Today the world politely reminded me that it is not unilingual. At the exact same time it also reminded me why I am in Quebec in the first place.
This story really starts last night, when our group went swimming, at a pool, oui. The pool is in a Police Training Academy that is apparently quite renowned and famous in Quebec. It is this great big beautiful stone building (this sentence can also be applied to 2/3 of every building in this provence) in the middle of town. On one wing is a fitness facility and a community auditorium and the rest is probably top secret high security business with shooting ranges and dramatic crime scene reenactments. At least, that is how it is in my head.
I quit swimming early a) because my left ankle decided it would be a great time to swell up to the size of a small mango and b) because i'm fairly incapable of doing front crawl.
(A small aside - Eric greatly improved my stroke when we were in Thunder Bay, but without him by my side I tend to hyperventilate and my flutter kick looks more like a person having a seizure)
Another important fact about swimming: It's not cool to pretend to be an orca whale, surfacing for air, when kind, elderly men are busy workin' on their fitness in the next lane over. Martin, with his long hair, fully splashed about 6 people while becoming the human incarnation of Free Willy and I was ashamed to be seen as his swim partner. Especially as my french capabilities are not great enough to defend myself. I don't think so anyways. I should put more faith in my language.
On my way back to my locker a nice policelady says things to me in French (Voulez-vous prendre une douche?) which I take to understand as "Do you want to shower?"... I also took this to mean "Would you like to shower with me?" as there was no one else in the room and I had not expressed interest in showering prior to this conversation.
Oh.. hmmm... okaay..
This one caught me off guard a little bit. But, upon looking to my right hand side I discovered there were several shower units... shower units which I was blocking. So, facial expressions summarized, first I give this person a look of complete bewilderment, then comes confusion, then comes realization that Hey! There are some showers right there! Look at that! You are asking me to move and not to shower with you! Right! and lastly I manage to actually speak, only to spit out, "Oh! Oui" and move out of the way to let her through. Which in hindsight, I realize, doesn't make sense. "Yes, I'd love to shower, allow me to move away from them quickly."
I wonder if she knows I don't speak her mother tongue or if she thinks I'm just a really clueless francophone with a very expressive face.
I've been having a lot of trouble with this sort of translation, and have now taken to calling it the shower translation; this furthers the confusion I instigate, I imagine. I've found lately with the whole question asking that is it more intonation changes than phrase changes and I'm not great with voices I'm not used to.
Today at work I spoke more French than usual and I'm not sure why, though possibly just because it's fun to actually talk to the people in the office instead of just sitting around at break time looking at everyone's shoes like some tired puppy. After work however I had to go downtown (a phrase which is not used in small places like Nicolet where there is no actual downtown) to buy some tape for said mango sized ankle.
No luck at the grocery store less that 30 m away, although a cute boy with snake bites told me to "check street down with colours". Although this was in English it needed translation. I came up with few answers but I continued walking down the street to a drugstore which is called Family with a strange ending. I walk in and quickly find out that the woman at the front speaks no English. Whatever. I ask her for the medical stuff. She points left. I go left. The store isn't very big so left doesn't leave much room. I find the medical stuff. A pharmacist finds me. I express my concern.. in English.
Bad move.
She begins to freak out.
"Non! Non! Non! Jenpeuxpasvousaider!"
Oh great.
I say "It's okay, I don't need help" but really couldn't find it in me to say this in French so I just walked away. I go back to the medical bondage section which is a small section with nothing in it but tensores and polysporin. Also great.
At this point I was late for dinner and in a mood that may be described as irritated; I just want some stupid tape!
This came out of my mouth accidentally, as I walked down a different aisle so I looked behind me to make sure I hadn't inadvertently offended the poor, hypersensitive pharmacist.
Rounding a corner I run into what appears to be another pharmacist. I quickly squeak out a "desole!" and try to veer right to avoid any more problems. Possible-pharmacist woman turns to me then and says "The medical tape is over here and the scotch tape is in the school supplies section."
Hallelujah. When in doubt, get a little bit angry and say something without meaning to near an anglophone! H'okay let's get this tape and go.
Oh right. Cash register. From personal experience on both sides of a till, language barriers with money are relatively easy to solve as numbers are still numbers and it is general knowledge to have basic 1-10 in another language down by age 6. I give the girl my card and she tells me my total. AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN.
While I'm punching in my pin the girl asks me "Voulez-vous un sac?"..
Don't be alarmed though, I was well prepared from the evening before and breezed by with an ultra cool, "Non, merci" as though I had never freaked out at intonation-type questions before in my life.
Bon Nuit!
Petra :)
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Last Days of TBay - a Pictoral Edition
Bonjour,
That's it for the French, chill out Rossland. (and others.. dare I say I have other followers?)
As you may have realized, I do in fact, have a terminal condition which prevents me from uploading, posting and taking photos. I've had it most of my life but must have figured I could overcome it by promising multiple batches of pictures on my blog. It's a mildly contagious predicament which sometimes results in lack of evidence and irritated family members. But as I am a firm believer in overcoming illnesses (especially, hypothetically speaking here, those of the mental variety) I have decided to upload several photos.
That's it for the French, chill out Rossland. (and others.. dare I say I have other followers?)
As you may have realized, I do in fact, have a terminal condition which prevents me from uploading, posting and taking photos. I've had it most of my life but must have figured I could overcome it by promising multiple batches of pictures on my blog. It's a mildly contagious predicament which sometimes results in lack of evidence and irritated family members. But as I am a firm believer in overcoming illnesses (especially, hypothetically speaking here, those of the mental variety) I have decided to upload several photos.
This is me hanging from a rafter at our rotation camp destination. We went to a really cool conference centre on the outskirts of Thunder Bay. The man who built it is a closet engineer who built off the grid because his wife has multiple chemical allergies related to urban living. The basement has a swimming pool which heats the rest of the house and the lodge we were in. It would be the perfect ski lodge, complete with customer kitchen and cute little tablecloths. There were however, no ski racks and though it was close to a ski hill, it was not close enough. "Rotation Camp" is where all Katimavik groups in one district get together and break down the rotation (aka, 3 month period) but as we were 5 hours from the nearest group, it was just us. We played some awesome games and talked about moving to Quebec; we also slept sans thermarests, thus, sore backs in the morn.
When we got back from the conference centre our house was occupied by the next program leader who was setting up for our sister group to arrive. We spent the night at The Boys and Girls Club of Thunder Bay - one of the first places we came to when we arrived in Thunder Bay. The club has pool tables and xboxes and rock band and other great things which kept us amused well into the night. Our plane was due to leave at 6:30am the next morning and we had to be at the airport for 4:30am because we are a large group. So, naturally, we didn't sleep but instead chose to take advantage of the 5m x 15m bouncy castle the club had nicely packed away in storage. This event was accompanied with streaking and a rush to get packed when we became aware of the time.
Temporarily stuck..
A few days before our rotation camp we went to the university fields to play some snow football because a certain group member who goes by the name of Scott is flippantly obsessed with football. Afterwards, we went to his billet family's house to watch the Grey Cup. It was a fun time but unfortunately I have no photos from the Grey Cup and I don't remember the score, nor do I really care. I considered writing that after watching the match I realized that I like MLB much more than CFL but if I put that my parents will probably celebrate to the point of extremism which could dangerously affect their so far healthy ageing. I'll just say CFL is ridiculous.
I had this brilliant idea to crochet Sarah (first program leader) a hat for a goodbye present. At this time I was not exactly great at making hats. Maybe I'll post a picture of the first hat I crocheted. Maybe not. Anyways, several of us in the group crochet like we've got no other purpose in life and it was kind of a theme in our house in Thunder Bay so I thought it would be cool to make Sarah a hat with a line crocheted by each of us. 6 girls 5 guys. I figured this would be a challenge as most humans of the male array are somewhat incapable of touching yarn let alone crocheting.
(Just telling it like it is, hats off (ha) to those beautiful men who do)
Halfway through the hat-making process Sarah says "Can I crochet a line?". Who was I to deny my dear friend a line in her own headwear? She's up there with the rest of us, the red one, right in the middle. <3
(result - she had no idea, and was seemingly quite pleased! ..
..though possibly blinded by it's intense colour scheme..)
On the way to the conference centre (yea, I'm back to that, I like to jump around) we stopped at Kakabeka Falls, a beautiful landmark near Thunder Bay. This is one of many attempted group shots. The falls were frozen on the outside which led to an impromptu snow ball throwing competition to break through the ice. Eric won.
Dre, Me and Sam on our first plane ride of the greatest day of airports in my life. Note our smiling faces.
On one of our first evenings in Nicolet Sam took this photo. The sunsets over the river are so gorgeous. Please observe my t-shirt. Please know that the next morning we received 6 inches of snow.
And an ending note from my dear friend Sam Middleton, an avid Katimavikker.
"Roses are red,
violets are blue
some poems rhyme
and others don't."
Bon Nuit.
PetraFied
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Nicolet QC, in all it's glory
This post is a little late (huge surprise there) as I thought I should wait a little while and not write on first impressions. So instead here are some third, fourth, fifth and six impressions.
Nicolet is pretty small. Nicolet has one grocery store. Nicolet got 7 inches of snow yesterday. Nicolet has protective females.
An extension of these facts.
Nicolet has 7,800 people. But don't be fooled.. many of those people live on rural property outside of town so the so called "main drag" we live on gets about.. well it doesn't really get any traffic. Our Katima-house is five minutes from downtown which includes but is not limited to: several restaurants, a post office, a library, a drugstore, multiple bars and a hardware store that appears to only sell snowblowers.
The grocery store is called super C and it is a 30 minute walk down the strip of highway that Nicolet is somewhat built around. We take the van.
On Saturday we went to work on a vineyard 30 minutes out of town. The man who owned it was really interesting and he and his family have been running a "Medieval Children's Camp" on their property every summer for a few years. They also had a guest house with a hot tub which we will be going to for New Year's day. As a small aside, I had a lot of fun on Saturday. Our group is kind of ridiculously exuberant when given physical tasks so the work was a lot of fun and didn't take long. It's the best kind of work when it just feels like hanging out. He (I've clearly forgotten his name.. :( ) was very appreciative and made really good soup for lunch.
When we got back from their place I walked around town at about 5:00pm in a t-shirt and jeans. Sunday.. not much difference, beautifully clear day.. Monday.. torrential down-flutter (well you can't really say down-pour, work with me here) of snow. Today, Sam and I had to practically pull each other out of the ditches we sunk into on the way to work. We have a foot of snow. Guess what? It's snowing again tonight. J'aime Canada.
On Thursday night when we got here a few of us went for a walk with Valerie, our new program leader and afterwards we went to a bar. There were a few locals who appeared to live at the bar on a permanent basis and several people who said bonjour to us. We figured petite ville Nicolet was nice and friendly. Then we went to the bar on Friday night. Our pretty faces were not so warmly welcomed. We got glares. French glares. One particularly intoxicated young lady told us (en francais) to "not kiss her boyfriends". But all is well now as we met some of them at the next bar and they were "merely interested as to know who we were because we did not look familiar". Which is cool. Our English probably helped them come to that conclusion. Small town Quebec = also not very bilingual.
We had work interviews yesterday (en francais, s'il vous plait) and right after them we were given our work placements. I had really wanted a daycare job that was split with an out of town job where you would shadow a biologist working with the large swan population in the area. (Nicolet is home to a bird sanctuary) My second choice was working at an Arts Centre.. moving chairs and tables, setting up for events, cleaning, shovelling snow, joking with the funny guys who work there. (Rosslanders: picture a much larger Minor's Hall with an arched ceiling that looks like the inside of a great ship.)
Buuuuut in the end I got a job at the musee des religions de Nicolet. It's one of only 3 museums in the world and the only one in North America that focuses on all 5 main religions. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It's a beautiful building, the staff members are great, and on top of that Jessie and Sam both work there as well. We will be switching jobs weekly so hopefully it won't get too boring and repetitive. The job I'm doing this week (get ready to shake your head and blow me kisses from wherever you are..) is scanning religious images. All day. For a week. Just that. Yup.
Jean-Francois, the director and our boss, is super sweet though and gives us lots of breaks and is nice to chat with. He is more or less the only bilingual staff member.. which is difficult, oui. My french improves chaque jour. But don't blow me too many kisses because it will be a fun job.. The scanner is really slow which allows for optimal movie watching, music listening and reading time. I forgot my book at home today so when I was at work I picked up a casual copy of the Satanic Bible.
Don't worry, I felt morally confused scanning First Communion images from 1924 Italy while reading verses from the Satanic Bible. Little bit of a paradox, yea. The museum has some pretty great reading material though, and lots of French children's books for me to practice reading with.
Tonight I had a 2.5 hour French lesson. You could probably blow me some more kisses now.
Actually it wasn't really that bad but because it was our first one it was a big review of highschool stuff. French lessons every week will be good though, and we didn't have them in Thunder Bay so we're all really behind.
We've been planning excursions as a group and it looks like we will be making one to Montreal, one to Quebec City and on top of those we also have 48 hours off in January when we can go wherever we want. And on top of that we are also going to Trois Rivieres to stay with the another group of Katimavictims for New Year's Eve. FUN STUFF. For Christmas Day we are going to our French teacher's house but are also having a dinner at our place.
I plan to have more adventures soon so as to not fill blog posts with boring things like grocery stores in rural Quebec. My sincere apologies.
Now, I will blow you kisses!
Bon nuit
Petra
Pictures coming soon (just for you, Anthea/Scot!)
Nicolet is pretty small. Nicolet has one grocery store. Nicolet got 7 inches of snow yesterday. Nicolet has protective females.
An extension of these facts.
Nicolet has 7,800 people. But don't be fooled.. many of those people live on rural property outside of town so the so called "main drag" we live on gets about.. well it doesn't really get any traffic. Our Katima-house is five minutes from downtown which includes but is not limited to: several restaurants, a post office, a library, a drugstore, multiple bars and a hardware store that appears to only sell snowblowers.
The grocery store is called super C and it is a 30 minute walk down the strip of highway that Nicolet is somewhat built around. We take the van.
On Saturday we went to work on a vineyard 30 minutes out of town. The man who owned it was really interesting and he and his family have been running a "Medieval Children's Camp" on their property every summer for a few years. They also had a guest house with a hot tub which we will be going to for New Year's day. As a small aside, I had a lot of fun on Saturday. Our group is kind of ridiculously exuberant when given physical tasks so the work was a lot of fun and didn't take long. It's the best kind of work when it just feels like hanging out. He (I've clearly forgotten his name.. :( ) was very appreciative and made really good soup for lunch.
When we got back from their place I walked around town at about 5:00pm in a t-shirt and jeans. Sunday.. not much difference, beautifully clear day.. Monday.. torrential down-flutter (well you can't really say down-pour, work with me here) of snow. Today, Sam and I had to practically pull each other out of the ditches we sunk into on the way to work. We have a foot of snow. Guess what? It's snowing again tonight. J'aime Canada.
On Thursday night when we got here a few of us went for a walk with Valerie, our new program leader and afterwards we went to a bar. There were a few locals who appeared to live at the bar on a permanent basis and several people who said bonjour to us. We figured petite ville Nicolet was nice and friendly. Then we went to the bar on Friday night. Our pretty faces were not so warmly welcomed. We got glares. French glares. One particularly intoxicated young lady told us (en francais) to "not kiss her boyfriends". But all is well now as we met some of them at the next bar and they were "merely interested as to know who we were because we did not look familiar". Which is cool. Our English probably helped them come to that conclusion. Small town Quebec = also not very bilingual.
We had work interviews yesterday (en francais, s'il vous plait) and right after them we were given our work placements. I had really wanted a daycare job that was split with an out of town job where you would shadow a biologist working with the large swan population in the area. (Nicolet is home to a bird sanctuary) My second choice was working at an Arts Centre.. moving chairs and tables, setting up for events, cleaning, shovelling snow, joking with the funny guys who work there. (Rosslanders: picture a much larger Minor's Hall with an arched ceiling that looks like the inside of a great ship.)
Buuuuut in the end I got a job at the musee des religions de Nicolet. It's one of only 3 museums in the world and the only one in North America that focuses on all 5 main religions. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It's a beautiful building, the staff members are great, and on top of that Jessie and Sam both work there as well. We will be switching jobs weekly so hopefully it won't get too boring and repetitive. The job I'm doing this week (get ready to shake your head and blow me kisses from wherever you are..) is scanning religious images. All day. For a week. Just that. Yup.
Jean-Francois, the director and our boss, is super sweet though and gives us lots of breaks and is nice to chat with. He is more or less the only bilingual staff member.. which is difficult, oui. My french improves chaque jour. But don't blow me too many kisses because it will be a fun job.. The scanner is really slow which allows for optimal movie watching, music listening and reading time. I forgot my book at home today so when I was at work I picked up a casual copy of the Satanic Bible.
Don't worry, I felt morally confused scanning First Communion images from 1924 Italy while reading verses from the Satanic Bible. Little bit of a paradox, yea. The museum has some pretty great reading material though, and lots of French children's books for me to practice reading with.
Tonight I had a 2.5 hour French lesson. You could probably blow me some more kisses now.
Actually it wasn't really that bad but because it was our first one it was a big review of highschool stuff. French lessons every week will be good though, and we didn't have them in Thunder Bay so we're all really behind.
We've been planning excursions as a group and it looks like we will be making one to Montreal, one to Quebec City and on top of those we also have 48 hours off in January when we can go wherever we want. And on top of that we are also going to Trois Rivieres to stay with the another group of Katimavictims for New Year's Eve. FUN STUFF. For Christmas Day we are going to our French teacher's house but are also having a dinner at our place.
I plan to have more adventures soon so as to not fill blog posts with boring things like grocery stores in rural Quebec. My sincere apologies.
Now, I will blow you kisses!
Bon nuit
Petra
Pictures coming soon (just for you, Anthea/Scot!)
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Thought #1 - Flow vs. Follow
Don't be alarmed.. I've had more thoughts than just this one since birth.
Last night, 10:45pm - somewhat bilingual young man named Martin picks me, Sam and Dalandrea up at our new house in Nicolet. Sam met this boy the night before at the bar down the street, Bavaroise, so he wasn't entirely a stranger.. right?
11:00pm - Find myself mildly alarmed at the speed this young man is able to push out of his poor sunfire, as we reach about 130 km/hr, the casual driving speed of the French.
11:01pm - kindly try asking the young francophone to slow down, in french. (moins vite, s'il vous plait? - all I could think of at that hour..) He responds by turning up the music.
It was at this point that I turn to Dalandrea in the back seat and we both begin to laugh. WHERE ARE WE GOING? we both ask each other, and as difficult as it was to scream over the music, we ask the boy as well.
He tells us he is taking us to Trois Riviere, the city nearest Nicolet, to go to a club; like it was just something one might do on an idle Sunday, right after taking the dog for a walk. This is the part of the story where I should probably mention that Dalandrea and I were merely along for the ride, just playing wingman for Sam. Apparently one is not wise to trust French boys after just meeting them.
Okay cool, I'll go to a club in my dirty jeans and sneakers, whatever. Thanks for telling us this crucial piece of information before we left the house. I suppose that would have been a little difficult considering the whole I-have-to-translate-every-word-of-my-texts-before-sending-them-to-Sam-which-sometimes-allows-for-large-errors-in-grammar thing he had going on. Tough luck for us.
I guess the point of all this is to question whether or not we were going with the flow of it all or merely following. Following, because it would be immensely difficult to extricate myself from that vehicle at that time without obtaining severe road rash in the process, or going with the flow on the simple basis that we were accompanying our friend for safety and comfort.
I had this same experience when I found myself in a white minivan on the way to the dump with a man named Lloyd just outside of Thunder Bay. (see previous post "Weekend of What?" no really, do it.)
More and more with this whole Katimavik business I ask myself where I am. Because it changes too frequently to be aware of as it happens. One minute I am in an airport and the next I'm on a bus. Thunder Bay was finally getting familiar and regular but then suddenly they shipped us off to a retreat camp and then onto a plane at 6am. Talk about disorienting. I've tried to avoid feeling like a pilot-program kid who has all arrangements made for her and actually has choices, but when it comes to transportation us Katimavictims have no say whatsoever. Feeling like herded sheep in these situations motivates our group more to go out on our free time (something I should probably be doing right now) to see and do what we please. I can't complain. The last time I bought my own food was early in October, and I sleep in a bed every night in a house I don't pay rent for.
The club was amazing but for all the old people in it, and none of us were prepared to pay the $12 cover for the top part which probably had live entertainment, more young people and less creeps. I had a fun time dancing with Dre. We obviously got home safe and sound and before curfew (boo curfew!). Martin explained to us on the way back that he liked going to Trois Rivieres better than staying around Nicolet because it is richer and has more people. Fair enough, Martin. Just don't beat up your car too much over the winter.
Tonight I'm working on a resume.. en francais.
I like bilingual places.
Petra J.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
The tale of the arresting of Scott Creechan
Scott Creechan is a lovely fellow. He stands at probably 6 foot and is as lanky as shoelace liquorice. He is a gentle soul with little need for violence and zero experience with any sort of gang violence, street fighting and or encounters with police of any kind.
On September 15, 2010 Scott Creechan was arrested while in the presence of 6 police cars, one bomb squad vehicle, a swat team and 6 other very anxious Katimavik volunteers in downtown Thunder Bay.
I. KID. YOU. NOT.
All facts of this story are entirely true and for the sake of cutting to the chase and not souping things up I will cut to the chase and not soup things up.
Picture a scenic village, or if you've been here just picture Thunder Bay. The city is split into what used to be two different townships - Port Arthur and Fort William. Some time ago a very smart man said "Gee, why are we all being so stupid and having two municipalities when we could just have one big municipality?" and thus, Innercity (or, Intercity) was created which joined the two cities in cohabitation. Innercity is basically a big strip full of big box store names and shopping destinations. And a movie theatre. (which we eventually visited for the viewing of Harry Potter the 7th part 1 on November the 20th.)
Keep this movie theatre in mind, for it plays a key role in this story.
Our group of 11 had been split up into groups or 3/4 for what our Project Coordinator informed us was a "photo scavenger hunt". In fact it was and it fact I had good fun on this little excursion. It was when I arrived home that I heard of the ultimate consequences of tampering with good fun.
Scott's group was in Inner city (my group at this time was already comfortably seated on a bus which would take us home) when the shenanigans went down. I have heard this story so many times I feel like I was there and I can picture everything up until the arrest. I will tell it like I have been told.
Three days before our photo scavenger hunt there had been a murder quite close to our house, just a mere block and a half away actually. A week before that there had been a murder on the other side of town involving two young people of the Canadian-Indian variety. Needless to say, the cops and the entire city were aware and probably on the lookout for more illegal business.
The movie theatre sits on the other side of a quaint little bridge on the edge of Innercity. After coming out of Innercity mall Scott's group met up with the other group on the scavenger hunt and they began travelling together. As he was crossing a lawn on the way to the bridge Scott Creechan found a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. A plastic wonder for a young boy, if you please! It was a toy gun, the type I am not so sure of but please know that it was enough of a gun to qualify for a real gun. Scott jokingly swung the gun around on his finger as though he was a real gun-slinging old west chap and crossed the bridge with his friends on the way to the Movie Theatre (a destination on the map of scavenge).
On the other side of the bridge Mr. Creechan gave the gun one last shine on his possibly dirty jeans and tossed it onto the grass on the other side, not wishing to carry it with him on public transit. The group had reached a gymnasium just on the other side of the movie theatre and got the correct information from inside. Literally no more than 8 minutes after crossing the bridge with the toy gun Scott and pals were leaving the parking lot of the gymnasium when cop cars came from every direction, closely followed by a bomb squad car. (at least, that is what we figure. It looked like a bomb squad car but it did not SAY it was a bomb squad car.. gotta keep the facts straight, oui.)
Innercity is of course in the middle of the city. It was just after lunch hour. There had been recent murders. Thunder Bay has cops. These somewhat obvious facts all lead to multiple cops being very quick to get to a common area. Although no one really got a chance to talk with the cops what we figure is someone called in the "sighting" or another peace officer saw it and called it in. At any rate, young Mr. Creechan was arrested. I will continue.
Scott was told to "drop his weapon!" several times in what I'm sure was an assertive tone and was promptly put in handcuffs and stuffed into a waiting police car. The rest of the group decided it would be a brilliant time to get on the phone to our Project Coordinator, Alexa, the lady who put us on this marvellous adventure and who was monitoring us for the day because... dun da da dunnn.. our project leader was out of town for the day!!! BRILLIANT!!
After some vigorous questions and yelling the police finally allowed Scott to explain himself and Alexa showed up after they had released him. By this time there was only two officers and cars left because the rest of the lovely policemen had realized there was no need for them to be there as there was no immediate danger. Scott was reduced to tears, quite understandably.
Upon arriving home my group found Alexa in the driveway taking our sick Sam to the doctor and as Scott was so shocked he was going with them. We exchanged a few words and Alexa said she'd be back soon and we'd all talk. Right, okay. Normal enough.
We went inside and 7 people informed us that Scott had been arrested. The fact that this event was matched with a SWAT team and a bomb squad made it ridiculously hard to believe it could be true. In fact I made Jessie pinky swear she would do my chores for the next two weeks if they were telling lies. Obviously, they weren't. But I had a hard time believing it until I got home and I still have a hard time believing that our sweet little Scott Creechan would ever be arrested.
Hope that was a fun read. Sorry it's taken so long to write down!
Petra
On September 15, 2010 Scott Creechan was arrested while in the presence of 6 police cars, one bomb squad vehicle, a swat team and 6 other very anxious Katimavik volunteers in downtown Thunder Bay.
I. KID. YOU. NOT.
All facts of this story are entirely true and for the sake of cutting to the chase and not souping things up I will cut to the chase and not soup things up.
Picture a scenic village, or if you've been here just picture Thunder Bay. The city is split into what used to be two different townships - Port Arthur and Fort William. Some time ago a very smart man said "Gee, why are we all being so stupid and having two municipalities when we could just have one big municipality?" and thus, Innercity (or, Intercity) was created which joined the two cities in cohabitation. Innercity is basically a big strip full of big box store names and shopping destinations. And a movie theatre. (which we eventually visited for the viewing of Harry Potter the 7th part 1 on November the 20th.)
Keep this movie theatre in mind, for it plays a key role in this story.
Our group of 11 had been split up into groups or 3/4 for what our Project Coordinator informed us was a "photo scavenger hunt". In fact it was and it fact I had good fun on this little excursion. It was when I arrived home that I heard of the ultimate consequences of tampering with good fun.
Scott's group was in Inner city (my group at this time was already comfortably seated on a bus which would take us home) when the shenanigans went down. I have heard this story so many times I feel like I was there and I can picture everything up until the arrest. I will tell it like I have been told.
Three days before our photo scavenger hunt there had been a murder quite close to our house, just a mere block and a half away actually. A week before that there had been a murder on the other side of town involving two young people of the Canadian-Indian variety. Needless to say, the cops and the entire city were aware and probably on the lookout for more illegal business.
The movie theatre sits on the other side of a quaint little bridge on the edge of Innercity. After coming out of Innercity mall Scott's group met up with the other group on the scavenger hunt and they began travelling together. As he was crossing a lawn on the way to the bridge Scott Creechan found a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. A plastic wonder for a young boy, if you please! It was a toy gun, the type I am not so sure of but please know that it was enough of a gun to qualify for a real gun. Scott jokingly swung the gun around on his finger as though he was a real gun-slinging old west chap and crossed the bridge with his friends on the way to the Movie Theatre (a destination on the map of scavenge).
On the other side of the bridge Mr. Creechan gave the gun one last shine on his possibly dirty jeans and tossed it onto the grass on the other side, not wishing to carry it with him on public transit. The group had reached a gymnasium just on the other side of the movie theatre and got the correct information from inside. Literally no more than 8 minutes after crossing the bridge with the toy gun Scott and pals were leaving the parking lot of the gymnasium when cop cars came from every direction, closely followed by a bomb squad car. (at least, that is what we figure. It looked like a bomb squad car but it did not SAY it was a bomb squad car.. gotta keep the facts straight, oui.)
Innercity is of course in the middle of the city. It was just after lunch hour. There had been recent murders. Thunder Bay has cops. These somewhat obvious facts all lead to multiple cops being very quick to get to a common area. Although no one really got a chance to talk with the cops what we figure is someone called in the "sighting" or another peace officer saw it and called it in. At any rate, young Mr. Creechan was arrested. I will continue.
Scott was told to "drop his weapon!" several times in what I'm sure was an assertive tone and was promptly put in handcuffs and stuffed into a waiting police car. The rest of the group decided it would be a brilliant time to get on the phone to our Project Coordinator, Alexa, the lady who put us on this marvellous adventure and who was monitoring us for the day because... dun da da dunnn.. our project leader was out of town for the day!!! BRILLIANT!!
After some vigorous questions and yelling the police finally allowed Scott to explain himself and Alexa showed up after they had released him. By this time there was only two officers and cars left because the rest of the lovely policemen had realized there was no need for them to be there as there was no immediate danger. Scott was reduced to tears, quite understandably.
Upon arriving home my group found Alexa in the driveway taking our sick Sam to the doctor and as Scott was so shocked he was going with them. We exchanged a few words and Alexa said she'd be back soon and we'd all talk. Right, okay. Normal enough.
We went inside and 7 people informed us that Scott had been arrested. The fact that this event was matched with a SWAT team and a bomb squad made it ridiculously hard to believe it could be true. In fact I made Jessie pinky swear she would do my chores for the next two weeks if they were telling lies. Obviously, they weren't. But I had a hard time believing it until I got home and I still have a hard time believing that our sweet little Scott Creechan would ever be arrested.
Hope that was a fun read. Sorry it's taken so long to write down!
Petra
bienvenue
HI
I'm currently at the Thunder Bay Boys and Girls club at a student computer. It's 2:17am and we're pulling an all nighter because otherwise we'd have to get up at 3:45am to get to the airport on time. We spent last night at a place 30 minutes out of town called Taiga Ventures. It was this one-of-kind "conference centre" that this really interesting man had built himself. It was over 1600 square feet and could seat 70 people. He built it off the grid and out of town because his wife (who is very nice and has pet lorikeets that spoke to us) has multiple chemical allergies and can't function well in urban areas. I don't know the entire concept of the building but I'm just going to say it is a work of engineering genius.
Our last day of work was on Friday and since then we've been packing and cleaning the house spotless and surprising we haven't done any crying. Yesterday and today were our "debriefing" days for the last 3 months. We all had to do different activities and what not, and thankfully it didn't feel at all like school but in fact very relaxing and reflective. Tomorrow will be the last time I see Sarah my program leader and I will also meet a new one in Quebec, her name is Valerie and she doesn't speak a lot of English. One bonus - in Quebec I get French lessons so perhaps I will pick up a bit more.
I've decided that because I've just been giving a timeline of things I should probably start recording my fun stories and exciting encounters because that really is where the juice is.
Stories to come, very soon, as I'm not going to bed tonight, remember?
love you
Petra
I'm currently at the Thunder Bay Boys and Girls club at a student computer. It's 2:17am and we're pulling an all nighter because otherwise we'd have to get up at 3:45am to get to the airport on time. We spent last night at a place 30 minutes out of town called Taiga Ventures. It was this one-of-kind "conference centre" that this really interesting man had built himself. It was over 1600 square feet and could seat 70 people. He built it off the grid and out of town because his wife (who is very nice and has pet lorikeets that spoke to us) has multiple chemical allergies and can't function well in urban areas. I don't know the entire concept of the building but I'm just going to say it is a work of engineering genius.
Our last day of work was on Friday and since then we've been packing and cleaning the house spotless and surprising we haven't done any crying. Yesterday and today were our "debriefing" days for the last 3 months. We all had to do different activities and what not, and thankfully it didn't feel at all like school but in fact very relaxing and reflective. Tomorrow will be the last time I see Sarah my program leader and I will also meet a new one in Quebec, her name is Valerie and she doesn't speak a lot of English. One bonus - in Quebec I get French lessons so perhaps I will pick up a bit more.
I've decided that because I've just been giving a timeline of things I should probably start recording my fun stories and exciting encounters because that really is where the juice is.
Stories to come, very soon, as I'm not going to bed tonight, remember?
love you
Petra
Sunday, November 21, 2010
So the countdown begins..
I have nine days left in Thunder Bay. My flight to Montreal (via Toronto) leaves at 6am on December 1st. Thank God we are travelling as a pack this time around because my first round of flights to get to Thunder Bay were very long and boring.
This past week has been great. I was house manager with Millie and we had such a good time making meals and bread and cleaning the house it didn't feel like work at all. My second boss is in Cuba right now and my new boss started last week so I'm also thankful to have successfully avoided the first week mayhem minus one.
The group has spent lots of time this past week preparing for our final party, as a thank you to those we've met while in Thunder Bay. It's been a pretty quiet week otherwise.. lots of free time and lots of time at the Canada Games complex!! YAY.
Last Sunday we went kickboxing at a jiu jitsu studio with a guy named Matt and his insane children. We were supposed to have a class this Sunday as well but he had to cancel so we went to a make up class on Tuesday with the rest of his normal students. It was really sweet to have more people there but the one on Tuesday was less of a workout which was unfortunate.
Yesterday (Saturday) we manned a Salvation Army kettle in shifts. Jessie, Martin, Julien and I were obviously the best with our beautiful serenading of passersby but I think collectively we raised a lot of money. It also helped that it was outside of a liquor store. ;)
Today we helped Alexa and her boyfriend move to a house they just bought. Alexa is our Project Coordinator so she is like our project leader's boss, and although she is in charge of three Katimavik groups in Northern Ontario we know we are her favourite. :) Her new house is beautiful and they treated us to pizza for lunch as a thank you, but it didn't feel like work. It's going to be sad to leave without spending more time with people like Alexa.
We have so much packing to do and a lot to get ready for the group we are switching houses with. Their group has 4 vegetarians so that makes meals much harder to make for our meat loving group and a little bit more expensive, but c'est la vie! They have the same challenge with all of our allergies.
I have nothing more to report really. I have really enjoying living here and it has gone by too fast. :(
Quebec shall be a fun adventure.
au revoir
Petra
This past week has been great. I was house manager with Millie and we had such a good time making meals and bread and cleaning the house it didn't feel like work at all. My second boss is in Cuba right now and my new boss started last week so I'm also thankful to have successfully avoided the first week mayhem minus one.
The group has spent lots of time this past week preparing for our final party, as a thank you to those we've met while in Thunder Bay. It's been a pretty quiet week otherwise.. lots of free time and lots of time at the Canada Games complex!! YAY.
Last Sunday we went kickboxing at a jiu jitsu studio with a guy named Matt and his insane children. We were supposed to have a class this Sunday as well but he had to cancel so we went to a make up class on Tuesday with the rest of his normal students. It was really sweet to have more people there but the one on Tuesday was less of a workout which was unfortunate.
Yesterday (Saturday) we manned a Salvation Army kettle in shifts. Jessie, Martin, Julien and I were obviously the best with our beautiful serenading of passersby but I think collectively we raised a lot of money. It also helped that it was outside of a liquor store. ;)
Today we helped Alexa and her boyfriend move to a house they just bought. Alexa is our Project Coordinator so she is like our project leader's boss, and although she is in charge of three Katimavik groups in Northern Ontario we know we are her favourite. :) Her new house is beautiful and they treated us to pizza for lunch as a thank you, but it didn't feel like work. It's going to be sad to leave without spending more time with people like Alexa.
We have so much packing to do and a lot to get ready for the group we are switching houses with. Their group has 4 vegetarians so that makes meals much harder to make for our meat loving group and a little bit more expensive, but c'est la vie! They have the same challenge with all of our allergies.
I have nothing more to report really. I have really enjoying living here and it has gone by too fast. :(
Quebec shall be a fun adventure.
au revoir
Petra
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Photographic Update!
Hello!
A variety of photos - enjoy!
Eric's old bike photo - 72 hours off
crew on the river - 72 hours off
breakfast
Our petite chambre
Hiking up Mt. McKay
Hiking down Mt. McKay
Murder Mystery Night - Sam was the killer.
Sam giving out the love at dogsledding (Novemer 9th)
There were 42 husky-cross dogs (all of whom were completely adorable) and we got to harness them, rope them up and ride in a golf cart which they pulled. The owner, Paul, bought a few packs of Iditarod Trail dogs and has kept them in prime racing condition. It was the best way to make up for 3 months of no canine company.
Terry Fox Monument on the clearest day of November
A piece of Lake Superior coast line
plucking a grouse - delicious
I hope this is enough to satisfy all the promises I have made. I am getting much better at uploading more frequently.
A small update:
I came home to the Katimavik house a week ago. My billeting period was %110 great, I could not have been paired with a better family. Anthea and Scot took my sightseeing, fed me great food, taught me new card games, let me drive their car, took me to get my hair cut and made my brain hurt with intense philosophical conversations. It was a vacation that was definitely needed. The sauna with Siggy and friends was excellent and would definitely be a killer warm up after a long day of skiing. Note to Dad: build sauna.
On Tuesday the group went dogsledding! see picture above. As mentioned there were 42 beautiful dogs who would greet us by jumping up to our chests and whimpering. Paul is racing this winter down in the states and is in the process of training different teams of dogs. We went on a 5km ride and it was so neat watching them gear up and down the hills. The dogs at the back would start to pull and twitch at the ropes and get the dogs in front of them fired up and so on up the line of 12 dogs. Definitely something I will be doing again, and something I highly recommend.
Wednesday we went to play "goalball" at a school in Fort William (which as it turns out.. is NOT the ghetto end of town.) It was a game invented after WWII when returning veterans who were blind needed games to play. Two teams of three use a ball (with a bell inside) to score points. You are blindfolded and put into a ring of rope which helps you orient yourself. The objective is to roll the ball past the opposing team and to stop any balls rolled to your end of the court.
Fairly simply game right?
Not at all. Difficult to start out with, but by the time you've played a few games it got a lot easier and your sense of hearing was heightened immensely.
Friday and Saturday we drove an hour out of town and spent time at Tenkula farms, owned by a woman named Lisa who breeds Tennessee Walking horses. We stayed the night in her hay barn and the temperature dropped to at least negative 7. It was fun times! Snuggling was a mandatory activity on this excursion and we made little hay cabins to sleep in. The ride was great, Dalandrea's horse and my horse were egging each other on and both of them would not stop jumping. I think I took flight 6 times during the ride. Dalandrea fell off, horse riding - not her cup of tea. Turns out they were the only two horse that weren't Tennessee Walkers (whaaaat luck) so their pace isn't as quick. To compensate they were trotting and jumping all over the freaking place to keep up. Also, mine had a cut leg, thus lacked the capacity to walk through mud without freaking out. Hence the jumping. I still had a ridiculously good time. Finnish pancakes for breakfast!
This week my new boss starts, but unfortunately I won't be spending time at The Arthritis Society. I am house manager again this week, this time with Millie! Should be fun times, we're making Colombian food as Millie is from Colombia.
oh hey, look at this.
BYE!
Petra
Monday, November 1, 2010
Whoops!
Forgot to mention!
Sarah's friend Ooysem took our group curling last Monday night. I seriously enjoyed curling and we are trying to do it again as a group.. but it's hard because it's HUGE here in Tbay. Here, I'll put a picture up cause I'm GREAT at blogging now.
please check out Michelle's Italy blog, she is hilarious.
http://www.italy-michelle.blogspot.com/
I miss this girl.
okay ta ta !
Sarah's friend Ooysem took our group curling last Monday night. I seriously enjoyed curling and we are trying to do it again as a group.. but it's hard because it's HUGE here in Tbay. Here, I'll put a picture up cause I'm GREAT at blogging now.
please check out Michelle's Italy blog, she is hilarious.
http://www.italy-michelle.blogspot.com/
I miss this girl.
okay ta ta !
So Fast
Hello!
Many things have happened since my long post below. Many things. But please understand these things happen fast and then they make me tired so I go to bed instead of blogging about these things.
These things include:
Hiking (up the one mountain Thunder Bay possesses)
Cake Making and birthday celebrations
Attending Shows
Billeting
Making lots of food
Becoming caffeine reliant
Gabe
Halloween
Update on the French
I will try my very hardest to cover EVERYTHING.
Hiking started out with our entire group leaving late. We packed a stupid amount of food and loaded ourselves into the van about 4 times before we finally left. The first part of the hike was SUPER steep. At one point the mountain was a ski hill with a lift and everything but now it just has crazy steep 4 wheelers tracks all over it. After the initial altitude gaining hill it's a pretty nice hike, a little bit of scree and a little bit of dirt paths, but for the most part we just wandered all over the mountain. It is necessary to cover all sides of a mountain this size in order to get a good work out because up and down takes about 1/2 an hour each way.
We ate some lunch at the top and took pictures and made Petra super mom-nervous by going really close to the edge of large cliffs. Thanks guys..
On the way down we literally found ourselves in the cross fire of a game of paintball.. no injuries though.
After our hike we went back to Gale and Volker's house for chilli and we watched the rest of K2, which we started on Thanksgiving. Funny, funny movie. I don't recommend it.
Cakes
Eric (our baby) turned 18 on October 23rd. I made him a 5 layer chocolate cake from scratch, icing included. Sam decorated it with gummy bears we stole from Dalandrea. We got him a sassy fedora also. I love Eric. I will put a picture up. I promise. I'm just not on my own computer right now.
Attending shows. Last Monday we went to a Magic show. We got free tickets from the Salvation Army. Really nothing much to say. Sometimes there's a reason things are free. Sometimes I should check what age group things are intended for. Magic sucks without cool lights.
We also went to Fierce Light, but I posted that below so check it out!
Billeting.
We had our billet family BBQ last Tuesday. We made a TON of food and accommodated.. way too many people for our little house to handle. A week before we called in the local paper to promote us; they photographed us and Sam and I did an interview, which was great because the reporter was a fine specimen of a man.
Basically the idea of billeting is to give you a break from the whole program and everyone you live with, as we are literally packed into that house. (I'm on the bottom bunk these days, Sophie and I switched)
I started billeting last Friday.
I live with a couple named Anthea and Scot and they are really sweet. We live 40 minutes out of town. Anthea and I drive in every morning around 8 because she works at the university as a student advisor (I know, SCORE!) and Scot works at home restoring canoes and building things with his carpenter skills. They have 3 kids who have all left home so I share the top floor with their grumpy 18 year old cat who licks my feet.
This weekend they took me everywhere I haven't been here yet.
I FINALLY SAW THE TERRY FOX MEMORIAL!! pictures definitely will be up soon, bear with me. (Anthea and Scot don't have wireless)
Then we went to Sleeping Giant park and walked around the cottage area. People here are in love with their cottages, which they actually call camps. We also ran into lots of deer which are more or less tame. Pictures, I promise! We also went to a little camping/touristy spot near their house called Kekebeka Falls, it was very pretty.
On Saturday night I stayed in town with their daughter who is a 3rd year at Lakehead. Her and her crazy roommates took me to a Halloween party which I wish I could remember more of. We didn't stay long. Tonight they are taking me to Kanga Sauna. It's a Finnish tradition to do group saunas and by the sounds of it a Thunder Bay drinking tradition. I'll update on this one soon!
Caffeine
I drink coffee, daily. I drink coffee and I don't have massive anxiety reactions or the desire to DO EVERYTHING WITH LOTS OF EFFICIENCY! I drink coffee and I like it, and it appears to like me back. I should probably not blog about this as it has zero point or affect, but I find it strange that I of all people now drink coffee. Okay, I'm over it now. Ignore this.
Gabe.
I came home on Wednesday of last week to find an unfamiliar face in my house. I said hello to him nonetheless and then reached for a piece of celery which my beautiful house managers Sam and Martin had prepared for their working children.
There was a lizard on my piece of celery.
Gabe (that's the guy, not the lizard) has a pet gecko. I can't remember the gecko's name because I kept referring to him as Geico and speaking in an Australian accent to him. He was such a champ. Gabe was part of the program a year ago and lived in our house. He was driving back home to Quebec from Calgary where he had not be successful with finding work. He had a really cool tattoo of a snake around a half-moon which was symbolic of his ADHD. Best of luck Gabe, I hope you find work.
Last night was Halloween and Eric called me. He's staying out of town too but in the other direction; he lives on a farm with a girl named Marcel who taught us how to make bread when we first got here. Her and her boyfriend have a few animals but mostly they grow food to sell and contribute to the slow food trend that is growing quickly around the area. Eric skinned a deer this weekend. I was extremely jealous. UNTIL...
Scot went out and shot a grouse and let me pluck it! I really don't know how to describe how strange it felt to be pulling feathers out of a bird that was still warm in my hands but had no tail feathers or head. Pictoral evidence will come for this too, you bet!
French
is going well for the most part. I'm wondering how fluent one can possibly get when all they say is "Ce quoi ________ au francais?"
Progress is progress though, but for the sake of measuring goals I'll say I'm at a 3 out of 5 on understanding and a 2 out of 5 with reiteration.
Okay, pictures soon!
Bye
Petra
ps. Comment section below does not require an account! Say hello to me! I want to hear from you!
pps. Hi Mum :)
Many things have happened since my long post below. Many things. But please understand these things happen fast and then they make me tired so I go to bed instead of blogging about these things.
These things include:
Hiking (up the one mountain Thunder Bay possesses)
Cake Making and birthday celebrations
Attending Shows
Billeting
Making lots of food
Becoming caffeine reliant
Gabe
Halloween
Update on the French
I will try my very hardest to cover EVERYTHING.
Hiking started out with our entire group leaving late. We packed a stupid amount of food and loaded ourselves into the van about 4 times before we finally left. The first part of the hike was SUPER steep. At one point the mountain was a ski hill with a lift and everything but now it just has crazy steep 4 wheelers tracks all over it. After the initial altitude gaining hill it's a pretty nice hike, a little bit of scree and a little bit of dirt paths, but for the most part we just wandered all over the mountain. It is necessary to cover all sides of a mountain this size in order to get a good work out because up and down takes about 1/2 an hour each way.
We ate some lunch at the top and took pictures and made Petra super mom-nervous by going really close to the edge of large cliffs. Thanks guys..
On the way down we literally found ourselves in the cross fire of a game of paintball.. no injuries though.
After our hike we went back to Gale and Volker's house for chilli and we watched the rest of K2, which we started on Thanksgiving. Funny, funny movie. I don't recommend it.
Cakes
Eric (our baby) turned 18 on October 23rd. I made him a 5 layer chocolate cake from scratch, icing included. Sam decorated it with gummy bears we stole from Dalandrea. We got him a sassy fedora also. I love Eric. I will put a picture up. I promise. I'm just not on my own computer right now.
Attending shows. Last Monday we went to a Magic show. We got free tickets from the Salvation Army. Really nothing much to say. Sometimes there's a reason things are free. Sometimes I should check what age group things are intended for. Magic sucks without cool lights.
We also went to Fierce Light, but I posted that below so check it out!
Billeting.
We had our billet family BBQ last Tuesday. We made a TON of food and accommodated.. way too many people for our little house to handle. A week before we called in the local paper to promote us; they photographed us and Sam and I did an interview, which was great because the reporter was a fine specimen of a man.
Basically the idea of billeting is to give you a break from the whole program and everyone you live with, as we are literally packed into that house. (I'm on the bottom bunk these days, Sophie and I switched)
I started billeting last Friday.
I live with a couple named Anthea and Scot and they are really sweet. We live 40 minutes out of town. Anthea and I drive in every morning around 8 because she works at the university as a student advisor (I know, SCORE!) and Scot works at home restoring canoes and building things with his carpenter skills. They have 3 kids who have all left home so I share the top floor with their grumpy 18 year old cat who licks my feet.
This weekend they took me everywhere I haven't been here yet.
I FINALLY SAW THE TERRY FOX MEMORIAL!! pictures definitely will be up soon, bear with me. (Anthea and Scot don't have wireless)
Then we went to Sleeping Giant park and walked around the cottage area. People here are in love with their cottages, which they actually call camps. We also ran into lots of deer which are more or less tame. Pictures, I promise! We also went to a little camping/touristy spot near their house called Kekebeka Falls, it was very pretty.
On Saturday night I stayed in town with their daughter who is a 3rd year at Lakehead. Her and her crazy roommates took me to a Halloween party which I wish I could remember more of. We didn't stay long. Tonight they are taking me to Kanga Sauna. It's a Finnish tradition to do group saunas and by the sounds of it a Thunder Bay drinking tradition. I'll update on this one soon!
Caffeine
I drink coffee, daily. I drink coffee and I don't have massive anxiety reactions or the desire to DO EVERYTHING WITH LOTS OF EFFICIENCY! I drink coffee and I like it, and it appears to like me back. I should probably not blog about this as it has zero point or affect, but I find it strange that I of all people now drink coffee. Okay, I'm over it now. Ignore this.
Gabe.
I came home on Wednesday of last week to find an unfamiliar face in my house. I said hello to him nonetheless and then reached for a piece of celery which my beautiful house managers Sam and Martin had prepared for their working children.
There was a lizard on my piece of celery.
Gabe (that's the guy, not the lizard) has a pet gecko. I can't remember the gecko's name because I kept referring to him as Geico and speaking in an Australian accent to him. He was such a champ. Gabe was part of the program a year ago and lived in our house. He was driving back home to Quebec from Calgary where he had not be successful with finding work. He had a really cool tattoo of a snake around a half-moon which was symbolic of his ADHD. Best of luck Gabe, I hope you find work.
Last night was Halloween and Eric called me. He's staying out of town too but in the other direction; he lives on a farm with a girl named Marcel who taught us how to make bread when we first got here. Her and her boyfriend have a few animals but mostly they grow food to sell and contribute to the slow food trend that is growing quickly around the area. Eric skinned a deer this weekend. I was extremely jealous. UNTIL...
Scot went out and shot a grouse and let me pluck it! I really don't know how to describe how strange it felt to be pulling feathers out of a bird that was still warm in my hands but had no tail feathers or head. Pictoral evidence will come for this too, you bet!
French
is going well for the most part. I'm wondering how fluent one can possibly get when all they say is "Ce quoi ________ au francais?"
Progress is progress though, but for the sake of measuring goals I'll say I'm at a 3 out of 5 on understanding and a 2 out of 5 with reiteration.
Okay, pictures soon!
Bye
Petra
ps. Comment section below does not require an account! Say hello to me! I want to hear from you!
pps. Hi Mum :)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Shakin' their Sassafrass
Tonight I went to see a film called "Fierce Light". It was pretty sweet. I could maybe explain it but it might just be nicer for you to watch the teasers. I would really like to see the first part of the trilogy too, and the third comes out in 2012.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqhyBdb9JKA
do enjoy.
Petra
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqhyBdb9JKA
do enjoy.
Petra
Friday, October 15, 2010
Weekend of WHAT?
For Thanksgiving we took time off. Because it is a stat holiday it was the only time we could extend our 48 hours off time period to a 72 hours off. Considering we've been cooped up in this little 4 bedroom house for the last 5 weeks it was nice to get a break.
SO! here's a great story for you, little Rossland.
We decided we didn't want to spend our coveted $20/week allowance on an expensive hotel in town when we could have free accommodation at the house while in town. So we did a little research :)
We found an International backpackers hostel about 40 minutes outside of the city. We booked ourselves some rooms and had plans set by Monday of the previous week.
Saturday morning Jessie and Eric and I went out and got various body parts pierced. bellybutton, ear and eyebrow. We make a nice set of silver triplets. Dalandrea and Millie also got piercings that morning and ever since then we have had saltwater cleaning parties in the bathroom which gets quite cramped and odd. We are sure not to double dip, we're champs.
After this exciting experience six of us jumped in a taxi and cleared out of 32 Dalton. Sophie, Antoine, Eric, Jessie, Sam, and me. We are definitely the six that give the group energy so the house must have been quite dull without us.
After a brief stop thanks to our incompetent taxi driver we arrived at the Thunder Bay International Hostel.
Seriously here.. quite a site. (I'll have pics up soon)
Outside on the road were three big sign posts with literally hundreds of different directional signs to cities all over the world.
We went inside and met the owner who appeared to be a nice woman in her senior years. She takes all around the place and then out to the building where we stayed. It's hard to describe a place like this one. One of those sort of.. dodgy looking on the outside, musty smelling on the inside, not quite sure what's on the carpet, no matching furniture, 8000 encyclopedias stacked in the corner, multiple afghans lying all over the place, cats running free range, knitted place mats, doors that don't lock- let alone close, bathtub painted green, lots of old newspaper clippings all over the walls kind of places.
Not two seconds after we'd begun to relax a nice looking old man (don't be fooled though, stay tuned) tells us that he is taking us to the dump. I had not exchanged a handshake with this man, he did not know me from a hole in the ground and yet all six of us jumped in his mini van and off we went.
To the dump.
This man, whose name is Lloyd, is a big fan of taking photos.. of art.. So he had us create art, at the dump, out of dump materials. This experience included us picking the dump, and creating a smiley face... yes, interesting. It gets better yet.
We took photos at the dump and someone (probably Lloyd) found an unsuspecting stranger to take a photo of us at the dump with Lloyd.
Picture one shows a nice picture of our friendly group. Please note man in plaid shirt with hand around Eric's waist. Clearly visible to any passersby, any person viewing this picture. Nice and appropriate, PG13 if you please.
SO! here's a great story for you, little Rossland.
We decided we didn't want to spend our coveted $20/week allowance on an expensive hotel in town when we could have free accommodation at the house while in town. So we did a little research :)
We found an International backpackers hostel about 40 minutes outside of the city. We booked ourselves some rooms and had plans set by Monday of the previous week.
Saturday morning Jessie and Eric and I went out and got various body parts pierced. bellybutton, ear and eyebrow. We make a nice set of silver triplets. Dalandrea and Millie also got piercings that morning and ever since then we have had saltwater cleaning parties in the bathroom which gets quite cramped and odd. We are sure not to double dip, we're champs.
After this exciting experience six of us jumped in a taxi and cleared out of 32 Dalton. Sophie, Antoine, Eric, Jessie, Sam, and me. We are definitely the six that give the group energy so the house must have been quite dull without us.
After a brief stop thanks to our incompetent taxi driver we arrived at the Thunder Bay International Hostel.
Seriously here.. quite a site. (I'll have pics up soon)
Outside on the road were three big sign posts with literally hundreds of different directional signs to cities all over the world.
We went inside and met the owner who appeared to be a nice woman in her senior years. She takes all around the place and then out to the building where we stayed. It's hard to describe a place like this one. One of those sort of.. dodgy looking on the outside, musty smelling on the inside, not quite sure what's on the carpet, no matching furniture, 8000 encyclopedias stacked in the corner, multiple afghans lying all over the place, cats running free range, knitted place mats, doors that don't lock- let alone close, bathtub painted green, lots of old newspaper clippings all over the walls kind of places.
Not two seconds after we'd begun to relax a nice looking old man (don't be fooled though, stay tuned) tells us that he is taking us to the dump. I had not exchanged a handshake with this man, he did not know me from a hole in the ground and yet all six of us jumped in his mini van and off we went.
To the dump.
This man, whose name is Lloyd, is a big fan of taking photos.. of art.. So he had us create art, at the dump, out of dump materials. This experience included us picking the dump, and creating a smiley face... yes, interesting. It gets better yet.
We took photos at the dump and someone (probably Lloyd) found an unsuspecting stranger to take a photo of us at the dump with Lloyd.
Picture one shows a nice picture of our friendly group. Please note man in plaid shirt with hand around Eric's waist. Clearly visible to any passersby, any person viewing this picture. Nice and appropriate, PG13 if you please.
Now take a look at picture numero deux.
Lloyd's hand is missing from Eric's waist.
Expressing great concern and angst Eric came up to me after our little photo shoot and says in a strained voice "The old man just grabbed my ass!"
Sorry Eric. But this is even funnier than the time Scott got arrested.. (will come in future blog posts) The fact that this event has been captured with pictoral evidence just makes the entire event so much funnier!
Our dump experience was amusing and I met a nice dog and scored a sweet jaguar kitten backpack circa 1997. I gave it a wash when we got home even though it was still in the packaging but I haven't taken it out on the town yet..
Lloyd got us to take many things from the dump back to his home, which made us question what else from that house was from the dump... mmhmmm..
Upon arriving back at our home away from home away from home we had to kindly explain to the perverted old man that this was our time OFF from the program and that we weren't expected to be doing any physical labour or activities we didn't find entertaining over the next 24 hours.
He got very offended. He spent the next 4 hours editing his new photos and "catchin's up" with all his pals on facebook. We left and took the bikes the hostel provided for a little spin around the countryside. Good thing these bikes weren't any better than the sh*t bikes the Katima-house has otherwise we might have actually had an efficient trip.. and that would never do. I got stuck with a 12 year old boy's green bike, possessing very sloppy full suspension and a lack of the ability to shift out of first gear. Ontario may be flat.. but it is still necessary to pedal in order to get from A to B so by the time our little journey was over my legs were fully exhausted. For the last leg of our journey though Eric fixed my bike with a piece of bark so that it would stay on the second gear wheel. We found an amazing old railway bridge and a cute little stretch of river. Good thing we took pictures! I'll have them up soon!
Back at "home" we tried our hardest to avoid our new crazy homestay. After eating some dinner and wasting some time around the house we went back to our building hoping Lloyd would be in bed.
He wasn't.
After having previously thought that our adventures of the day were the way horror stories begin I was a little creeped out that he was going to be hanging out in his makeshift office five feet from the door I was supposed to be sleeping behind.
(I may be exaggerating here a bit. This man did not threaten me in any way nor make my stay uncomfortable. I am not intent on cutting him and his ways down, but the entire weekend was such a peculiar experience and he played such a role in it I feel the need to expand on each small detail. Had I been a backpacker or someone staying at this hostel if I had been a road traveller I'm sure I would have enjoyed his company a lot more. But as it was our only time off and about on our own we were all hoping to have the privacy of a place out of the way. He is an incredibly interesting man - a die hard Catholic who writes essays by the thousands. He has had Cambodian boat people stay with him, has four kids of his own and has adopted another two. He is able to stay incredibly devoted to his faith and still have an open mind to accept life's difference [we noted specifically, homosexuality] and keep his various human service projects non-religious. He has had quite an interesting life and him and his wife have traveller all over the world, as we could tell by their hundreds of photo albums.)
Okay back to the juice. He was serious deranged.
That evening we met a guy named Cosmo (or so he said) who was a crazy man who worked for bell and swore a lot. He convinced us that Lloyd and Willa were millionaires and told us their whole property history. He could be right.. they pick the dump after all. Cosmo compares Lloyd and Willa to his grandparents, a statement which makes me question just how screwed up his grandparents must be - I know my grandparents are NOTHING LIKE THOSE CRAZY PEOPLE!
The hostel had probably close to 250 dvds and after critically reviewing all of them we decided on a great option... The Lion King 1 and 1/2. Beautiful.
The next day we ditched the crowd around 11 and took the bikes (this time I got one with curved handle bars and back-pedal breaks) and jumped across the highway to where a new four lane highway was in construction. We came to a half-completed bridge and scrambled down the gully and followed the little river upstream for.. what felt like way farther than it actually was. We rock hopped most of the way up to a gorgeous waterfall. Antoine found us a sweet spot of rock to eat lunch on. October 3 and all of us were in shorts and t-shirts and none of us brought sweaters. And they say Northern Ontario is cold.. what?
We spent the whole day on the river, half swimming and skipping around the rocks and bathing in the sun. Definitely time well spent.
When we got back to the hostel we painted our own sign post and of course added our signatures and hometowns. Lloyd was very grumpy that we were leaving.
Our adventure came to an end with Lloyd cornering Eric into given out his email address (a move which would eventually lead to a friend request on facebook which was promptly accepted, thoroughly creeped and then deleted) Eric is now more conscious of pedophiles and we have taught him how to make up a fake email address on the spot.
When we got back to Thunder Bay Jessie, Eric and I went skating (it took a tad bit of convincing) and then biked home the long way which ended up with us getting lost.. which was chill.. UNTIL SOME ASSHOLE DROVE BY AND THREW A POTATO AT JESSIE!!! Thunder Bay youth have serious issues.
Overall a completed unplanned, spontaneous and fabulous weekend.
BUUUUUUT it wasn't over.
Because on Monday we went to Gale and Volker's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Gale and Volker are more of Jessie's work partners from the food bank. I guess everyone cool wants to work there.
Volker is the funniest and most brutal man I have ever met. I think he hit me four times that night. He is a mountaineer so I kept thinking of my Dad and his late climbing partner Steve.. same sort of humour exchanged.
For dinner we had turkey, goose and quail. I'm getting used to all the wild game eaten in Ontario. As we are deprived of ice cream in the Katima-house we literally fought over all the ice cream they had. So embarrassing. hahah.
We do summer camp like things and wash dishes in rotations, so that's how we came to be cleaning their kitchen at 9:30pm.
(As a side note: we also make our own ketchup, mayonnaise, salad dressing, bread, yogourt, granola, fajitas, and more or less everything else under the sun)
It was really nice to be in someone else's home for Thanksgiving. I know we all missed family and friends over the weekend but no one was really out of sorts and we all had a great time.
"Wherever you go, there you are" Confucious
Petra
The worst blogger in all the land.
I'll start with apologies. I won't promise that this will never happen again but I will promise to try my very hardest to never allow such a gap in between posts again. There, it's in writing.
Now for some juice.
I'll start with where I left off.
My house manager week finished on Sunday the 3rd. Halfway through the week I made cinnamon buns to celebrate the fact that we were out of our "Probation Period" which means nothing to you and next to nothing to me so don't worry about the details.
On the weekend we caught the tail end of a cultural film festival. One of our planned activities was to watch two of these films so we all sat through the most painful movie of the Finnish peoples most common historical.. thing... It was not a fabulous time, but all the Finnish people in the crowd loved it so.. well whatever. Thunder Bay has the largest population of Finnish people outside of Finland. So the last names here.. whew, fun times trying to pronounce those! The next night however we had free time so Jessie, Eric, Sophie and I all went back and watched a movie on the history of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It was definitely time well spent; we got to talk with the writer/producer afterwards. I'm not sure who won people's choice award but from the 5 films I saw he definitely deserved it. Wish you could have seen it Cydster.
That same weekend we went to the Food Bank where Jessie works on weekdays and helped out a food drive. While it is nice to think that loving people donate the food from their home they don't want it's actually really nothing like that.
Big corporate companies like Safeway "donate" all their just about to expire food and Walmart donates 8,000 dented cans they can no longer legally sell to the public. There are a lot of other companies that have sponsors who specifically want their dollars to go to charity so we'd get boxes full of peanut butter and pasta. It's an easy way for a lot of companies to write off some taxes while still being able to say they donated.
Nonetheless we filled nearly 350, 24 pack beer boxes full of food. I think it filled like 7 and a bit pallets. Just ridiculous. It was fun times. lunch provided.
Monday was our welcome party where all of our workpartners and neighbours and potential billet families came to see our tiny house and postage stamp sized backyard and oggle over how we work together and size us up by our profiles. It went well considering our advertising sucked.
Tuesday we hopped the fence to a closed catholic school and played soccer and other fun games. There is one school across the street from us that has been closed down and one down the road that has been closed down. Remind anyone of the Kootenays?
The week continued with me and Charlene going to lots of restaurants all over town to deliver caterer's packages for the ladies night I'm working on for February. I've seen more of Tbay from her little CRV than from the Katimavik van.. how sad is that?
STILL HAVEN'T BEEN TO THE TERRY FOX MEMORIAL!!!! SO RIDICULOUS!!!! UGH!!!
On Thursday we went to Lakehead Uni for a presentation from the Stephen Lewis foundation which is funding girls education in Malawi. If it hadn't been a huge sales pitch I'm sure it would have been great. We signed up for it because it was advertised as African women living with AIDS talking about their experiences with a lost generation. It's a great foundation by the sounds of it but I would rather have been sleeping that night.
That's it for this one!
aaaawwwwl my love :)
Petra
Now for some juice.
I'll start with where I left off.
My house manager week finished on Sunday the 3rd. Halfway through the week I made cinnamon buns to celebrate the fact that we were out of our "Probation Period" which means nothing to you and next to nothing to me so don't worry about the details.
On the weekend we caught the tail end of a cultural film festival. One of our planned activities was to watch two of these films so we all sat through the most painful movie of the Finnish peoples most common historical.. thing... It was not a fabulous time, but all the Finnish people in the crowd loved it so.. well whatever. Thunder Bay has the largest population of Finnish people outside of Finland. So the last names here.. whew, fun times trying to pronounce those! The next night however we had free time so Jessie, Eric, Sophie and I all went back and watched a movie on the history of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It was definitely time well spent; we got to talk with the writer/producer afterwards. I'm not sure who won people's choice award but from the 5 films I saw he definitely deserved it. Wish you could have seen it Cydster.
That same weekend we went to the Food Bank where Jessie works on weekdays and helped out a food drive. While it is nice to think that loving people donate the food from their home they don't want it's actually really nothing like that.
Big corporate companies like Safeway "donate" all their just about to expire food and Walmart donates 8,000 dented cans they can no longer legally sell to the public. There are a lot of other companies that have sponsors who specifically want their dollars to go to charity so we'd get boxes full of peanut butter and pasta. It's an easy way for a lot of companies to write off some taxes while still being able to say they donated.
Nonetheless we filled nearly 350, 24 pack beer boxes full of food. I think it filled like 7 and a bit pallets. Just ridiculous. It was fun times. lunch provided.
Monday was our welcome party where all of our workpartners and neighbours and potential billet families came to see our tiny house and postage stamp sized backyard and oggle over how we work together and size us up by our profiles. It went well considering our advertising sucked.
Tuesday we hopped the fence to a closed catholic school and played soccer and other fun games. There is one school across the street from us that has been closed down and one down the road that has been closed down. Remind anyone of the Kootenays?
The week continued with me and Charlene going to lots of restaurants all over town to deliver caterer's packages for the ladies night I'm working on for February. I've seen more of Tbay from her little CRV than from the Katimavik van.. how sad is that?
STILL HAVEN'T BEEN TO THE TERRY FOX MEMORIAL!!!! SO RIDICULOUS!!!! UGH!!!
On Thursday we went to Lakehead Uni for a presentation from the Stephen Lewis foundation which is funding girls education in Malawi. If it hadn't been a huge sales pitch I'm sure it would have been great. We signed up for it because it was advertised as African women living with AIDS talking about their experiences with a lost generation. It's a great foundation by the sounds of it but I would rather have been sleeping that night.
That's it for this one!
aaaawwwwl my love :)
Petra
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
katimanuts!
Hello Friends,
I've been suuuper busy today, as my second day of house manager. Today I made 6 loaves of bread, half a dozen buns, two loaves of zucchini bread, 2 dozen muffins, a dozen pizza rolls, and shepherd's pie and salad for dinner. Pretty sweet day, also did lots of laundry and cleaned our Katima-house. I also decided to butcher my finger on a potato peeler.. NO FUN. On Sunday the whole group went to a community garden very near to our house and put the garden to bed for the winter. I helped tear down a green house and did some soil turning and weeding. Lots of bug bits later I got the impossible task of rearranging the shed for the winter but thankfully we had an impromptu composting session and I got away from it. We've been doing a lot of French activities as we are supposed to get in 1/2 an hour of second language learning everyday. Pretty soon we are going to have a huge wall of vocab. We've also labelled literally everything in this house with both English and French vocabulary words so everywhere you walk there are bright post its which have been conveniently laminated.
Sophie and Millie talk about the kids they see everyday at the boys and girls club and every single day Jessie comes home from the Food Bank with either random food or a crazy story (or often both), as a result of having a crazy boss. I don't think she's had a tame day of work yet. Martin works at the Art Gallery at Confederation College (backup option for locals who don't get into Lakehead) and he loves it because he gets to draw all day. Eric has been tagging along with Jessie having interesting adventures all over town and being force fed multiple kinds of traditional Thunder Bay food. Tbay has a big Finnish population so traditional food include huge doughnuts slathered in pink icing and strange sausage dishes. I haven't tried either yet.
On Saturday we rode bikes/took the van to the Thunder Bay museum. It was a decent sized building all stoney and viney. The first floor was the coolest - all these old indian beadwork hides and mits, moccasins, vests you name it, old newspaper prints, and lots of old Finnish stuff. And then just because they had to fill the rest of the museum they filled the second and third floors with a huge display of old wedding dresses and an Albertasaurus. (which obviously brought up a nice round of "My Province is Better Than Yours", which I might add despite statistical differences West Coast is winning! )
Yesterday after dinner we went slack lining (please youtube if you don't know) which was super stellar and afterwards my legs hurt in places they have not hurt since ski season.
I finally got my photos up on my computer so I have many to share and not all are from Katimavik some are from the summer time.
aaand one last thing - I sent postcards today. Be excited.
Sophie and Millie talk about the kids they see everyday at the boys and girls club and every single day Jessie comes home from the Food Bank with either random food or a crazy story (or often both), as a result of having a crazy boss. I don't think she's had a tame day of work yet. Martin works at the Art Gallery at Confederation College (backup option for locals who don't get into Lakehead) and he loves it because he gets to draw all day. Eric has been tagging along with Jessie having interesting adventures all over town and being force fed multiple kinds of traditional Thunder Bay food. Tbay has a big Finnish population so traditional food include huge doughnuts slathered in pink icing and strange sausage dishes. I haven't tried either yet.
On Saturday we rode bikes/took the van to the Thunder Bay museum. It was a decent sized building all stoney and viney. The first floor was the coolest - all these old indian beadwork hides and mits, moccasins, vests you name it, old newspaper prints, and lots of old Finnish stuff. And then just because they had to fill the rest of the museum they filled the second and third floors with a huge display of old wedding dresses and an Albertasaurus. (which obviously brought up a nice round of "My Province is Better Than Yours", which I might add despite statistical differences West Coast is winning! )
Yesterday after dinner we went slack lining (please youtube if you don't know) which was super stellar and afterwards my legs hurt in places they have not hurt since ski season.
I finally got my photos up on my computer so I have many to share and not all are from Katimavik some are from the summer time.
aaand one last thing - I sent postcards today. Be excited.
Cyd & Petra on top of Robbie on Canada Day '10 <3
Eva & Petra on top of Fairview - Lake Louise August
Our photo scavenger hunt crew - Me Dalandrea Martin and Julien outside the Hoito (famous for pancakes!)
There are hundreds of these beautiful stone churches in both ends of the city
Indoor Turf Dome - so sweet/cheap :D
New City Hall - also the bus terminal
Me and Dalandrea outside City Hall :)
Sophie hard at work dans la jardin
Partial Katima-group getting diiiirty
Scott, Antoine, Dalandrea, Jessie, Sarah, Eric, Petra, Sophie, Jodie, Julien
Slack-Lining!
More Slack-Lining
Serving Aborginal Medicinal Tea (tastes like bark and leaves) at Old Fort William
Awkward Utensil Dinner - first day of house manager, I made soup muahahah
Utensils included sieves, whisks, oil brushes, can tops, flippers and steak stabbers
Opening large package of goodies from Ma & Paps
C'est fini! :) Au revoir
Thursday, September 23, 2010
super tardy
I think it's high time I posted some goodz on here.. it's been a little while.
Thunder Bay is pretty sweet, I won't lie. I just received a package from the parents and now I have my skates and my climbing shoes so I can do more physical activities while still being ridiculously cheap. I somehow have managed to live off the $50 my mum gave me right before I left for the last two and a half weeks which has been more than stellar. We also get $20 every Wednesday (thanks Tories!) which allows me to visit the gym here at least twice a week. The gym is pretty ridiculously fabulous - there's three pools, a running track, four weight rooms and 3 studios, I like the city.
Anyhoo this week I went to work on Monday and Tuesday only. I've been putting together catering packages for an event called Sweet Indulgences. My boss is a serious sweetheart who has rheumatoid arthritis and it's really neat working with her because she is very professional but still has the personal aspect of business which I think comes from having the disease she works with everyday. She's basically giving me the reins on the whole planning of this event which happens in February so I won't be able to go because by that time I will be in Quebec. On Friday we are going to restaurants to give out caterers packages because the event is all about which restaurant in Thunder Bay has the best dessert. It's pretty intimidating when I have to call a sponsor or a donor and say "Hi this is Petra and I'm calling from the Arthritis Society." because instead of me being a little school kid who wants money for new computers or whatever I'm actually representing an organization...an organization I really know nothing about. So on Tuesday I did some reading. I'm not going to summarize what I read but arthritis.ca is a superb website! Arthritis is quite fascinating and though I am not an expert I now at least know what to do when someone says "I think I have Arthritis."
Yesterday and Today I joined the rest of the group (besides the house managers) and volunteered at an event called "Fall Harvest" which was up at Old Fort William, out of town a bit. It was an First Nations exhibit kind of ordeal - the First Nations elders had their little wigwams and gave presentations to school groups on native living. Our job was more or less to help the elders. Yesterday I was at the "Medicinal Tea" station, and in the afternoon at Bannock Making - soooo yummy.. Today I went to Wild Rice Drying where we actually had to do the presentation. For lunch I had Canadian Goose Soup - not even joking. I've also had my fair share of moose meat and duck over the last three days.. enough with the wild game already.
We can't have steak at the Katimahouse because unless we budget super strictly we really can't afford it. Our food allowance per week is just under $600 which we spend on flour.. a lot of flour because we make our own bread. And we also buy lots of apples and cheese. Peanut butter has become a staple in my diet which I'm not going to disapprove of because due to allergies in my house it has been a foreign substance for most of my life.
We're doing an activity tonight where we label virtually everything in this house with french.. I'm preparing myself for the kitchen to have multiple pieces of coloured paper all over the place.
This past weekend we split up and went to either the Toys for Tots toy drive at the Salvation Army or a big slow pitch fundraiser put on by Lakehead University. I was a score keeper at the slow pitch tourny and it was frickin cold the entire day and there was only crappy hot chocolate to warm up my practically board stiff body. FUN TIMES.
Katimavik is slowing letting go of all these stupid rules because our "probation" time is almost up, thank heavens. We get to start planning our own days and doing whaaaatever we want :)
And now for some photos
Thunder Bay is pretty sweet, I won't lie. I just received a package from the parents and now I have my skates and my climbing shoes so I can do more physical activities while still being ridiculously cheap. I somehow have managed to live off the $50 my mum gave me right before I left for the last two and a half weeks which has been more than stellar. We also get $20 every Wednesday (thanks Tories!) which allows me to visit the gym here at least twice a week. The gym is pretty ridiculously fabulous - there's three pools, a running track, four weight rooms and 3 studios, I like the city.
Anyhoo this week I went to work on Monday and Tuesday only. I've been putting together catering packages for an event called Sweet Indulgences. My boss is a serious sweetheart who has rheumatoid arthritis and it's really neat working with her because she is very professional but still has the personal aspect of business which I think comes from having the disease she works with everyday. She's basically giving me the reins on the whole planning of this event which happens in February so I won't be able to go because by that time I will be in Quebec. On Friday we are going to restaurants to give out caterers packages because the event is all about which restaurant in Thunder Bay has the best dessert. It's pretty intimidating when I have to call a sponsor or a donor and say "Hi this is Petra and I'm calling from the Arthritis Society." because instead of me being a little school kid who wants money for new computers or whatever I'm actually representing an organization...an organization I really know nothing about. So on Tuesday I did some reading. I'm not going to summarize what I read but arthritis.ca is a superb website! Arthritis is quite fascinating and though I am not an expert I now at least know what to do when someone says "I think I have Arthritis."
Yesterday and Today I joined the rest of the group (besides the house managers) and volunteered at an event called "Fall Harvest" which was up at Old Fort William, out of town a bit. It was an First Nations exhibit kind of ordeal - the First Nations elders had their little wigwams and gave presentations to school groups on native living. Our job was more or less to help the elders. Yesterday I was at the "Medicinal Tea" station, and in the afternoon at Bannock Making - soooo yummy.. Today I went to Wild Rice Drying where we actually had to do the presentation. For lunch I had Canadian Goose Soup - not even joking. I've also had my fair share of moose meat and duck over the last three days.. enough with the wild game already.
We can't have steak at the Katimahouse because unless we budget super strictly we really can't afford it. Our food allowance per week is just under $600 which we spend on flour.. a lot of flour because we make our own bread. And we also buy lots of apples and cheese. Peanut butter has become a staple in my diet which I'm not going to disapprove of because due to allergies in my house it has been a foreign substance for most of my life.
We're doing an activity tonight where we label virtually everything in this house with french.. I'm preparing myself for the kitchen to have multiple pieces of coloured paper all over the place.
This past weekend we split up and went to either the Toys for Tots toy drive at the Salvation Army or a big slow pitch fundraiser put on by Lakehead University. I was a score keeper at the slow pitch tourny and it was frickin cold the entire day and there was only crappy hot chocolate to warm up my practically board stiff body. FUN TIMES.
Katimavik is slowing letting go of all these stupid rules because our "probation" time is almost up, thank heavens. We get to start planning our own days and doing whaaaatever we want :)
And now for some photos
Sketchy
Me and Dalandrea being beautiful
Scary x ray vision
Dalandrea, Antoine, Jessie, Petra, Eric and Sam !
ta ta xox P
Friday, September 17, 2010
9-5
Hello
My first day of work has been super quiet, hence my ability to have free computer time. My boss is very nice, she's very small and cute and took me to lunch today. No one else has really been working today, just a few people in and out of the office. Right now we're doing promotional work for the Joints in Motion projects which allow people to run marathons, half marathons and 10 & 5 km runs in other countries. This looks like fun. This Sunday is The Thunder Bay Marathon and so we're doing lots of advertising there. But if this slow stuff keeps up these posts are going to get smaller and smaller. She has promised me that this place is usually bustling and time is a sacred thing that goes very quickly, but I'm not sure whether I buy that at the moment. Time will tell.
P
My first day of work has been super quiet, hence my ability to have free computer time. My boss is very nice, she's very small and cute and took me to lunch today. No one else has really been working today, just a few people in and out of the office. Right now we're doing promotional work for the Joints in Motion projects which allow people to run marathons, half marathons and 10 & 5 km runs in other countries. This looks like fun. This Sunday is The Thunder Bay Marathon and so we're doing lots of advertising there. But if this slow stuff keeps up these posts are going to get smaller and smaller. She has promised me that this place is usually bustling and time is a sacred thing that goes very quickly, but I'm not sure whether I buy that at the moment. Time will tell.
P
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thus, now
Hi Hi,
This week has gone by super quickly. Tomorrow I start my new job at the Arthritis Society. I will be in the office doing a lot of promotional stuff and a lot of things on the computer by the sounds of it. My boss was very excited during my interview so I'm pretty stoked to go to work tomorrow - never has that really happened before! I'll only be working there for 10 weeks in total but the change of pace is going to be great.
Today we went on a picture scavenger hunt all over Thunder Bay - rode the bus a lot - my team won because we are awesome and made it all the way to the other side of town to city hall.
We had a bread making workshop tonight so now our freezer is seriously jam packed with a ton of bread which is good because we literally eat enough of it a day to feed a small African nation for a month.
Our house is very close to Lakehead University so we sort of live in the student district. We also live right around the corner from the Canada Games Complex which has a sweet gym and a swimming pool; I think I will be spending a lot of time there and probably a substantial portion of my $3/day budget.
I really need to figure out how to use my Mac so I can get my photos up on here, Canon software is just darn tricky.
Our house is looking into getting a Katimapet, a fish to be name Giles I believe. Giles probably won't be that stoked on flying to Nicolet come December though.
Good Night
P
This week has gone by super quickly. Tomorrow I start my new job at the Arthritis Society. I will be in the office doing a lot of promotional stuff and a lot of things on the computer by the sounds of it. My boss was very excited during my interview so I'm pretty stoked to go to work tomorrow - never has that really happened before! I'll only be working there for 10 weeks in total but the change of pace is going to be great.
Today we went on a picture scavenger hunt all over Thunder Bay - rode the bus a lot - my team won because we are awesome and made it all the way to the other side of town to city hall.
We had a bread making workshop tonight so now our freezer is seriously jam packed with a ton of bread which is good because we literally eat enough of it a day to feed a small African nation for a month.
Our house is very close to Lakehead University so we sort of live in the student district. We also live right around the corner from the Canada Games Complex which has a sweet gym and a swimming pool; I think I will be spending a lot of time there and probably a substantial portion of my $3/day budget.
I really need to figure out how to use my Mac so I can get my photos up on here, Canon software is just darn tricky.
Our house is looking into getting a Katimapet, a fish to be name Giles I believe. Giles probably won't be that stoked on flying to Nicolet come December though.
Good Night
P
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