Mid Rotation Reflection

So last night Amy came from Quesnel to help us have our mid-reflection rotation. After talking to my lovely mother, we ate salad and lasaunga. (Which was Tres epic, Kate and Zoe) Right as we sat down Amy asked us to power clean the house because it was slightly lacking in the clean department, so we ran around for a couple of minutes and took care of that situation.
The first activity we did we had a ball of yarn and stood in a circle and one person would hold it and say one thing they disliked about the Katimavik program and then hold their piece of yarn and pass the ball to the next person and so on, creating an intricate web of negativity. After we had this complex web of how it sucks we can't go home for Christmas, how breathing seems like a competency, and how anything fun is at least 10 sheets of intense paper work we reversed the web with something positive about Katimavik. Most of us agreed it was a good oppertunity to travel, meet new people and I said it's not often you're forced to look at yourself in so much depth and complexity. It was really great to see a sort of metaphor for Negativity vs. Positivity because it shows that for every bad thing, there can always be a good thing.
Next we did the street lights activity. We each had to write down one thing that we want our group to stop doing, one thing our group wants to start doing and one thing we want our group to continue doing. Most commonly our group wanted to start doing more excursions and start communicating more, stop being so negative and continue being a great katima-family.

To be honest, it was hard when half of the things to stop doing were to stop being negative, because I feel that's something I struggle the most with, and even though they weren't pointing out anyone specifically, it's hard not to feel cornered when you know it's you.
As we went through and talked about the things we want to change, like communicating more, Amy spoke with us about communicating with eachother, and we tried to get to the root of the problem, why were we not communicating? We established that it was because we were afraid of offending eachother, destroying dynamic, and having those awkward, 'you really hurt me' days. Amy, just like Melissa previously told us that it's much better to resolve a conflict while it's addressable than leave it for too long until it's harder to resolve, and becomes too complicated.
We decided as a group that something had to be done, that night. We arranged a system of group dating/interview type discussions between 2 people and they spoke to eachother privately about things they liked and didn't like. I really expected it to be worse than it was, but it was really, really good.
I already knew that I'm a really negative person and it's not easy to be around and almost every person touched on it, but lightly, and said basically, they just want me to be happy, and that's what I want too, so I'm positive that I can continue working towards changing my negativity.
Once we all rotated, the difference in our group was clear. Everyone was laughing and joking around, and everyone got things off of their chest that they clearly needed to. It seemed as if the atmosphere changed from a low foggy tension, into a light airy cheerfulness.
After our speed dating conflict resolution we brainstormed the traits of the ultimate PL and then we made a tree for Melissa and placed the leaves according to how well we feel she succeeds at mastering those traits. It's hard to know when you're being harsh, or honest, but in the long run, even if it's hard to handle your weaknesses, at least you know what you need to work towards improving, and with a person like Melissa, no matter how many things she has to work on, the things she excels at overshines any weakness. I personally feel very, very priveledged to have a PL with so many diverse perspectives, so many applicable life experiences, someone who is incrediby relateable, and genuinely a great person to be around.

We were all getting pretty tired, seeing as we started our activities around 6, and most of activities were emotionally draining and took us to about 10:30 but Amy had the fix! She thanked us for paying so much attention and participating and volunteering in our community and brought us real, store bought ice-cream and chocolate sauce. It was definetely a nice, nice surpise and I'm very appreciative of it.
Mid rotation reflection was a really good part of Katimavik and really helped to de-stress our group. Billeting is coming up this Sunday evening and I'm excited to see what I can learn from my host family, and am looking forward to spending sometime on my own for reflection, writing letters, and just regrouping myself after the last almost, 2 months.

Thanks for reading folks!