Monday, November 23, 2015

Churchill: The Polar Bear Capital of the World (1)

Visit Churchill, Manitoba, for experiences of a lifetime!

Some of the late fall visitors to Churchill, Manitoba, don’t wear down jackets. They arrive in gorgeous white fur coats. These visitors cause quite a bit of excitement as they are the ones that everyone else goes to see. This main attraction – polar bears!

Located in northern Manitoba on the west side of Hudson Bay, Churchill is out in the middle of nowhere. But the bears like it that way. They spend summers on the tundra. In the fall, they wait anxiously along the shore of Hudson Bay for the ice to form. Then they go out into the frozen sea to hunt ringed seals – their favorite food. October and November are the best polar-bear viewing times. From tundra vehicles, visitors observe the bears. Some enjoy day trips or stay overnight on the mobile tundra-buggy lodge. Others stay at a wilderness lodge on the bears’ migration route to view the mighty creatures. These lodges can be reached only by air and feature luxury food and living arrangements.

Language Lab
Teaching Topic: The Boondocks 教學主題: 窮鄉僻壤

It’s not easy to find a language that hasn’t contributed at least one or two words to the English lexicon. Even Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines has added a couple words of its own. One is the word bundok, which means mountain.

At the end of the 19 century during the Spanish American War, US soldiers serving in the Philippines took this Tagalog word and used it to describe a remote or isolated area.

When the soldiers returned to the US, they brought the word back with them, but with the slightly different pronunciation and spelling, boondocks, spelled, b, o, o, n,d, o, c, k, s.

Right. And notice that s at the end, we always say this word in a plural form. Again, boondocks refers to the country side or any out of the way location. I might say, have you ever been to Albert’s house? He lives way out in the boondocks.

A more informal version of boondocks is boonies. If you are hiking out in the boonies, don’t expect to get a 3G signal.

More recently, boondocks has taken on the extended meaning of a town or even city and in the middle of nowhere that is considered backwards and unsophisticated.

Language Lab
down jacket
small and very soft feathers jacket
- a down pillow/comforter/jacket

anxiously adv.
afraid or nervous especially about what may happen : feeling anxiety
- Her parents waited anxiously for her to come home that night.
anxious adj.
/ˈæŋkʃəs/
They are anxious [=worried, concerned] about their son's health.


quite a bit of …out in the middle of nowhere= boondockswilderness

mms://203.69.69.81/studio/20151123baa6b1a798c90fff655322c2a318868f8bad88213232d057a0925a1bd05e7c5e666.wma

No comments:

Post a Comment