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.

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