So today was spent cleaning and packing, and boy what a job that is. Countless suitcases are laying anywhere they can fit, the broom is in high demand, everyone wishes the vacuum actually works, there is a pile of dishes, there are no clean rags, and Evelyne has informed us that no-one is allowed to take a shower from today on because she cleaned the bathrooms so well. Sorry, but that last one is not going to work.
When packing, everything seems to become that little bit more real.
We have tomorrow... and that's it.
We're going out for supper as a group and most of us are staying up all night long, and the following morning is a time that makes my stomach churn just to think about.
At 12:22 pm on Wed I will be returning to my own city, my own house, my own bed, and my friends and family.
I'm so excited but so scared at the same time.
This afternoon I've made a new blog, one that I can carry on with after Katimavik is over, because I am only Katima Kyra until the 2nd of March. :(
If you'd like to stay in tune with my life and adventures after Katimavik, go ahead and follow me at www.Kyrasreality.blogspot.com
Thanks for reading, update again the next chance I have, which may easily be when this is all over.
xooxox,
Monday, February 28, 2011
Debriefing.
The time has come where Katimavik is coming to the end. If the program had been the 9 months we had all signed up for, we would be reaching the start of our final rotation, but rather in two days we are making the sad, yet equally joyous voyage home.
Debriefing activities which focused on just Quebec were planned by us group members and have taken place over the last two days.
Last night MA, Zoe and Kate did their activity which covered group living in dynamic. They gave each group member a mountain to represent a hard time, a tree to represent a time of growth, a heart for a time of love, a sun for a happy moment and a stop sign for a new start. We had a timeline and each group member put their objects where they felt it belonged over the 6 months and why. I put my stop sign at the start because I felt we all had the oppertunity to start fresh and sort of be whoever we wanted to be because we didn't know eachother before the program. I put my sunshine at the end of november, one of our last nights in Vander where we all had matching timhortons mugs and walked to timhortons in the middle of the night in the middle of the street together. I put my tree in the first billeting section because it was our first time away from eachother since the start of the program, I put my mountain in the two weeks of hell at the end of Jan start of Feb, and my heart at the start of the program because that's when we had to many conversations late at night about life and at the time it made me so excited to spend time with the group I had been given and appreciate the group I was in so much, because I could tell I was in the right place with the right people who had similar intrests as me, and NO I didn't cry at all when telling this to everyone... hardy har har.
This morning when I got up for breakfast people were giggling and making many references to my camera so I turned it on and found a wide array of extremely artistic photographs of couches, silly faces and the inside of my project leaders mouth. Stephane had found it and decided that he'd spend his valuable time and leave me with some of his extremely rare photography. These are my favourites.
After breakfast I was sitting and drinking my juice when I witnessed a spontaneous massage train through the kitchen, dining room area. Since my camera was nearby for the epic pictures already taken for me that morning I also snapped this candid moment.
After the dishes and massages, it was me and Eve and Isaacs turn and we had the competency category. We got everyone to rate how they felt we did on doing activities which covered all 8 of our competencies and then they were allowed to use that many fingers to support an exercise ball as a group. It was cool to see if the ball balanced or not, and it really sparked some interesting conversation about whether or not the group felt we had spent considerable time on learning about the French culture, and about languages in Canada and the identity of Canada.
After was Jared and Brandon and they had 11 random objects and by rotating objects we all had to relate them to our workplace. It got a little old after about 6 rotations, but it was funny to hear all the work memories it brought up from everyone, and we never really would sit down and talk about our work experience because it was just something we would all do everyday and not really talk about so it was cool hearing about what everyone thought about their workplaces.
After supper it was Sara(h)s and Ryan who organized a scavenger hunt. I was on Eve's team and we had to collect a packet of salt and pepper from Ashton's the best place for poutine, a napkin from Star Cafe, a hangout for uni students, from Espresso lab, an empty cup, a nice internet cafe, from the movie theatre the clap a photograph, and Timmies a small treat. When we got home there was hot chocolate and doughnuts for all of us and we spoke about our favourite place and least favourite places in the community.
We decided to stay in for the rest of the night and everyone except Eve and Brandon played monopoly. It was cute though, because even though they didnt play they stayed in the room and the entire group was together the whole night. In between her turns Sara managed to paint mine, Eve's, her own, Sarahs, and Kate's nails! She's kinda professional.
We were tired so we paused the game until tomorrow but at this point Zoe and Sarah are raking in the dough, and we have a death alley on our hands.
But we're cute, and intense monopoly players, and me and Kate are losing, lol!
The other night I decided I simply needed a picture with the bagged milk that is ever so popular here in quebec. Here you buy plastic bags of milk, cut the tops off and put the bag in a little jug, def not a thing you see in the west so Sarah and I took photos with this eastern rarity.
We also figured out that in Quebec, we haven't had a SINGLE group picture, because everytime we seem to take one, at least one person is missing for whatever reason so we took our first complete group picture in our living room this afternoon, with 3 days of Katimavik left.
You know, with two days left, and me able to say, 'See you on Wednesday...' a fear truely shoots through my body. Over these past six months I have had the oppertunity to go through so much, so many experiences, good and bad, and learn so much about myself and the people around me. I know that Katelyn love's stars and can see the Ocean from her bedroom, and that Sara is italian and wants to be a teacher and that Sarah wants to be Vegan and wants to have dreads, and how Ryan has his pilots license and loves living in northern Canada, and that Isaac is accepted to University and likes meat, and Brandon loves Parkour and second hand stores, and Evelyne loves working at night time and going out, and that Zoe is extremely artistic and loves places with mellow atmosphere's and that Jared likes to read and loves history, that Marc-Andre has an adventerous spirit and can run an entire farm. And I learnt to face conflict head on, to be honest with myself, to follow and do what I want to do, and to be independent.
I learnt how to cook, how to manage my time, to be less lazy, and to live in a house with 10 other teenagers.
I've slept on plastic matresses, I've volunteered in minus temperatures of extended amounts of time, I've taken public transit in a city I didn't know, I've spoken a new language, I've learnt that I don't like sorting clothes, I've tasted real Quebec Poutine, I've seen carnaval and bonhomme, I've eaten soup out of tupperwear, I've house managed solo style, I've eating soup with plastic in it, I've pulled all nighters, I've built card cities, I've lived near a river, I've sent more postcards than I can count, I've written almost two journals worth of my experiences.
I will cry when I say goodbye to my Katima family, I will sleep when I get onto the plane to forget reality, I will cry again when I see my family and my dog again. My heart will be happy when I can share a room with my sister again, grocery shop and play computer with my dad, and sit with my mom for hours and talk, and give her the longest hug I can imagine, when I hug my dog again for the first time. I will smile when I see Lisa, and Cally, and all the dear friends I've missed this whole time. I will change my cell-phone number from Quebec local to Edmonton, and I will find a job again.
I will be a Katima-Victim, and I will never forget the things I experienced in these six months.
Thanks for reading, xoxo
Debriefing activities which focused on just Quebec were planned by us group members and have taken place over the last two days.
Last night MA, Zoe and Kate did their activity which covered group living in dynamic. They gave each group member a mountain to represent a hard time, a tree to represent a time of growth, a heart for a time of love, a sun for a happy moment and a stop sign for a new start. We had a timeline and each group member put their objects where they felt it belonged over the 6 months and why. I put my stop sign at the start because I felt we all had the oppertunity to start fresh and sort of be whoever we wanted to be because we didn't know eachother before the program. I put my sunshine at the end of november, one of our last nights in Vander where we all had matching timhortons mugs and walked to timhortons in the middle of the night in the middle of the street together. I put my tree in the first billeting section because it was our first time away from eachother since the start of the program, I put my mountain in the two weeks of hell at the end of Jan start of Feb, and my heart at the start of the program because that's when we had to many conversations late at night about life and at the time it made me so excited to spend time with the group I had been given and appreciate the group I was in so much, because I could tell I was in the right place with the right people who had similar intrests as me, and NO I didn't cry at all when telling this to everyone... hardy har har.
This morning when I got up for breakfast people were giggling and making many references to my camera so I turned it on and found a wide array of extremely artistic photographs of couches, silly faces and the inside of my project leaders mouth. Stephane had found it and decided that he'd spend his valuable time and leave me with some of his extremely rare photography. These are my favourites.
After breakfast I was sitting and drinking my juice when I witnessed a spontaneous massage train through the kitchen, dining room area. Since my camera was nearby for the epic pictures already taken for me that morning I also snapped this candid moment.
After the dishes and massages, it was me and Eve and Isaacs turn and we had the competency category. We got everyone to rate how they felt we did on doing activities which covered all 8 of our competencies and then they were allowed to use that many fingers to support an exercise ball as a group. It was cool to see if the ball balanced or not, and it really sparked some interesting conversation about whether or not the group felt we had spent considerable time on learning about the French culture, and about languages in Canada and the identity of Canada.
After was Jared and Brandon and they had 11 random objects and by rotating objects we all had to relate them to our workplace. It got a little old after about 6 rotations, but it was funny to hear all the work memories it brought up from everyone, and we never really would sit down and talk about our work experience because it was just something we would all do everyday and not really talk about so it was cool hearing about what everyone thought about their workplaces.
After supper it was Sara(h)s and Ryan who organized a scavenger hunt. I was on Eve's team and we had to collect a packet of salt and pepper from Ashton's the best place for poutine, a napkin from Star Cafe, a hangout for uni students, from Espresso lab, an empty cup, a nice internet cafe, from the movie theatre the clap a photograph, and Timmies a small treat. When we got home there was hot chocolate and doughnuts for all of us and we spoke about our favourite place and least favourite places in the community.
We decided to stay in for the rest of the night and everyone except Eve and Brandon played monopoly. It was cute though, because even though they didnt play they stayed in the room and the entire group was together the whole night. In between her turns Sara managed to paint mine, Eve's, her own, Sarahs, and Kate's nails! She's kinda professional.
We were tired so we paused the game until tomorrow but at this point Zoe and Sarah are raking in the dough, and we have a death alley on our hands.
But we're cute, and intense monopoly players, and me and Kate are losing, lol!
The other night I decided I simply needed a picture with the bagged milk that is ever so popular here in quebec. Here you buy plastic bags of milk, cut the tops off and put the bag in a little jug, def not a thing you see in the west so Sarah and I took photos with this eastern rarity.
We also figured out that in Quebec, we haven't had a SINGLE group picture, because everytime we seem to take one, at least one person is missing for whatever reason so we took our first complete group picture in our living room this afternoon, with 3 days of Katimavik left.
You know, with two days left, and me able to say, 'See you on Wednesday...' a fear truely shoots through my body. Over these past six months I have had the oppertunity to go through so much, so many experiences, good and bad, and learn so much about myself and the people around me. I know that Katelyn love's stars and can see the Ocean from her bedroom, and that Sara is italian and wants to be a teacher and that Sarah wants to be Vegan and wants to have dreads, and how Ryan has his pilots license and loves living in northern Canada, and that Isaac is accepted to University and likes meat, and Brandon loves Parkour and second hand stores, and Evelyne loves working at night time and going out, and that Zoe is extremely artistic and loves places with mellow atmosphere's and that Jared likes to read and loves history, that Marc-Andre has an adventerous spirit and can run an entire farm. And I learnt to face conflict head on, to be honest with myself, to follow and do what I want to do, and to be independent.
I learnt how to cook, how to manage my time, to be less lazy, and to live in a house with 10 other teenagers.
I've slept on plastic matresses, I've volunteered in minus temperatures of extended amounts of time, I've taken public transit in a city I didn't know, I've spoken a new language, I've learnt that I don't like sorting clothes, I've tasted real Quebec Poutine, I've seen carnaval and bonhomme, I've eaten soup out of tupperwear, I've house managed solo style, I've eating soup with plastic in it, I've pulled all nighters, I've built card cities, I've lived near a river, I've sent more postcards than I can count, I've written almost two journals worth of my experiences.
I will cry when I say goodbye to my Katima family, I will sleep when I get onto the plane to forget reality, I will cry again when I see my family and my dog again. My heart will be happy when I can share a room with my sister again, grocery shop and play computer with my dad, and sit with my mom for hours and talk, and give her the longest hug I can imagine, when I hug my dog again for the first time. I will smile when I see Lisa, and Cally, and all the dear friends I've missed this whole time. I will change my cell-phone number from Quebec local to Edmonton, and I will find a job again.
I will be a Katima-Victim, and I will never forget the things I experienced in these six months.
Thanks for reading, xoxo
Festi-Glisse!
Hello again!
On Saturday morning we woke up at 7 to go volunteer at 9 for the Festival of Ice at Sara and Jared's volunteer placement. We all have different assignments such as photographs, selling refreshments, renting out skates and tubes, and Sarah, Zoe and I got to face paint!
At first I was really, really nervous. I had never face painted before, and we all know how I barely passed Junior High Art class, so the first two faces I painted I hyperventilated and prayed that when they looked in the mirror they wouldn't cry. But it turned out after a little while, I wasn't doing too shabby! The kids seemed happy when they saw my artwork on their face and it put a smile on my face!
I ended up doing 2 spidermen, 2 spiders, 2 princesses, a dolphin, 3 hearts, 2 flowers, a panda, a cat and about 500 butterflies. I was pretty surprised, as I thought about two people would want their faces painted but we pretty much had non-stop people from 12-3.
The best part about face painting was that it was indoors!! Many of the activities were outside and the group had to switch and do shifts because it was so cold! -25 for a few hours is certainly not the most enjoyable time spent, and it was slightly alarming when they came inside and their water bottles had frozen.
However, due to the volunteering we got to wear these attractive red fleece vests, and obnoxiously long toques, so we kinda pulled those off with A LOT of class.
And in the few moments we didn't have kids who wanted their faces painted some of us got a little creative aha.
After we had finished working we grabbed a group picture minus eve and zoe because they had to house manage, and Melony Sara and Jared's boss bought us cookies and pop. Cute!
For our last volunteering oppertunity, we all really enjoyed it. Despite the cold weather we all realized it was our last chance to volunteer in the community and the time passed quickly and we had a lot of fun.
Up next, debriefing!
Thanks for reading!
Shennigans!
Hello there everyone!
Sorry if I haven't been updating much! There is.. dare I say it.. 2 days of Katimavik left, and things have been crazy! So many shannigans I've been catching on my camera!
Friday was our last day of work! (Finally...) I got to do Laundry (yay!) with Nadia, (yay) sit at the staff table for lunch (yay!) and get a certificate with my name spelt right. (yay!) and finish at twelve. (yay again) I captured two more photos of my workplace.
This is the 'donation room' and I would come and get the donations from here and drag them to this table in the laundry room to sort them. This is where I spent my entire work day, 8-230, sorting dirty donations.
Friday evening, someone got the idea to slide down the stairs on our Katima matresses, which are made of the hard plasticy consistancy.. This didn't work because the mattress was too wide, so it turned into Jared getting squished in the front entrance, and MA and Brandon having a parkour competition up the stairs..
I used to be shocked at the weird things our group came up with, and now I just accept it, nothing phases me anymore.
After that, most of us went over to Zack's apartment to say goodbye to him. It really, really sucked to see Kelton and Zack say goodbye because they are super close friends and to see them have to seperate seriously broke my heart.
Here's me and Zack looking uncontrolablly happy. At Christmas by the river he taught me how to look like I was having fun in every picture.
Flashback to Christmas:
Now:
Now he's headed to see Friends and Fam, and then going to Denmark with Aupair! Best of luck Zack, you'll own no matter where you go or what you'll do!!
Coming up: Festi-Glisse et Debriefing!
Stay tuned!
Sorry if I haven't been updating much! There is.. dare I say it.. 2 days of Katimavik left, and things have been crazy! So many shannigans I've been catching on my camera!
Friday was our last day of work! (Finally...) I got to do Laundry (yay!) with Nadia, (yay) sit at the staff table for lunch (yay!) and get a certificate with my name spelt right. (yay!) and finish at twelve. (yay again) I captured two more photos of my workplace.
This is the 'donation room' and I would come and get the donations from here and drag them to this table in the laundry room to sort them. This is where I spent my entire work day, 8-230, sorting dirty donations.
Friday evening, someone got the idea to slide down the stairs on our Katima matresses, which are made of the hard plasticy consistancy.. This didn't work because the mattress was too wide, so it turned into Jared getting squished in the front entrance, and MA and Brandon having a parkour competition up the stairs..
I used to be shocked at the weird things our group came up with, and now I just accept it, nothing phases me anymore.
After that, most of us went over to Zack's apartment to say goodbye to him. It really, really sucked to see Kelton and Zack say goodbye because they are super close friends and to see them have to seperate seriously broke my heart.
Here's me and Zack looking uncontrolablly happy. At Christmas by the river he taught me how to look like I was having fun in every picture.
Flashback to Christmas:
Now:
Now he's headed to see Friends and Fam, and then going to Denmark with Aupair! Best of luck Zack, you'll own no matter where you go or what you'll do!!
Coming up: Festi-Glisse et Debriefing!
Stay tuned!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
'It's like we have our own Landfill...'
Hello my lovely readers! (Of which there was almost 50 of today!)
Today was a good day but I'm a bit tired!
I got up like usual to go to work for 8, and sorted donations for the morning.
Marc-Andre came eventually and requested we take photos of our personal landfill.
When I say I sorted donations this means I open boxes or garbage bags of people's donations, check to see if they are clean enough, fold them, put them into like piles, and then put them in a new garbage bag, label it, in French, and then put it in a bin and someone takes it to a room in the basement and throws it on the other 100 already sorted bags to eventually use in the second store, or send to Africa.
So we took photos of the fruits of our labours for the last 3 months.
Observe.
My morning break got skipped however because we went to the local church where the homeless shelter has a recreation centre for the homeless and we set up tables, one for each type of clothing, pants, shirts, socks, whatever. Then we opened it up to the homeless and low incomed from 12-3pm. When they came in they were handed a garbage bag, and a small piece of paper which they had to get initialed at each table to say they had taken an acceptable amount of clothing. It was really crazy to see, it was completely packed for all 3 hours. I ended up speaking a lot of French and it called for quick understanding! My most common phrases of the day in French was 'Mens shirts are here, womans shirts are there.'
Yesterday was our French evaluations, and it was so much harder than I expected!
She asked me my birthday, where I was born, the time, the temperature, my job in Vander, my job in Quebec, if I liked Katimavik, and what we've done in Quebec so far. Funny part is I understood 90% of it, answered in full sentences, and moved from a 0 out of 5 to a 2! (And the biligual people have like 3s... soo..) Yay me! I guess Katimavik really does help you learn your other language.
Tomorrow is my second last day of work, and we have free time I think. Marc-Andre wanted to experience working at night, so he's working 4-10 pm and I'm doing my usual 8am-2pm.
On Monday morning at 3:30 am our lovely Sara left us and will be gone for the next two days. She had to do a comfirmation for her friends daughter or something. The morning she left I told her to wake me up and we took a goodbye photo together.
Aren't we cute?
Me gots me morning face on. aahaha! (:
Butttt... I'm super tired.
I'm going to take a shower, drink hot chocolate anddd go to sleep! Ahaha. 6 day left of Katimavik, hasn't quite hit me yet, but I think I'm ready to come home.
xoxoxox,
Today was a good day but I'm a bit tired!
I got up like usual to go to work for 8, and sorted donations for the morning.
Marc-Andre came eventually and requested we take photos of our personal landfill.
When I say I sorted donations this means I open boxes or garbage bags of people's donations, check to see if they are clean enough, fold them, put them into like piles, and then put them in a new garbage bag, label it, in French, and then put it in a bin and someone takes it to a room in the basement and throws it on the other 100 already sorted bags to eventually use in the second store, or send to Africa.
So we took photos of the fruits of our labours for the last 3 months.
Observe.
My morning break got skipped however because we went to the local church where the homeless shelter has a recreation centre for the homeless and we set up tables, one for each type of clothing, pants, shirts, socks, whatever. Then we opened it up to the homeless and low incomed from 12-3pm. When they came in they were handed a garbage bag, and a small piece of paper which they had to get initialed at each table to say they had taken an acceptable amount of clothing. It was really crazy to see, it was completely packed for all 3 hours. I ended up speaking a lot of French and it called for quick understanding! My most common phrases of the day in French was 'Mens shirts are here, womans shirts are there.'
Yesterday was our French evaluations, and it was so much harder than I expected!
She asked me my birthday, where I was born, the time, the temperature, my job in Vander, my job in Quebec, if I liked Katimavik, and what we've done in Quebec so far. Funny part is I understood 90% of it, answered in full sentences, and moved from a 0 out of 5 to a 2! (And the biligual people have like 3s... soo..) Yay me! I guess Katimavik really does help you learn your other language.
Tomorrow is my second last day of work, and we have free time I think. Marc-Andre wanted to experience working at night, so he's working 4-10 pm and I'm doing my usual 8am-2pm.
On Monday morning at 3:30 am our lovely Sara left us and will be gone for the next two days. She had to do a comfirmation for her friends daughter or something. The morning she left I told her to wake me up and we took a goodbye photo together.
Aren't we cute?
Me gots me morning face on. aahaha! (:
Butttt... I'm super tired.
I'm going to take a shower, drink hot chocolate anddd go to sleep! Ahaha. 6 day left of Katimavik, hasn't quite hit me yet, but I think I'm ready to come home.
xoxoxox,
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Go Fish. Not.
So to properly name what I'm doing would properly be described as procrastinating... I'm supposed to be making this amazing powerpoint solo style for our work partners who are coming tomorrow night... so I'm blogging instead ahha.
So, the other night I vetured downstairs to find MA and Brandon eating their breakfast. At 10:00 pm, out of a large white tub, and an entire box worth. Only in Katimavik...
On Wednesday we volunteered for the snowboard Jamboree. I thought we were going to be volunteering for the actual event but this was really, really not the case. Instead we helped make the actual track/jumps! This required shovelling and ice chopping and Ryan showed me how to do it "Toronto Style" which is apparently extremely violent Ahaha!
It was going alright, but I had slight anxiety pretty much the entire time because it was really high up. To get to the main level we had to climb multiple flights of stairs up a makeshift metal structure and at one point we were breaking snow on the second ramp, and this was like really high. My pictures at night don't do justice, so here is a picture by Peter in the Beauport group so you can see how high we were.
So we were breaking the snow to make it better for snowboarding down, and I was half way up the second ramp, and my fear of heights and rickety structures kinda struct me so I got down and said I was finished.
So that night we finished about 9:00 a yellow toque, a large lunch, and 5 hours of snow chopping/softening/shovelling later. After the days events I spent on average 7 hours outside because I finished work before volunteering started and it was a 5 minute walk away from my workplacement, going home would have been a waste.
On thursday was our last french lesson ever and MK made it special by making it sugar shack themed. She played us cool songs, taught us the history of the sugar shack, and she MADE us traditional maple syrup on snow!
MK was certainly one of the best teachers I've had, and THE ONE who made the most effort into making lessons that I've ever seen. Our french activities were always tons of fun, always interesting and taught us a lot. Love this girl.
Then on Saturday was our excursion...
Now, origionally the idea was to go dog sledding, ice fishing and snow shoeing, however due to unknown reasons and not a big enough budget, this turned into just ice-fishing. Me and Sarah are vegetarians and very clearly did not want to ice-fish, but somehow our group excursion which was meant to be more of a group activity was instead made so that not everyone could participate. In my opinion, ice-fishing for Sarah and I went against our beliefs and was not just a case of the 'I don't want to's' so we both were a bit upset that it was an activity we had no choice but not to participate in. We went anyways with no alternative plans to do; there is only so much you can do in an ice fishing village. For the first hour me and Sarah sat in the cabin where the people who icefish eat their lunches in. Then I remembered the van was unlocked so we sat there for another hour. Sara eventually joined. She couldn't handle when they caught a fish, put it in a bucket with no water and had to watch it suffocate to death and when she mentioned something about it, our project leader stating, "That's the point - For it to die." Let ME mention, that when we planned the activity the idea was to catch the fish and let them go. Upon ice-fishing it changed to catch the fish, kill them, and bring them home with us to cook in the house.
We ate lunch where Brandon got creative and mixed Mayonaise and Jam sandwich and a Peanut Butter and Mustard Sandwich.
After me and Sara(h)*2 Returned to the van where our project leader came and told us that our chosen activity for the afternoon was unacceptable. Instead we were expected to walk around an ice-fishing pond for 2 hours.
So we sat in the park for 15 minutes and returned to the lunch eating cabin.
After the drive home where we enjoyed the company of about 8 dead fish in a plastic bag, we had a discussion with our PL and he said we almost got warnings for participation because we did not make alternate arrangements for our excursion other than sitting in a van. Apparently we were expected to go to Mountain Equipment Co-op on our own time, use our own money that would later be expensed to rent snow shoes and then snow shoe from 10 am to 2 pm. Give, me, a break.
I really don't care, give me a punishment for avoiding an activity that goes against my beliefs, and then am forced to take my own time and effort to arrange my other favourite type of activity of the physical nature. UGGH.
Then we went and watched the Snowboard Jamboree which I turned out discovering is actually a worldwide competition, it was cool to watch but I was really surprised when half them would fall, I just had it in my mind that snowboarders like, always landed their jumps, LOL. But it was cool, a Canadian won, so yay Canada!
Alright, time to make my powerpoint... Katelyn requests shoutouts to..
her parents! Hey Momma and Poppa Wilson! I have your house number now! Ahaha, maybe I'll call you! Ahaha.
Shout out to Bonhomme, who I know is reading this from his ice palace! Ahaha.
Thanks for reading, 9 days left tomorrow I think it is!
(:
So, the other night I vetured downstairs to find MA and Brandon eating their breakfast. At 10:00 pm, out of a large white tub, and an entire box worth. Only in Katimavik...
On Wednesday we volunteered for the snowboard Jamboree. I thought we were going to be volunteering for the actual event but this was really, really not the case. Instead we helped make the actual track/jumps! This required shovelling and ice chopping and Ryan showed me how to do it "Toronto Style" which is apparently extremely violent Ahaha!
It was going alright, but I had slight anxiety pretty much the entire time because it was really high up. To get to the main level we had to climb multiple flights of stairs up a makeshift metal structure and at one point we were breaking snow on the second ramp, and this was like really high. My pictures at night don't do justice, so here is a picture by Peter in the Beauport group so you can see how high we were.
So we were breaking the snow to make it better for snowboarding down, and I was half way up the second ramp, and my fear of heights and rickety structures kinda struct me so I got down and said I was finished.
So that night we finished about 9:00 a yellow toque, a large lunch, and 5 hours of snow chopping/softening/shovelling later. After the days events I spent on average 7 hours outside because I finished work before volunteering started and it was a 5 minute walk away from my workplacement, going home would have been a waste.
On thursday was our last french lesson ever and MK made it special by making it sugar shack themed. She played us cool songs, taught us the history of the sugar shack, and she MADE us traditional maple syrup on snow!
MK was certainly one of the best teachers I've had, and THE ONE who made the most effort into making lessons that I've ever seen. Our french activities were always tons of fun, always interesting and taught us a lot. Love this girl.
Then on Saturday was our excursion...
Now, origionally the idea was to go dog sledding, ice fishing and snow shoeing, however due to unknown reasons and not a big enough budget, this turned into just ice-fishing. Me and Sarah are vegetarians and very clearly did not want to ice-fish, but somehow our group excursion which was meant to be more of a group activity was instead made so that not everyone could participate. In my opinion, ice-fishing for Sarah and I went against our beliefs and was not just a case of the 'I don't want to's' so we both were a bit upset that it was an activity we had no choice but not to participate in. We went anyways with no alternative plans to do; there is only so much you can do in an ice fishing village. For the first hour me and Sarah sat in the cabin where the people who icefish eat their lunches in. Then I remembered the van was unlocked so we sat there for another hour. Sara eventually joined. She couldn't handle when they caught a fish, put it in a bucket with no water and had to watch it suffocate to death and when she mentioned something about it, our project leader stating, "That's the point - For it to die." Let ME mention, that when we planned the activity the idea was to catch the fish and let them go. Upon ice-fishing it changed to catch the fish, kill them, and bring them home with us to cook in the house.
We ate lunch where Brandon got creative and mixed Mayonaise and Jam sandwich and a Peanut Butter and Mustard Sandwich.
After me and Sara(h)*2 Returned to the van where our project leader came and told us that our chosen activity for the afternoon was unacceptable. Instead we were expected to walk around an ice-fishing pond for 2 hours.
So we sat in the park for 15 minutes and returned to the lunch eating cabin.
After the drive home where we enjoyed the company of about 8 dead fish in a plastic bag, we had a discussion with our PL and he said we almost got warnings for participation because we did not make alternate arrangements for our excursion other than sitting in a van. Apparently we were expected to go to Mountain Equipment Co-op on our own time, use our own money that would later be expensed to rent snow shoes and then snow shoe from 10 am to 2 pm. Give, me, a break.
I really don't care, give me a punishment for avoiding an activity that goes against my beliefs, and then am forced to take my own time and effort to arrange my other favourite type of activity of the physical nature. UGGH.
Then we went and watched the Snowboard Jamboree which I turned out discovering is actually a worldwide competition, it was cool to watch but I was really surprised when half them would fall, I just had it in my mind that snowboarders like, always landed their jumps, LOL. But it was cool, a Canadian won, so yay Canada!
Alright, time to make my powerpoint... Katelyn requests shoutouts to..
her parents! Hey Momma and Poppa Wilson! I have your house number now! Ahaha, maybe I'll call you! Ahaha.
Shout out to Bonhomme, who I know is reading this from his ice palace! Ahaha.
Thanks for reading, 9 days left tomorrow I think it is!
(:
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