learn some canadian history

A lot of it was really boring, especially the pre-1900 stuff.

But the later years were more interesting. Unfortunately, the info was all recorded in the mid-1990s, so the current events were a bit dated.

But it ended on an interesting note – kind of relevant to current politics.

I only listened to the final CD once, I’ll listen again tonight, but I’m calling this goal DONE!

here I am already – on CD 14. This goal is gonna be finished well before my deadline!

It’s getting easier, because the recent stuff is less dry, more related to events I can remember or have heard of socially before. Therefore, more interesting.

It’s finally starting to get interesting. Post WWII – the details are finally starting to come together regarding the background of both current national issues and world issues.

This is good – hopefully now it won’t be such a struggle to work on this!

...Only 5 left!!

I think I forgot to bring my CD player home from work though. So I’ll try to get started on #10 tomorrow afternoon.

I’m finding that when I’m focusing on this goal, I can’t be asked to read the current news (not that it changes all that much from day to day anyway). I guess it’s just too much input of facts, facts facts (heavily influenced by opinion of course). Blah. Overwhelming.

So, I’m on a news break.

but I only listened to #7 once, and that was a couple weeks ago, so I can’t remember much of it.

I need to put more effort into this.

Ideally, I’d like to get through all 16 of them before the end of July – that way I’ll have 16 fewer CDs to carry on the plane.

SUB goal – listen to all of CD 8 tonight.

is a little more interesting than the previous ones. (I finally made it into the 20th century!!!) Slow progress though.

I’m currently reading the James Michener book “Alaska”. It’s fiction, but very well researched (and very heavy sometimes). It covers the entire history of Alaska from plate tectonics to mastodons to Russians and then Americans.

It’s kinda cool that I’m at about the same time frame in the book about Alaska as I am in the Canadian history CDs :-)

The Alaska one makes me more nostalgic for home though – I guess because of the characters and the Westcoast landscapes. _Sniff.

I’m on CD #5!

It’s really boring :-(

Darn… I sure know how to pick these goals (bangs head).

I finished CD #3.

Now I have an ipod, so I can load the rest of the CDs on that and go for walks while I learn about CDN history.

I also downloaded some CBC podcasts. They’re more related to current issues, but so far they are tying in quite nicely with the themes in the history class. I miss good ole CBC.

For the post-Confederate Canadian History course, there are 16 CDs.

So far I’ve listened to two of them, twice each, because they are long and have a lot of info. I suspect those two will be the most boring ones (pre-1900 elections and economic policy – snore!), and that it will get more interesting as we get further into the 20th century – or at least, the names and events will be a little more familiar.

It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. Listening is much easier than reading through a textbook, definitely.

I guess I should do a little research to find out what kind of books are most likely to be on the syllabus and pre-read them.

I think I’ll wait to do the reading -until I’m back in Canada – mainly because it will be easy to get Cdn Lit books from the library there, and I already have enough stuff here that I need to move across the Pacific Ocean later this year.