It's all a matter of perspective....

(The first three are what I grew up looking at....the last two are what I see now)


One thing that has puzzled us the most since our arrival in Newfoundland.....is the lack of excitement over the Ocean amongst the native Newfoundlanders. People look at us strangely as we exhibit extreme excitement over the sights, sounds and extreme power of it all. It's like, they just don't see it and all I want to do is shout-- BUT IT'S THE OCEAN!!! I remember, sitting in school as a child, labelling my maps, trying to come up with some method to remember which ocean was on the left side of Canada and which one was on the right. And now.....we are living on one! I can hardly believe it. We cannot get enough of it.

To emphasize this lack of excitement point even further is the way our house is situated. It's practically right on the ocean.....but it's a real chore to see it. The bedrooms are along the back of the house and they have very small windows. I've been telling people here, in Ontario (at least where we were from) any house built anywhere near a body of water would be at least facing the water and most likely have a wall of windows in order to see the windows. In return we get that trying-to-figure-us-out look that is becoming so familiar to us.

I was recently commenting about this very point on the Canadian Homeschooler's Chat Board that I visit and a friend who was raised here in NL provided an explanation that cleared up this whole issue for us. It's all a matter of perspective.

Newfoundlanders (or many of them) traditionally earned their living from the water. They spent a large chunk of their time out on it. The last thing they wanted to do is look at it when they weren't working. They had small windows in the back of the house in order to see what the water was doing (for working purposes) but didn't have big windows to help keep heat loss, exposure to the elements etc.,at a minimum.

Ahhhhh......it was like a light bulb went off in my head. *That* makes perfect sense to me now.....I'm not sure why I couldn't see that right from the start. This is exactly the way is was for me growing up. I was raised on a farm, complete with hay fields, tractors and a barn. I could never figure out why, when people came to visit, they always wanted to go to the barn. To me, it represented a smelly place that meant a lot of work and the last thing I wanted to do is look at it when I didn't have to be working in it. Hmmmmm......sounds familiar.

Yep ---- it's all a matter of perspective.