Hammock Effect

One of our fellow guests was Paulo, a biologist from Medellin who works in the herbarium at the University of , well, we’ll go with Medellin as I didn’t catch the name of the institution. He has learned both French and English and was told by his instructors to seek out Canadians to speak to because he could practise both. In point of fact, his French instructors told him if he could understand the french spoken by a Quebecois he could understand any French anywhere. We had to disappoint him on the French front, but were happy to oblige with our English. He hopes to attend graduate school in the USA and we encouraged him to consider the University of Alaska in Fairbanks for its programming and generosity of grants. I was saddened to hear how both the US and Canadian embassies treat applicants for student visas – not well. One of our conversations petered out we decided because of the hammock effect. The hammock causes such a degree of laziness and sloth it becomes difficult to even carry on a conversation.