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

Seeing Green, the best way we know how.

So yesterday we had free time until supper since we volunteered all during our free time the night before setting up for the benefit, so Me and Jared and Katey and Ryan and Evelyne and Zoe went and checked out the piercing place. It's official, I am getting my ears pierced on Tuesday morning at 8am before I go to work. Whoot! Anyhow we came home and we all just chilled around and then we ate amazing veggie stew produced by the hands of the Sarah-Isaac power team. We got dressed up all decently fancy and then headed over to the friendship centre to pull off the Children's Hospital Fundraiser without a hitch.

Jobs included:
Coat CheckBabysitting really cute babies:Clearing off tables with style:

And my job, selling a deck of cards $10 dollars each to be put into a draw to win a gold/diamond ring. And yes folks, it is true, I sold all 52 making $520 dollars. Who can say no to Kyra? ahaha.

The winning card which I was allowed to pick on stage in front of everyone was Red Jack of Hearts. (: I asked Ryan to take a picture of me on stage drawing the winning card but he just stood there holding my camera and never took the photo so that was fabulous, however the winning card is in my journal. (:



Once everyone left and the silent auction was over (including selling 2 turtle pies for $250 dollars!!!) we cleaned that place up good with just enough time to take an epic group photo.

I <3 my Katimavik familyyyy!

House Tour!

So we officially have like 1 month and 1/2 here in Vanderhoof, and I still haven't done a house tour, how rude of me. :P
This is our bedroom. I'm on the top right hand bunk. Sara is on the left bottom, Sarah left top, Zoe on right bottom.

This is our messy dining room after a snack of fruit and random pumpkin pie. ahaha

Welcome to our huge kitchen. Unfortunately you cannot appreciate it to it's full extent because Jared demanded he be a part of the photograph.

This is our living room. My favourite has got to be the epic 70s couch. Well, not really. Its really low to the ground and you don't expect it so you just fall into it pretty much..

This is our fly collage wall. Melissa being the artist she is suggested we build a wall of pictures and seeing as national geo is the only magazine you can get your hands on in this small town most of the pics are fromm all over the world.

This is our computer room but it's useless to me because I have an epic notebook that I use at the dining room table.

Alright, and then yesterday Reg was nice enough to let us and some youth from the community come to the Neighbourhood Space and listen to a presentation about diversity and anti-racism and then eat pizza and pop and then we watched Splice the movie and it's pretty much the worst movie I have ever, ever, seen. So don't watch it EVER.

And Anne-Rose's adorable mother baked the Katimavik kids a cake for last night! Soo cuteee! Thank-you Anne-Rose's mom!!

And last night, again we must have been extremely tired as our little sleepy head fell asleep again! I always take advantage of such amazing oppertunities and Zoe took a photo. Mwaaha.

Alright, and on top of all of this awesomeness, I had an epic day.
So it all started with me having to clean up the neighbourhood space alone after the party. The best finds were a greasy napkin in a brochure for a local organization, and about 3 full cans of pop that were opened but never drank... I swept and cleaned and then Reg came around and mopped up the whole place. It looks pretty spiffy now.
A little later into the day we get this mysterious phone call, (I still don't know who it's from) and I just didn't answer it because if Reg is there, the phone is always for Reg. Me answering the phone is basically useless. However this time he answered it and it was for me!!! Some lady who remains nameless as I have no idea who she is called me slightly frantic and said that down at the Health Unit they were doing precautionary mammograms to detect breast cancer and the ladies that usually help out were all unavalible and then someone suggested to her that there was a Katimavik volunteer at the Neighbourhood Space and that she really needed help. So I asked Reg and then ran home and asked Melissa and they said it was fine so at 12:30 I walked over to the Health Unit and I basically did a lot of medical paper work and talked to the ladies as they came in. The nurses too were super super nice and they were both uber interested in Katimavik so I had an oppertunity to tell them all about it. As well as this I met a South African doctor with the same last name as my Aunts Daughter LOL, AND it turns out dad, that she was born in the same hospital as us! "The one in Pretoria with all the nuns" ahahaha. So that was really, really cool. After that was over and it flew by because my mind was actually challenged (because there was so much paper work, all different types and I had to do like 20 things at once and stay organized, soo fun) I walked down the hill and as I was getting to the bridge I was like man, that really looks like M.A, and ooh wow that guy has a cap just like Isaacs.. turned out it was Brandon, Isaac, M.A and Jared making hiking trails and picnic tables for a cool man down here. He told us all about how he used to make hiking trails for a living and how he chainsawed off part of his arm. He also has the sweetest dog EVER. Since they were done their volunteering at 6 and it was 5:45 I just chilled with the guys dog and watched them work, and then Mel picked us all up in the van because she passed her drivers test today!! Yaaaay! We came home and had an amazing meal of Chile and kinda biscuit bread, and then Me and Sara and Kate and Ryan and Eve and Zoe helped set up for the auction/fundraiser for the childrens hospital and tomorrow we get to dress up all fancy and help with the kitchen and coat rooms and I get to do this sweet thing where I sell individual cards from a deck to people for $10 each and then they draw a card and that person wins a diamond ring! Anyways it looks gorgeous in there and it took like 2 hrs to set up and I wish I brought my camera but I'll have my camera tomorrow so it's all good. Basically to sum it up, today was an EPIC day and I am happy. Tomorrow will be great too, this weekend we have a lot of spare time because we bascially volunteer all our spare time away. (: Anyhow, stay awesome guys.

Another Day in the Office

So word on the street is that it could snow this weekend. That's kinda crazy, but not that crazy and I'd be prepared because the 'rents sent me all my winter stuff.
So far, I've been really lucky with all the mail I've recieved while being away and I just want to thank everyone. So far I have recieved letters or packages from my cousin, my grandma, my parents, Rachel, Rebecca, Jessica, and Tristan. Thank you guys SO much and I'm super lucky to have great friends and family! (Not bragging but if getting mail were a contest, I've won) ahaha.
The only difficult part about this is to find the time to write back to all my wonderful friends and family, hahaha. Please be patient because I have only 4 blocks free time a week and usually two are spent sleeping and two are spent chillin'. I swear I have no forgotten about any of you, I just need to get my mind in gear and write like a million letters in one day.
Today I got my first volunteer profile since starting at Volunteer V-hoof. That's awesome, now I just have to call all the organizations which has proven to be harder than expected. Either the contact is the wrong number, the contact no longer works with the organization, or the organization has no need whatsoever for volunteers, or I just can't reach them at the number I have, so it's been great.
We are billeting next week I think. Or the week after, something like that. Melissa has been running around and tracking down billet families for all of us. I may go with a couple thats around 65, whose children are all grown up and moved away and whoo have a little dog who will probably remind me a little bit too much of Cleo... Billeting is going to be such a new and interesting experience. Can't say at this point I'd really mind getting away from the group for a little while, and nothing besides still going to your volunteer placement is Katimavik related while you're away so I can sort of have a breather. However, I'm not really good with coming up with independant activities to do ever since living in Katimavik. Since I'm a social person I always want to be with people and besides sleeping and showering there probably has not been more than an hour where I'm completely by myself and doing something independently.. so that's pretty darn crazy. Rents, I want a picture of Cleo! Asap!
Like the blog re-vamping? I know, so legit.

72 Fools

So I am back from my crazy fun 72.
Me, Evelyne, Isaac, Jared, Katey, Ryan and Zoe went to Prince George and stayed in a hotel, Ryan after the first night went to Vancouver.
Brandon and Sara and Melissa stayed at the house.
Sarah.L hung w/ her boyfriend in V-hoof and M.A went to Prince Rupert alone.
Our weekend basically consisted of a lot of laughs, unexplained bruises, shopping trips and A LOT of episodes of how I met your mother.
On the 2nd day we went shopping and I got a sweater and some jeggings, and I almost got my ears pierced but chickened out. I should really go here though, soon. We ate a lot as well. Like breakfast at starbucks, lunch at wendys, supper at subway/red robbins. So food, laughs, and HIMYM.
We headed back here in the early morning, recapped the weekened with Brandon and Sara and Melissa, and then me and Katey and Jared went and got Pizza and then went to Timmies where me and Katey ate 2 1/2 donuts each, and Jared ate 1 and made fun of us. :P We basically sat around and imagined what our families back home were up to, and how strange it was that we were endulging on donuts in a timmies on Thanksgiving day, def one for the record books.
Basically both my arms are sore, I took like a 5 hour nap and I'm dreading work tomorrow so I'm not in the mood to go to sleep but there is very little left to do as Zoe is sleeping on the couch, Evelyne, and Jared and Sara are asleep, and MA, Sarah and Ryan are not home, and Isaac is having some one-on-one time with the walking stick he found in PG whilist climbing a mountain solo.
So that was my thanksgiving folks. Here is a photo summary of the weekend. (:
waiting for the greyhound Vanderhoof--->George

Us looking fly by this random wall in George.
Katey dancing in her purchases of the day.

The view outside of our hotel room window.

Us wearin' our sunglasses at night, oh and 3d-glasses. We saw that owl movie the first night in PG. I forgot about that.

And us indulging in some hardcore heart attack causing dessert!

Notice how I look so into my element and how my face makes the viewer assume that this is an activity I often find myself doing.
Happy thanksgiving 'yall and I'll leave you with this:
"I'm thankful for the courage to have new experiences, the oppertunity to learn from other people, family, and the friends who become just like family when you're away from home." - This is what I would say at the table if I were home with my family. It's a tradition to say what you're thankful for you know.
OH and shoutout to Katelyn's parents who appearantly read this! Good to know someone does!! (: