipeg. Bannatyne Avenue was made famous by the Winnipeg singing sensation The Guess Who when they named their second album So Long Bannatyne. The record has a song on it with the same name.

But Bannatyne Avenue is named after someone who was famous in Winnipeg long before The Guess Who came on the scene.  

Andrew Graham Bannatyne was born in the Orkney Islands in 1829 and began working for the Hudson’s Bay Company in Norway House in 1846. 

Andrew Bannatyne photograph from Wiki- Tree

In 1850 Andrew married Annie McDermot, one of 15 children of Andrew McDermot and Sarah McNab.  Annie was highly educated. Her Dad, a former manager of the Hudson’s Bay operation at Norway House, was a wealthy Red River merchant. He offered Andrew a job in his Sturgeon Creek shop and watermill.  Instead, Andrew decided to start a merchant firm in Red River with a partner. Soon it was a large and flourishing business. Andrew was appointed a Red River magistrate in 1861.

In 1868 when Louis Riel led his resistance against the government of Canada and set up his own provisional government in Manitoba, Andrew Bannatyne tried to serve as a mediator between the two warring factions.  He was appointed the first postmaster of Winnipeg in 1871 and he and his wife Annie opened their home to host the first-ever meeting of the Manitoba Legislature that same year.  

In 1875, after Louis Riel, a duly elected member of Parliament for his Manitoba constituency was banished from the House of Commons, Andrew Bannatyne was elected to take his place. Andrew also helped found the Winnipeg Board of Trade and the Manitoba Historical Society. He played in Winnipeg’s first-ever curling match in December of 1876. 

Annie Bannatyne- photograph from Wiki Tree

 Andrew’s wife Annie was not only devoted to her family but gave lots of her time to various Winnipeg charities, in particular the Winnipeg General Hospital which the two Andrews in her life–her father and husband, had helped to found at her request and with her encouragement. Annie is known as one of Winnipeg’s first philanthropists.

Annie, a Metis, was outspoken and opinionated.  She was incensed when a Winnipeg writer named Charles Mair wrote an article for the Toronto Globe in which he made derogatory comments about the women of mixed blood in the Red River Settlement. 

Annie knew that Mair came into her husband’s store every Saturday to collect his mail and she told the store clerk that as soon as Mair arrived she wanted to know. The clerk dutifully informed Annie of Mair’s arrival and she burst into the store brandishing a horsewhip. Grabbing Mair by the nose she gave him a half-dozen licks with the whip and shouted, “That’s how the women of Red River treat those who insult them.”

Mair to his credit did not retaliate and left the store in humiliation. A priest named George Dugas was in the store at the time and wrote about the debacle he had witnessed in his journal. Later Louis Riel would write a humourous poem about the encounter between Mr Mair and Mrs Bannatyne. They say Bannatyne Avenue was named after Andrew Bannatyne but I’d like to think it was named after his wife Annie too. Her feisty compassionate personality makes her every bit as interesting a historical figure as her husband. 

Monsieur Lazhar- Personal Connections

I am disappointed that the Canadian film Monsieur Lazhar did not win the Academy Award tonight for best foreign film. I just saw the movie this afternoon and thought it was very good. Set in Montreal this French movie with English subtitles tells the story of an Algerian refugee who gets a job as a substitute teacher for a class of grade six students whose teacher has just committed suicide. 

I connected with the film in many ways. The movie makes it clear that the relationship between a teacher and his or her students is the most important factor in effective education. The substitute teacher Monsieur Lazhar uses old-fashioned teaching techniques, makes the kids sit in rows and gives them difficult dictations, but because they come to like him and appreciate him, they learn and grow in his classroom.

I was well into my career before I realized that dozens of activities, elaborate classroom decorations and creative teaching methods weren’t what made the biggest impression on kids. Spending time getting to know them and building relationships with them was the key both to their academic progress and classroom management. I realized as well that my relationship with my students was the most rewarding and memorable thing about my job. 

 

The movie Monsieur Lazhar also teaches us how important it is to talk to our kids candidly about things like death and illness. Children need to feel free to express their own anger and grief honestly.  This is something I have learned both as a teacher and a parent. Children are very perceptive. They know when something is wrong and if we aren’t honest they will become more anxious and worried then they need to be. They need caring adults with whom they can discuss how they are feeling. 

I really liked the things Monsieur Lazhar had to say to his students about the classroom being a community, a place of friendship, a space devoted to learning, where everyone has something to contribute. 

I realized this more and more during my career. The teacher wasn’t the only source of knowledge in the classroom. We were a community of learners who each had important things to share. I learned so much from my students and came to understand that my job was to create a safe, friendly place where we could all learn from each other. 

The film also addresses the way the zero tolerance rules for teachers touching students can be problematic. Sometimes teachers are hampered from doing what is best for kids because they feel like their every action is under close scrutiny.  

I know as a teacher I found that sometimes what a student needed was an arm around their shoulder, a hand to wipe away their tears, a reassuring pat on the back and yes sometimes even a hug. It is too bad if teachers feel they are no longer free to provide that kind of physical reassurance. 

The movie Monsieur Lazhar is a well acted, beautifully understated, moving look at the relationship between teachers and students. I was crying freely at its end. Too bad it didn’t win an Academy Award tonight.

 

Marriage Statistics and Bible Verses

Statistics have become the modern-day equivalent of Bible verses. Both statistics and Bible verses are handy for proving almost any point. There are people who have a barrage of Scripture passages on the tip of their tongues ready to provide substantiation of any viewpoint. Quotations from the Bible have been used to defend all kinds of opinions including……..the earth is flat, not round, human beings never walked on the moon, women should be silent and education is bad.

Statistics are often used like Bible verses. Pick a cause or an idea and you will probably be able to find a statistic to back up your opinion of it. It can be confusing for people of faith to realize selected Biblical quotations can be used to defend radically different ideas. Statistics can be equally confusing.  

Take marriage for example. A Canadian statistical study on marriage looked at what factors lead to divorce and which indicators give couples a better chance to have a lasting relationship. Looking at them I can’t figure out whether my marriage has a good chance or not. 

My husband and I did not live together before we were married. This is in our favour since 35% of Canadian couples who cohabitate before marriage get divorced compared to only 19% of those who don’t live together. 

Dave and me when we had just started dating 

I got married at the tender age of 19.  My husband was 20. According to statistics, this makes it three times more likely we will end up in a divorce court compared to if we had waited until we were over 30 to marry. 

We attend church regularly and this is a statistic in our favour since it improves a couple’s chances of staying married. 

I had a thirty-five-year career as a teacher. 

Another statistic would suggest shaky ground for my marriage. Women who work outside the home, as I have always done, have a higher rate of divorce. 

So which statistics should I take seriously, the ones that say my marriage has a good chance of surviving or others that say it doesn’t?  Who knows?

I won’t be using Scripture either to predict the success of my marriage. 

“Those who marry will face many troubles,” says Saint Paul in the seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians. “It is not good for a man (woman) to live alone”, says the narrator in the second chapter of Genesis. 

Tom Lamb-Mr. North

This statue in Winnipeg’s Richardson Building is one I have passed countless times on my way to Winnipeg Square.
 It is a statue of Tom Lamb.  Who was he?    Tom was born in 1898 in Grand Rapids Manitoba. His British father and mother were Anglican missionaries in the north. His Dad did many different jobs but was primarily a school teacher. Tom’s family moved to Moose Lake in 1900. 

Although Tom would later be awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Manitoba his formal education ended at grade three. In 1935 he bought an aeroplane and learned to fly it so he could go fly fishing in the north. Four years later he had founded Lambair.

The airline hauled fish and furs, trappers and fishermen. They transported Inuit families and equipment for oil rigs. They handled emergency and medical evacuations. The airline’s motto was “Don’t ask us where we fly! Tell us where you want to go.”

Tom, also known as the “Babe Ruth of bush pilots” married Jennie and they had nine children.  The Lamb kids all started flying by sitting behind the steering wheel of a plane on their Dad’s lap in the cockpit. 

Their six sons all became career pilots and went into business with their Dad. By 1959 Lambair had logged more than 1,500,000 air miles, owned twenty planes and employed 40 pilots. In 1960 Tom, who had earned the nickname “Mr North” let his sons take over most of the airline business since he still had his fur-trading operation to run, a 7,240-acre cattle ranch to maintain and 24 grandchildren to keep him busy. 
Tom Lamb died in 1969 and his sons kept running the business till 1981. A 1981 Free Press article notes that Lambair is bankrupt and Calm Air is trying to buy the company. Only one of Tom’s grandchildren, a granddaughter Tracy took up flying. Tom’s son Jack has told the family’s story in his book My Life in the North. 

 Although the Leo Mol statue in the Richardson Building bears the date 1991, the original piece was poured in 1971. There is another copy of the Tom Lamb statue in the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in Assiniboine Park. A fibreglass version sits in the airport at The Pas and there is another copy in the Canadian embassy in Washington DC. 

Leo Mol said he wanted to show Tom Lamb as a young pilot and he made the propeller in his hands look a bit like a clock because he wanted the statue to take people back in time to the era when Mr Lamb helped open up the north as an aviation pioneer.

In September of 1977 at a ceremony where Tom Lamb was posthumously admitted to the Honor Roll of the Aviation Council, he was lauded as an individualist, humanitarian, multi-skilled, community-minded businessman.

This post has been updated here. 

Visiting the Hubbards

Tonight we are in Ankeny, Iowa visiting our friends Mari and Taylor Hubbard. We taught at the International Christian School in Hong Kong with them from 2003-2005. Dave and Taylor both taught in the high school and played on the ICS Orange–a staff basketball team together. Mari was an educational assistant in my classroom in the elementary school and she and I became good friends and had a regular Saturday morning coffee date in Hong Kong. 

Taylor is teaching Chemistry and AP Biology at the Ankeny Highschool and is just completing the practicum portion of his degree in counseling. Mari works as an educational assistant in an Akeny elementary school. 

Their son Paul, who was my student in fifth grade at ICS, is a freshman at Northwestern College in Iowa and their daughter Sarah is a junior at Ankeny High. Sarah has a part-time job at the YMCA doing child care and is busy saving money for a trip to France this summer. She is in her fourth year of studying French. 

 

When I contacted Mari and said we’d be coming through Ankeny on our drive from Phoenix to Manitoba she immediately invited us for dinner and offered us a bed for the night. We were happy to accept. Mari is a great cook and we had often enjoyed her delicious meals in Hong Kong so we weren’t about to turn down one of her dinners. She had made a wonderful chicken dish, with rice and green beans and we had homemade cheesecake for dessert. Mmmmm!

We stayed up talking till after ten o’clock. We reminisced about our time in Hong Kong and caught up on what’s been going on in our lives since the Hubbards moved back to North America. I had seen Mari a couple of years ago when she made a short visit to Hong Kong with Paul and Sarah, but it had been six years since we had seen Taylor. 

When I was interviewing former students for the history book I wrote about the school where we taught with the Hubbards, many of them mentioned Taylor as a teacher who had made a big difference in their life both because of his good teaching and his fine character. Mari served on the school’s Board of Directors and helped to formulate a special needs program for the school. She was famous in Hong Kong for her fabulous homemade cinnamon buns. 

It was such a pleasure to visit with the Hubbards again. Our time in Hong Kong has given us friends all over the world. That is a gift we feel very blessed to have and one that we get to enjoy even now that we no longer live in Hong Kong. 

PS. Guess what Mari made us for breakfast?  Her legendary homemade cinnamon buns with icing! 

Radio on the Road

Dave likes to have the radio on when he drives. Since he does all the driving the selection of radio stations and the volume of the radio is his jurisdiction. He likes to flip channels quite a bit and enjoys talk shows, news shows and commentary. In the last few days of driving home from Phoenix I’ve learned lots of interesting things from our radio listening. Here’s a sample. 

Dr. Daniel Levitin is a scientist who studies how music impacts people. He hooks people up to machines and measures their emotions and heart beats as they listen to a song. In this way he has discovered what things excite people and make them become emotionally attached to a song. He used this method to analyze Adele’s song Someone Like You which won best solo pop performance at the recent Grammy awards.  One reason it is popular is because it has several surprising elements. For example in the chorus Adele suddenly jumps up an entire octave with her voice.  If you want to know more listen to the interview with Dr. Levitin. 

Every Sunday  a 6 ft 4 in.  240 pound Latino man becomes Jesus –the Holy Host on his radio show called The Jesus Christ Show. Neal Saavedra, a martial artist and punk rocker with plenty of tattoos goes on the air to bring a message and  take calls from listeners as Jesus. This Sunday he was reflecting on Whitney Houston’s death and how she made poor choices in friends who were a bad moral influence on her. “Choose your relationships wisely”, was Jesus’/ aka Neal Saavedra’s advice.  He took calls from listeners. One woman was in love with an atheist and wondered if she should break up with him because she was a Christian and her partner didn’t share her faith. 

I know all about Jeremy Lin the point guard for the New York Knicks who has caused such a sensation in the professional basketball world lately.   I taught in Asia last year and my former students, many of whom are my Facebook friends, are fully caught up in Linsanity. I heard an editorial with a chiding tone on the radio about Jeremy. The commentator was reminding everyone that Jeremy is first and foremost an American. The Harvard grad was born in California. Although his parents are from Taiwan and are Chinese citizens, the radio editorial said Lin shouldn’t be forced to be a spokesperson, role model or representative for China or the Chinese. Taiwan and mainland China have a difficult relationship at best and are apparently already fighting over whether Lin is Taiwan’s or China’s native son.  

I heard a radio interview with two members of the Little Rock Nine. One was Elizabeth Eckford, the girl in the sunglasses in this photo. The Little Rock Nine were the first black students to attend classes at Central High in Little Rock Arkansas after the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that segregated schools were unconstitutional. Despite the fact the students were accompanied to school by army troops they were routinely bullied. It was a traumatic experience and Eckford still bears the scars today. Eckford went on to Ohio State University where she earned a history degree. 

What next? We still have two, or perhaps three more days of driving before we reach home. I wonder what other interesting things I’ll learn from the radio.

The Hopi Reservation

We had hoped to spend part of Sunday on the Hopi Reserve. However Dave read that a snowstorm was on the way, preceded by freezing rain and he figured we should drive out ahead of it

 So instead of attending Oraibi Mennonite Church which since we lived on the reservation has changed its name to Kykostmovi Mennonite Church…….
I had to content myself with just taking a few photos of the church. It’s exterior is completely changed since we attended the church twenty years ago. It would be interesting to see what it looks like inside. Talking with Becca at Hopi Mission School yesterday it seems most teachers now attend church elsewhere on the reservation. When we were there most of us went to Oraibi Mennonite.

I took a picture of the Hopi Court House because I once visited it with my Hopi Mission students on a field trip. The Hopis have their own court to deal with civil and criminal offences that arise on the reservation if the defendants are Hopi. They deal with anyone who violates Hopi tribal law. There is also a jail at the court-house. I remember how impressed my students were to see the jail cell. 

I took a picture of this house because if you look carefully on the right you can see a basketball hoop. Driving through the reservation it is surprising how many houses have hoops. When we lived on the reservation our students were passionate about basketball. Some people said that Hopi kids sleep with a basketball in their cribs. Our youngest son who was four years old and in the Hopi Head Start program played basketball with his classmates. They even played a mini-game at half time during a high school game.

This isn’t a great picture of Corn Rock. I took it from far away. At home I have some great photos I took in 1990 right in front of the rock with the sun setting on it. I was told when we lived on the reservation that the Hopis believe when Corn Rock splits in two the world will end

When we lived on the reservation we were often invited to our students’ homes for meals and celebrations. 

Family celebrations like baby namings took place in people’s homes and yards.

Hopi Village or Oraibi

Dances took place in the village square in the old villages on top of the mesas. Many families maintained houses in the old villages at the top of the mesas where they went for dances and holidays but in addition they had more modern homes in the newer villages at the base of the mesa.

 What next? I was sorry our visit to the Hopi Reservation was so short. I’d like to go back someday with our whole family and try to contact some of our former students. Who knows? Maybe Dave and I can do some volunteer work at Hopi Mission again sometime in the future.

When I get back to Manitoba I want to get out my photos from our time on the reservation and perhaps do a few posts about our experience living there twenty years ago. 

Visiting Hopi Mission School

During the 1989-1990 school year, our family did a term of Mennonite Voluntary Service. (MVS) We moved to the Hopi Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona for eleven months and Dave and I were both teachers at the Hopi Mission School. Our son Joel was a grade five student at the school and our son Bucky attended Hopi Head Start.

Today we drove the four and a half hours from Phoenix up to the Hopi reservation to pay a visit on our way home to Manitoba. It was the first time in over twenty years we had been back there, but everything looked quite familiar. 
We loved our time at Hopi Mission and so it was quite nostalgic to drive down the road to the school and see it there at the end of the driveway. The Mennonite Church has had a mission on the reservation since 1893 and the school was founded in 1951. At one time it had over a hundred students.  When we were there in 1990 the school had around seventy students. Now there are only forty. 

We parked and walked up to the school, but the doors were locked. Dave taught grade six at Hopi Mission and coached the basketball team. I taught Grade one. Joel had June Sinclair for his fifth grade teacher. Our son Bucky attended Hopi Head Start. 

Volunteer construction crews have added quite a few new buildings to the grounds during the last twenty years including this gymnasium. …...

There’s new playground equipment and a new school bus. 

There were also two new houses for teachers and a volunteer housing unit, where up to 30 volunteers can be housed if they come to work on construction projects or do other jobs at the school. 

The house our family shared with fellow teacher Liz Yoder was still being used. It had been re-painted a different color but otherwise it looked just like we remembered it. 

Luckily we ran into Becca Yoder, an MVS teacher in her second year at Hopi Mission. She is from Iowa and a recent graduate of Eastern Mennonite University. When we told her we were former Hopi Mission teachers she said she’d be glad to open the school for us and show us around. 

Becca told us the school almost didn’t open this year because they were missing a principal, a couple of teachers, a cook and a bus driver in August. However more staff arrived, but not before some parents had registered their children at other schools because they thought Hopi Mission might not be operational. Shortly into the school year the principal and his wife left forcing some teachers to take on more than one grade of students and one of the teachers to assume the principalship.  Getting qualified teachers to volunteer at the school is an ongoing problem.

I saw the room which had been my grade one classroom. I can still remember the names of many of my students Ingrid, Edward, Charlene, Joe, Nuva, Irvin, Elwin, Benny, Matthew…………

Here I am back in 1989 with my grade ones. They would all be 26 or 27 years old by now. 

The room that served as a chapel and cafeteria at Hopi Mission hadn’t changed much.

The library is in a new location and looks much more organized and cheerful than it did in our day.

The bell outside the school we taught at on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona.

The old school bell in front of Hopi Mission is still there. 

The students had done some neat artwork to decorate the school’s front windows. 

Our son ready for the eagle dance

I told Becca how our son Bucky had danced the eagle dance at a cultural celebration with his Head Start group the year we lived on the reservation. The Hopi Dads had taught Dave how to make Bucky’s eagle feathers and how to sing the Hopi songs the fathers chanted while the kids’ danced. Dave was also invited down into a kiva (an underground religious chamber) for the ceremony when his grade six boys were inducted into the kachina society. We often attended dances in the villages at the invitation of our students. In 1990 our participation in these activities was questioned by some of the people in the Hopi Mennonite churches. We’d heard from a recent Hopi Mission school principal that kind of concern about teacher participation in cultural events is apparently still evident today.

This is one of my favourite pictures taken on the Hopi Mission School grounds of our two boys having fun in an old bathtub they found in our garage. I can hardly wait to get home and look at all our other old photos from our year on the reservation. 

After saying good-bye to Becca and the school we drove to the Hopi Cultural Centre on the second mesa. We are staying here for the night in a very nice motel that is set up like a Hopi village. We had supper in the Cultural Centre restaurant. I had Hopi tacos, made on traditional Hopi fry bread. 

What next? Tomorrow we want to go to the morning service at the Mennonite Church in Oraibi which we attended when we lived here.