Home sweet home.

Alright so I feel legit bad for not posting for quite a while but I have been tres busy!!
I last posted on Halloween which was Sunday, but not too much has happened since then except returning in the Katima house!!!
Billeting was a really interesting experience, and I'm pretty sure they designed billeting to be just so, that everyone is a tad bit grateful to return home. I had the ultimate pleasure of staying with Clara and Jorma down the street.
On Thursday, MA and Ryan came to visit me, and MA declared the stuffed cat in my billet bedroom to be the billeting mascot.

While MA was leaving, he cleverly changed my do not disturb sign to this:

I found it a bit later, and it was just uber funny as our last day of billeting was Friday. And don't get me wrong, billeting was tres fab, but we were all ready to get back home. (Except Sara(h) squared, leaving their billets were painful due to their extreme epic-ness in the areas of crochet and east indian cuisine.)
I will miss small things, like this poster that was in my billet bathroom:

And I will miss hearing interesting stories fromm Jorma and Clara's cheese biscuits.

Thanks Jorma and Clara!
So we returned to the Katima house yesterday at 7 pm, (except for Zoe who came home at 9!!) and we played Vanderfarm and drank Chai and Hot chocolate, but not mixed.

Reunited and it feels so gooood!!
Then this morning half of us went to help a man move wood and do yard work, and my half went to continue the mural.


New additions include Train, Fish, Sky Scrapers, Effiel Tower, Red Square, Totem pole, People, Cohesive sky, tea cups and China Palace.

This is clearly the face of an artist

Edmonton! Jk, represent!! I painted this. (: (This is why it sucks)


Then me and Sara ditched to get today's food goin'. We have reverted to homeade bread since we are no longer able to eat store bought bread from our billet houses lol. (Homemade bread is better anyways, I don't care what anyone says.)

It feels so good to be home with my Katima Fam.
Oh and by the way, today my blog hit 1000 views!!!
Thank you SO MUCH to anyone who takes any kind of time out of their day to visit this blog, especially when I'm neglectful and don't take time to update.
Spread the loveeeeee! <3

Halloween!

On Friday night everyone except for Zoe and Marc-Andre came skating at the local arena. I will not tell you how awesome me and Ryan were at skating, I'll just show you the evidence. Don't be jealous.


This is so posed btw, I wasn't actually pathetic or anything.


After skating, Brandon, Isaac, Sarah, Katey, Jared and Eve came over to my house and watched Beetlejuice. We ate chips, popcorn and hot chocolate, true spoiling for everyone!
Yesterday I drove to Fort Fraser and Fraser Lake with Molly, Jorma, and Clara to see some friends of theirs, and they took a photo for me in their friends backyard by Fraser Lake.


This is Molly, she rode almost the entire way on my lap instead of her car pillow, but that's because I'm way better than any dog pillow there is.

So this morning I slept in until 12pm.. ahaha. Jorma was like "It's alive!!" I ate breakfast and then we drove around for about an hour and Clara and Jorma showed me the reserve. The scenery was truly beautiful. Flat fields that stretched on for miles turned into rolling foot hills which blended into tree covered mountains which pierced a bright blue sky filled with poofy clouds. I also saw a wild deer running around which added to the entire atmosphere. There is something majestic about driving down the only road and to be surrounded by nature for miles on both sides.
On the way back to town, Jorma got him and I soft serve ice cream, and then me and Clara went to extra foods to get some milk, and afterwards me and Sarah went to timmies and then met up with Brandon and Sara and went skating again. I am getting better, really. :P
Afterwards I went to my billet house and I ate my first hamburger ever. Mixed feelings, if I have the choice between it, and anything else, I will go for the anything else, but if it was the only thing around, I wouldn't be too grossed out. Then I left for the pumpkin walk and the first two people I see are MA and Zoe, the two people I didnt expect to see at all because I didn't think their billets were going to come.. ahaha, so me and Zoe and MA and Laine went through the pumpkin walk and it was super pretty. Millions of pumpkins lined the paths and there were various campfire stations to warm up where they were handing candy out to anyone, and timmies had a hot chocolate centre set up.



Eventually we ran into all our Katima buddies except for Ryan and Katey. We had just enough time to take a small group photo before we got seperated again when me, Zoe, Eve, Laine and MA went to warm ourselves by a fire.

In Vanderhoof the only fireworks all year long is on Halloween. I find it as a really strange concept, not on New Years or Canada day, but on Halloween. We gathered in the parking lot to see quite a nice show, and then got Reg to snap a photo.


Afterwards we were hungry and went and got a spicy thai pizza from Scotts Foods and over all, it was a pretty picture perfect night. So far all the holidays in Katimavik have been very strange, but I don't know what can beat chillin with some of your fave Katima buddies in a fun pumpkin walk and watching fireworks and eating pizza. <3
Tomorrow is work, *sigh* but it must be done. Only 5 more sleeps until billeting is over, and right now I'm going to take advantage of my electric blankets.
Happy Halloween everyone! <3

Pre-Halloween

So today was a pretty decent day. Work went by quickly as right now I'm making a power point presentation for the local schools on anti-racism and anti-bullying which is really exciting for me. After being bullied for about 1 1/2 years I feel like my story can help other people in some small way, even if it's only to show them what their comments can do to the average teenager. My case was also interesting because most commonnly bullying is due to race and mine was purely based on intellect and way of dress. Anyhow, I'm trying my hardest for it to be interesting, engaging and modern/teenage looking so that they can stay awake during it. And, maybe if I'm lucky in the month of November I can make it into some of the schools to actually give some presentations. (:
The reason I'm really blogging though is because I want to talk about halloween. I've noticed that holidays in Katimavik do not feel like holidays. Normally today I would be in highschool and see all the girls dressed in sketchy skimpy outfits, maybe go to a halloween party, maybe have a halloween dance or activity with school, see all the local businesses decorated and things, but this year all I have to remember it's halloween is Brandon coming in to show me his costume and a bug infestation.
This is Brandon, and yes, he is the pink panther, and yes, he wore it during school all day long, and yes he wore it from the walk from Evelyne Dickson to the Neighbourhood Space.

And as for the bug infestation.. I came into work a few days ago, and I was utterly creeped out by this huge spider on the door that was NOT there the day before.

So I was like, okay whatever, it is clearly there for halloween purposes and thought nothing of it until I had the need to go to the washroom where the toilet seat is conviently raised to reveal another little demon.

Okay, so yuck, disregarded it, and then you reach over for toilet paper...

Ew again, okay whatever, you go to wash your hands in the sink and stare at your reflection and a few new friends..

And you reach over for some soap and try to avoid another one..

You sigh and begin to think this is over the top and you go to dry your hands, surprise!

You roll your eyes and go to turn off the light...

Okay, so my point being that decorating for halloween is awesome, tres awesome, just oh my goodness, that bathroom is just gross!
Regardless of whether or not you feel this event was camera worthy, I do, and I feel that I have proved my point. The only good thing about one million spiders investing my workplace is that I don't get startled because I know there will be creepy crawly things everywhere. My concern is when removing all these little friends they are not thorough and leave one or two realistic looking ones in intricate places which in the future will cause me to pee my pants due to the sporadic realism of the situation.
ANYWHO.
This evening I am going to go ice-skating with a few Katima buddies and then a few of 'em are coming over to my billet house to watch a movie, and then I'm hitting timmies with Josh. Should be a good night!
Happy Halloweening!! <3

Painter up then billet it!

I feel bad, I haven't posted in 5 days and yesterday 29 people checked out my blog. Hah, I think it's because nothing intensely interesting has happened over the past few days.. OH but that's a lie!
So on Friday me and Mel stayed up until 4 in the morning talking about life and such and it was a really great time because I learnt a lot and have found that I've been complaining a lot less over the last couple of days, because I don't see much worth behind it anymore.
Josh who we met and became friends with at the Children's benefit came over for breakfast Saturday morning and I showed off the impressive hostessing skills when Jared had to come wake me up because my guest had arrived ahaha.
Katey and Zoe made some awesome crepes and MA, Katey and Ryan got creative with the extra cream and had a sort of battle thing going on. Silly billies <3

Saturday we took shifts and part of the group painted the mural at the neighbourhood space in the morning to mid-afternoon and the other half of us went to paint a bit more and clean up.




A paint war ensued, but I did not participate, well a bit, but I didn't look like I crawled out of a swamp or anything like some people *Cough* M.a, Sarah, Isaac *Cough* did. :P Why they used like swamp green is past me.



Saturday night after supper me and Ryan and M.A and Sarah and Evelyne went and ate Nachos and Cake at Rickys LOL, I think we just wanted to see what it was like and it was not as sketch as we previously expected it to be! Ahaha
Sunday we cleaned, ran errands, got our billet stuff ready and packed and then we started to slowly be torn apart as our various billet families showed up. Jared was gone first then Katey and then everyone started disapearing. Near the beginning we arranged hug lines, and everyone lined up to hug the person leaving us, but this method kinda disapeared as more families showed up at once, and my billet families dog was running around our kitchen, and 20 bodies were jammed into the front entrance. My Billet house is seriously down the street from the Katima house, and now I live even closer to my job. I live with a couple named Jorma and Clara and their doggy Molly. Aaannnd I basically live in luxary, as I have my own room, with a huge bed equipped with heated blankets, access to a flat screen with satelitte and really tastey food. Clara is an amazing cook and has already treated me to potatoes, veggies, and chicken wings, and cheesey, shrimp, dilly rice the night before, oh and cinnamon buns!


On Tuesday night Katey and Jared came over and watched a movie at my billet house and then I walked them to volleyball, and then went on a lovely, refreshing walk around v-hoof for 40 minutes.
My billet bed is legit comfy, and I'm taking advantage of this by going to bed around 10 or 11 instead of 1 or 2, and it's quite nice, yet dangerous as I'm reminding my body what sleep is, and this is unacceptable, lol!
Thanks for reading. Love y'all.

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!

Egg Dropping and Pearl Earrings

So today, I GOT MY EARS PIERCED!
I had to wake up at like 7:15 am which is insaneee...
Me and Eve and Katey woke up and walked over to the hair salon/piercing parlor in the pouring rain. I went first and the lady asked me which earrings I wanted, she listed a few and then shes like "And little pearl ones..." and I was like "stop, that's it, those are the ones I want!" So Katey talked to me while I closed my eyes and it really did not hurt that badly. The lady went for the second ear and I saw her coming and I'm like "Katey.. katey this is where you talk to me! Start talking!" and she panicked and was like, "uuhh.. uh, uh.. I like chocolate!" it was so funny and we started laughing, and I needed to come up with something else to talk about so I was like "I hate rock climbing!" and Katey's like, "I won't make you rock climb!" and I'm like "Good, because you always make me rock climb.." and it was just super random. I'm surprised the lady didn't mess up my ears because I was laughing. :P

This is me laughing hysterically.
Once it was finished I completely accepted the fact that it was much less painful than I had expected and therefore shot an epic thumbs up.

After me, Eve was next and got her tongue done. It was hard to watch. But appearently Evelyne likes pain.. so it wasn't an issue for her.. LOL

She barely flinched and then she was all done!

Afterwards I asked the piercer to take a photo with us. She was kinda like ahahaha.. that's weird... but she agreed. You gotta think ahead when you've got a blog lol, every photo enhances it.

Afterwards I went to work and lunch was great because I skyped Lisa. <3
I had to call many organizations here and my conclusion is that a lot of people change their phone numbers in a short period of time, and that people can be extremely rude. People can be rude anywhere, but so far the people running these charitable organizations are exceeding my expectations. The one man actually told me that he has only religious people volunteering for him and if he took on volunteers from the community it would cause him more 'grief' than it's worth. I didn't know people volunteering their time to service could ever be a bad thing, but I've been enlightened.
After supper Isaac hosted an amazing candle lit relaxation story walk through, and then we did the typical egg support system game you play in like grade 7 science class or leadership where you grab random items create an encasing for your egg and then drop it and see if it survives or not.

These are reps from all 3 groups.

This is earnie, our egg. We had the idea that if you name your egg, it has to survive. To prove our point, this is earnie after hes been dropped by isaac who stood on top of the picnic table. See how earie is still completely intact?

Fail, because they did not name their egg.

Oh, and look another dead nameless egg. That is just too bad.

But it's okay, because although Me, Eve and Sara won, we all win in the end.
<3