It's only been a while..

Lots o stuff coming at you.

Arriving home from our weekend of shenanigans in the big city of fun felt like that strange sensation in your knees when you attempt a jump on solid ground after several on a trampoline.  Oh right.. this is earth.. Oh right.. we have work tomorrow.

We had a week of melancholy, G-rated fun including some language lessons and swimming lengths at our second home, the Police Academy.  We also had a meeting with our project coordinator about the progress we're making and what we have left to do for the town before we leave.

We found out a few days before this meeting that Katimavik has a bunch of stuff on their plate right now, that is probably less than appetizing.  Back in June'10 the program had some massive budget cuts from the Canadian Heritage Society and one of the results was making the 9 month program into a 6 monther.  They had to cut a huge amount of communities for housing placements because they didn't have the funds to keep the program running at such a high level.  After this there was a decrease in participant entries and so in order to keep each house operating (which is a no brainer - why waste money on a house when there isn't a group in it?) they had to start groups off with as little as 8 or 9 people, instead of the standard 11.  In hopes that more participants would show up, or check their yes box, Katimavik placed groups in nearly every community they had.  The low numbers became a problem when individuals began to leave the program, for various reasons; groups were down to as low as 5 in some communities, as early as one month into the program.

For obvious reasons, Katimavik doesn't want to deal with situations like this down the road and over the fence so to combat such obstacles they have had to make cuts again. No budget this time, but community placements - the need for less has made it necessary for a decrease in houses, in order to start groups off with full numbers.  This info came to us because we will be one of the placements that will not be continued, as well as three other groups all within an hour of us.  I've got all this news through my program leader, because it's not publicized on the web.  Very sad news, and it changes our last month of activity because we have to clean out the entire house.. we're planning on a garage sale.  Need a toaster?

Fun Part of post: Skip to here if disinterested in program logistics.

Here's a picture of some cross dressers.

Aren't we sexy?  Theme Thursdays are always a mystery..

Last Friday we started billeting, which apparently is a word that is not widely used and I need to specify its meaning instead of making the assumption people know what I'm saying.

Firstly, we advertise ourselves as the fabulous, interesting and "bilingual" *wink wink wink* people that we are in order to get phone calls from people willing to take us in for a week. We also promise a daily stipend of $10 to feed each hungry Katima-mouth.  Then we start the action of billeting; we all go different ways for a week, to a willing host family, and forget any minor problems we have with each other's living habits (darn that John, always leaving the milk on the counter.. etc). It also gives us a break from the program, excluding our work placement.

The idea is we get new people, new ideas, interesting conversations, different meals, hopefully a dishwasher, packaged food, showers longer than .8 seconds and our own room with a real bed.

This is the theory.

All that stuff usually happens, but on occasion Katimavictims find themselves in permanent babysitting situations or are set to work as a housemaid for a week and a half.  God forbid it should be both.

I've been extra lucky- both my billet families have been nothing short of amazing.

This round I was matched with Stephan and Isabelle and their three entirely french speaking children Antoine, Esteban and Marie-Claire.  The kids were a great source of laughs and I'm sure I was a great source of amusement for them too, constantly using broken phrases and extensive hand gestures to indicate things I desired to tell them.  When I would speak English too often they would point at me and say "WHIPPET", a word which has no meaning in either language but means very simply "Hey you dumb anglophone, that's a warning, do it again and we're going to dog pile on you".

I had a great week.

Last weekend we went to Trois-Rivieres several times ( I know, right, I'm over there more than I am in Nicolet.. it's a nice place)  once for Antoine's soccer practice and once for a winter festival.  Soccer practice was in a huge new sports centre that just oozes government funding and its luscious full sized turf made me drool.  Not to mention there was an ice rink right next door with small children workin' on their Catriona Le May Doan strokes.  Never have I ever wanted to live here so badly.

Nuits du Polaire was the name of the festival, which included a rail jam, lots of concerts, an anticlimactic snow slide that was really not worth waiting in line for, lots of people with dogs, and tons of children's games which the kids spent the afternoon exhausting themselves with.

It was also something like -21 that day so I merely examined the exuberant fun being had as I attempted to warm my many frozen body parts using both the run-on-the-spot and the exhale-into-your-mittens methods.  I could have been a much better sport that day had I not been intent on ensuring my survival.  The kids did not seem to be phased by such temperature.

Wednesday found me at the Centre des Arts hopelessly attempting again to fit in with a crowd, this time involving choreographed dancing.   However, this is an uncommon kind of dancing.  Gumboots.

Isabelle brought it to Nicolet and is the instructor of the class, which was the reason one would have found me there that night.

From my years as a figure skater I possess enough physical coordination to look graceful in several areas of performance, but this does not, apparently, extend to situations of the likes of this style of dance.  I spent most of the lessons slapping my ankles too hard or too soft, always a beat too late, and using a version of hip thrusting I'm quite certain should never have been discovered.

Gumboots comes from South Africa, where slaves working in diamond mines needed secret codes to communicate with each other.  (No, this isn't bullshit)
They created a language of tapping on their gumboots (such well equipped miners..) which could be easily heard throughout the mine.  Then, with the addition of shiny things on one boot, they were able to identify a friend or foe with the quick shine of a flashlight.

And so, everyone at this new-age tribal dance class had a funky pair of gumboots (it was a very pretty array of plastic footwear :) ) and several had a nice string of bottle caps around the ankle.  Except me. I had some normal shoes.

Gumboots has become more of a traditional, cultural dance now and the sound of rattling bottle caps makes for an excellent contrast to the continuous sound of stomping, the most common step.  The beats change up frequently and the movements are basically unlimited, but the main idea is to stomp lots, whack your gumboots a lot, clap lots and occasionally say something like "ooywaaay".

I was terrible at it.

It was great fun.

Here is a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdFXl3dU2Mw&feature=related
caution: this link contains scary mimes.

Thursday I went with Stephan back to Trois-Rivieres for ultimate frisbee!
It was a heap of fun, I brought Jessie to assist me in being unilingual and the two of us had a great time being embarrassed and inattentive.  We watched Stephan play in the league games afterwards.

Friday we played wii for a good chunk of time and had dinner with some of Stephan and Isabelle's friends and their cute blonde children.  I remember feeling so exhausted that night from stretching my french as far as it could possibly go; a full week of work, a full day of people and the questions of five kids that night.

Saturday morning after Taekwondo for Esteban and soccer for Antoine we drove to Montreal.  We spent most of the day down at the old port at the Science Musuem, afterwards going to a chocolate restaurant for taste bud pleasing desserts.  We stopped on the way home at Stephan's parent's place for dinner which was an extra late Christmas dinner with great food and hospitality to the extreme.  After such a great week in a dynamic family I felt so lucky to be a part of, I returned home to our Katimahouse to smiles of familiar faces with lots of new stories.

And that, ladies and gents, is the end.

Coming soon - the destruction of an _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ....

Bye
Petra

Montreal Round 2

Each rotation we get a minimum of 48 hours entirely off from the program.  It has to fall on a weekend.  Sometimes groups can extend it to 72 hours but we weren't able to this rotation, like we did in Thunder Bay over Thanksgiving.

Because no one wants to sit in a cold house doing absolutely nothing for a weekend we made plans to go to Montreal and raise some hell.  On Friday night we caught a ride to Trois-Rivieres with a few work partners, I was lucky enough to get a middle seat.. I always get the middle seat. It's the short legs rule.

We bought bus tickets at the depot and caught a bus which got us to Montreal for just after 9.  The city was nice and lively and we had to walk with our huge backpacks (or in Dalandrea's case, wheel a carry on bag with snow clogged wheels behind her..) through the busy sidewalks to get to our hotel. We booked two rooms with bunk beds, which was probably our subconscious minds at work keeping us from getting homesick from the Katimahouse and our squeaky metal bunks.  Our hotel was three seconds from Chinatown, 3 minutes from downtown St. Catherine's, and supplied a free continental breakfast which was ideal for our tight budget situation/bum lifestyle.

Sort of submarine style, eh?

Within the first few hours of being at the hotel we found out we were three rooms down from some of Dalandrea's hometown friends and down the hall from a group of New Yorker's who insisted on becoming our friends.  This forced friendship would eventually lead to many attempts at ditching them once we were finally able to remove them from their hotel rooms to enjoy the daylight hours.

The first night we all went out to a club called foufounes electrique, but the locals call it foufs, so we did too, because if that's all it takes to be cool we'll do it. It was super close to our hotel and a really good time, the music was excellent and the dance floor was full.  I met up with two really good friends and Sophie saw hers as well; the best part was that Montreal clubs stay open until 3am.

Saturday morning, after a a cat's nap of a sleep, Sam and I went off to Chinatown to get breakfast and go shopping for chopsticks.  We stopped a Vietnamese restaurant and got veggie rice rolls, soup and sprout salad.  It was fun, and so yummy and we'd both never tried food like it before.

My beautiful breakfast date :)

Delicious

We spent the day as a group shopping on St. Catherine's which is long and full of great stores and lots of people.  On our way to find some of the group Sam and I stumbled upon what appeared to be a large, screaming, car-horn-honking group of people staging a protest/riot against a man named Ben Ali.  I'm not going to post things about Ben Ali, but here are photos!

They happen to be on an extreme angle because I happen to be quite bad at taking photos above my head in extra windy conditions.

This post is not finished but I have to stop right now, more lata!

Okay more now!

Back at our hotel eating pizza for supper we experienced a healthy sized panic attack when we found out the times for Igloofest (an event we'd been planning to attend since back in Thunder Bay) were earlier than we thought.  We considered not going.  We strongly considered not going.  But then we realized that we had all bought one piece ski suits for the event and the world needed to see our fabulous costumes.  We made our way down to the old port by 8:30 and were pleased to discover it was just getting going.

As for a distinguished description of this "Igloofest", I'm at a loss. One of my friends who didn't go asked "It's just a big outdoor rave with people standing around in winter gear getting cold, right?".  

Which is a fairly adequate description if you don't really get along well with snow..

I'm going to have to give this some thought, because I'm pretty sure words to describe this night haven't been invented yet.

It was a huge outdoor rave, with the best music of life - no sh*tty mainstream mixes, heaps of people from everywhere - we met people from the States, Russia and Brazil, and a back and forth ripple effect of energy the entire night.  There were massive screens everywhere, it started to snow the second we got there and it didn't stop all night.  You'd be filthy rich if you could harvest the energy of that night in full swing.

Photo credit to Sam Middleton, who constantly supplies our group with a photo timeline of our adventures together.

This was early days..

Dj stand, big screens, and happy people

Hanging out on Martin's shoulders during our dancing hours, having the time of my life

This photo is from the back of the crowd, maybe 150 m from the stage (that huge bright light at the end). There was a balcony all around the port and you could see how thick the crowd was from up there.  When the crowd got too big we bailed to the balconies and guessed that about 4000 people were attending.  Whenever I looked back towards the streets all I could see were more groups of people making their way to the port.

Group shot with a beer bottle

Dancing in our one pieces was a ridiculously hot experience in more than one way.

And also, that's a snowflake, not Sophie's brain tumour.

This is the website version of that night.

I haven't got many more words for that night, and I'm forgetting more and more of it each day so I'm glad I wrote it all down sooner rather than later!  It was just unreal.  We still can't believe we thought of not going.. No one in our group had a bad time.

We're loosely planning to have a Katimavik reunion at igloofest in future years. Our weekend in Montreal made all others we've had together seem boring and slow, but as we're all back to being broke and exhausted now we fully realize one can't do weekends like that every weekend.

bye!

Petra J

le plus petit chatton

One day Jessie and I were at work when Martin and Sophie came to visit.

They brought a cat.

They said they found the little animal behind a snow shovel outside the Centre des Arts where they work.  No tags, no tattoos.

I said "Let's call him (insert stupid name I've already forgotten here)"

and Sophie says, "No, his name is Bâtard, we've been calling him that all day.  He'll get confused if we change it."

Bâtard means Bastard in English, and I'm sure that now that you know this you're thinking it is a quite obvious translation.  We're about 60% sure Bâtard was a male cat.

Bâtard is a super friendly cat who likes to have his face scratched and enjoys various meats and dairy products, two qualities of most felines in general.  He is in no way agressive and appeared to be in a permanent state of calm one might associate with the smoking of marijuana, had he been a homosapien.

We discovered these facts when Martin and Sophie brought him home from work that evening.  He wouldn't leave them alone, apparently.

Antoine is allergic to cats though, and sort of had a strong urge to kick the precious feline, so we kept Bâtard in the garage for a little while.  Then we decided that cats we designed by our creator/evolution to withstand the elements of the out of doors, and so we let him go in our backyard.  Sam and I went to the post office and watched Bâtard walk down the street in the opposite direction.

One would assume this is the end of Bâtard the grey cat, but that is not so.

The next morning as we were eating breakfast we could hear a very distinct meowing coming from inside our house; and although Julian is rather famous for his ultra-realistic animal impersonations, he was on the other side of the house.  After checking the general exterior of our vicinity we opened the door to our basement and a small kitten was sitting on the steps looking up at us like we were superior beings.  Hello, Bâtard.

We put him outside.

Not three minutes later we found him in our basement again, looking homeless and affectionate.

We played this game for about 20 minutes before we came to the conclusion there would have to be different measures executed in order to rid ourselves from this bastard cat we'd acquired.   There is an open pipe from inside our basement and the little chatton would crawl through it to come see his new friends.

That afternoon we were heading out to play games in the snow like small, hyperactive children so we took Bâtard with us.  Sophie brought some ham to guide the clingy feline out from under our porch.  She took him back to the Centre des Arts and left some more ham to deter him from his love of stalking.

We walked over to the highschool and played a game of snow soccer, which I don't recommend doing when the most recent snowfall was more than three weeks prior.  The snow fully tried to fracture our ribs, I know it.

We split up afterwards, some going for coffee and others going home.  Sophie, Jessie, Martin and others were walking through the trails behind the field after coffee and Sophie claimed to hear more meowing.  The when they rounded the corner they saw Bâtard again, sitting in the middle of a bridge.

Does anyone remember that song from elementary school "The Cat Came Back"?? Because if you do I hope you've been playing it as a theme song for the duration of this post.

That was actually the last we saw of Bâtard the grey cat with the attachment problem.

But he started a trend for homeless/lost cats everywhere.

The very next day a smelly ginger cat who enjoyed our warm house came for a visit.  He was not very friendly and really just wanted to take advantage of our house and eat our food, sort of like a really annoying, distant relative.  Jessie had to run at him at high speeds to evict him from our house.

Sophie, cat whisperer.

The con artist, Bâtard.

Eric, with his fabulous one piece and Bâtard.

Bâtard, munching on some jambon

Small town giving snuggles to the cutest cat in the world.

Sam, pretending Bâtard couldn't fend for himself.

Chat numer deux, Sam named him Simba.  He didn't stay very long.

Numbero Deux - a life in a day, a day in a year

Go.

This is part two.  Part two includes beautiful things like:

1. Trois-Rivieres
2. Victoriaville
3. Dancing
4. Veganism and the quest for less
5. A day of survival
6. Montreal, round one
7. Musée

Trois Rivieres is 20 minutes from Nicolet and on the way to Nicolet from Montreal in early December we dropped off the TR group at their new home, an apartment above a chinese restaurant.  They were previously in Saskatchewan and know how to raise a little hell.  We like them.  We like their challenges.

Within two weeks of settling in they challenged us to a friendly snowball fight on an idle Saturday, dinner included.  It was a great game, not much on the bloodthirsty side of things but competition is healthy at any level.  They had to leave early as road conditions were rough and Katima-vans are widely known for their dainty ways of (not) plowing through snow and ice.   It's a marvel more of us aren't killed from these things.
We knew their challenges would persist.. they figured they were evenly matched; however, we knew our wit and fitness would outsmart and outrun them.

For New Year's day our program leaders got on the phone and organized a cluster shin dig.  In a sort of my-mom-will-call-your-mom way we all knew what was happening, and it was happening in our house.

The Trois-Rivieres group had the seasonally appropriate and brilliantly festive idea to have a Junkyard Wars style competition - a homemade toboggan race.  We had preparatory time and a loose set of rules, and although neither of our groups knew our third allied force from a hole in the ground we suspected they may have a certain amount of jazz up their sleeves.

Victoriaville.  A group so loud they are quiet, so dynamic they are bored of each other, so exuberant and wild they emulate self confidence and unity, bound together through what may be described as either destiny or the miracle of randomity, we met them on New Year's eve day and they proved more than worthy of stoking our fires.  They also had an average height of 5 foot 10".

We spent the day as 30 rambunctious kids in a house of moderate size, playing games, making delicious food, and when outdoors, showing them around our petite ville.  They fit in nicely.

I'm doing this thing where I upload photos. It seems to be going nicely.

Continuing..

New Year's Eve we had some good, clean fun at home with a dance party and sparkling apple juice.  Until 12.  Then we were free reign until curfew, the time of which I'm not going to unveil because I feel like being difficult and secretive. Also, I'm a tad embarrassed.  About half our group in total went to Vestige (a bar we've taken to calling The Flinstone Bar, as a direct result of the interior appearance and cave-dweller-like bar goers) and shook up the dance floor.  We had zero competition, because young people in Nicolet don't know how to move off their Flinstone stools.

All too soon it was over and our house was a mess and there were unclaimed possessions and articles of clothing *cough,  Sébastien* from people we'd known for a little under 24 hours.  If that day were a movie I would have given it lots of stars and seen it at least twice in theatres.  Happy New Year, cluster.

Over the next few days we did a haphazard style resolution meeting, throwing out ideas whenever time struck acceptable.  There were two girls from Victoriaville who became vegan in the past few months and of course our meal plans for the party had had to accommodate them.  A few days after New Year's our group decided we should give the dusty bat in the corner a swing.  None of us have ever been strictly vegetarian, let alone vegan, and as this adventure we're on constantly entertains the ideas of becoming more adaptable and trying new things, we agreed to try vegetarianism for a week.  We're on day 5 tomorrow and it's been nothing short of unnoticeable, understandably enough.  Sam and Dalandrea have done an excellent job making delicious food, sans viande.  We haven't been giving each other daily vegetarian tips or statistics or anything but we've all refrained from consuming meat this week. Food for thought.  

Yummy bean soup in the making.

What's your take on Survivor?  Yea, you know the one I mean.. that television show that's been around forever that your parents disapprove of; about people who live on some mythical island who have to do things to stay on this apparently very desirable piece of land, and watch their backs in case they get "voted" off.  I think I just told you my take on it, but I'm going to give you a better version to form opinions on now.

I guess I'll call it..

Survivor Katimavik....  extremely original and creative name there Petra..

Names aside! This day was a gongshow, quite literally. 

First I awaken to a distant sound of clanging.  I assume it to be a part of my dream, the plot of which I obviously cannot remember anymore.  I fall back asleep only to have my door busted in the next moment and take into recognition a metal kitchen bowl.  Oh no.  Soon there are three more pots and the distant clanging noise becomes a very loud and present clanging noise which is accompanied by Dalandrea's early morning screech of words I was not alert enough to grasp the meaning of.  

It was 8 am on a Saturday. Cool.

Not cool enough.  

Our first challenge is for breakfast and is called "Morning Swim".. mettre sur votre maillot de bain..

Picture 8 semi-naked teenagers standing on each others toes in the early morning sun of a quaint little French town somewhere in Quebec.  

NOW MAKE IT A REALITY.  Because that's what we did!

The last member of the two groups to stay standing on the ice won their group a top quality breakfast.  My losing group (no shame, ladies and gents) was given one orange between four of us and some rice crispies.  Good morning, weekend.

For the rest of the day one would have found us at our usual riverside field playing chuck the penguin (an adaptation of chuck the chicken.. anyone?) a toboggan race to fill a bowl with water, playing sled dog - pulling group members up a hill, a dizzy izzy obstacle course, and an ice sculpting contest.  My team brought home the gold in the end, and our stylish medals were forged from foil of tin to recognize our devotion to surviving.

Okay, so it obviously wasn't as scripted or fake-risky as real Survivor, but I think we give the word a way better name.  Plus, we'd look so much better on TV, and our group dynamics rock out loud compared to theirs.  Our team name - the bilinguals.  I was thrilled to be included in said group name.

Which brings me, quite happily I might add, to Montreal.

Day one, wake up early, hop in twelve passenger van on loan from other group, fall asleep on partners shoulder, wake up, sing a few songs, arrive in Montreal.

Step two. Cloudy.  Not going to see much from Mount Royal viewpoint.  Next thing on the list, sledding.  

We spent several hours tugging inner tubes up a hill and twirling down the little chutes.  When we tired of such enjoyable child's play we went for a wander down the road until we stumbled upon the beautiful Basilica.

Hello Basilica.

Hello Massive Organ.

 These photos certainly don't do it any justice but it was an amazing place to be in, each footstep echoing and the lines of beautiful wooden pews empty, save a few visitors like us.

That evening we went out for dinner as a group to a restaurant called Nil Bleu, to try Ethiopian food.  (No, I'm not being sarcastic.)

Despite common belief, there is actually food in Ethiopia.  Their diet appears to consist of mainly meat and legumes, with little fruits or vegetables as one might assume the soil in Ethiopian is not fertile enough for the growing of crops.  It was a great time - we ate with our hands and the food was served on platters for four with a flat bread/tortilla as a utensil.

We spent the evening in Julian's brother's art gallery office, most of us only to sleep.  Martin took several of us off on a hunt for a shisha bar which, it turns out, was right back near the restaurant we ate at.. only a stretch of about 4 km.  We made it in time to turn around and search for a coffee shop.. not enough time to enjoy shisha as it should be was our deal breaker, though it was great to walk around and see the shops.

Our second day in Montreal we went to the biosphere, the engineering work of genius for the 1967 Expo.  The museum was focusing on a sustainability theme and we spent our time looking at the exhibition they had on "reusable fashion".  There were 16 pieces designed to make a statement about consumer waste and global issues.  link here http://www.ec.gc.ca/biosphere/default.asp?lang=En&n=8BCED24D-1 It was called ONE - Outfits from a New Era. Very interesting, we all really enjoyed it.

This outfit was made from bullet canisters.  All the info was about the war in Iraq, it was my favourite.

After that we had one last stop, this time in Old Montreal.  Down by the docks is Point-a-Calliere, and the museum there is amazing.  I've now been there twice; my parents took me and my brother there 7 years ago when we were visiting friends.  The entire museum is underground and actually goes under the street.  It shows the foundations of early Montreal and all the history behind the native settlers vs the new world pioneers.

Little Nicolet welcomed us home with a light sugar coat of snow and the reminder that we had to return to work the next day.  Bringing me to my last point is the musée, where I spent every weekday learning more french and touching more artifacts I don't understand the value of.  I'll be sad when my turn for house manager comes because I enjoy being at the museum very much.

Last week Jessie, Sophie and I tried out Mandala at the museum. The word Mandala is derived from Sanskrit and means "circle".  In both Hinduism and Buddhism Mandala is practiced and has spiritual and ritual purpose, as either a form of meditation or as sandpainting to focus attention on importance religious aspects.  In tongue of North American man, we really enjoyed making circles and shapes with different coloured sand by using little metal funnels. 

Apres le weekend.. Montreal round two and a tribute to...

I like quotes.

Don't wait. The time will never be just right.Napoleon Hill 

Petra

Numero Uno

Hi,

I'll just start slow, and use self restraint.

That's what Jack said to Jill when they went up that stupidly dangerous hill; but I've got more support than Jack had, so if/when I fall down a hill (I'm pretty good on hills though, I have coordination) I'll have lots of people catching me on the way.

Enough metaphors.  This post won't bring you, the reader, up to speed with me.  I don't do things television style though, so you'll have a nice solid ending with all sorts of great morals and life lessons, and possibly fireworks.

On the 18th of December we put on our boots pretty early for a Saturday and trucked off to the Centres des Arts to help out with a food drive.  I got paired with two guys who had the goofiest toques on the planet and kept hitting each other.  Their names were Alladar and Jacques.  They stuffed me into the backseat of their car with four boxes of food and offered me cigarettes and told me in broken English that I would be the one to carry the Christmas present because I was much cuter than they were.  Then we took off from the icy parking lot at lightning speed and almost hit a helpless, dumb squirrel.  I told them small pieces of info about myself, in French, and the one driving almost took out a garbage can when he looked back at me.  "YOU TALKING FRENCH?"
Hah, my God, they were so funny, they acted more like teenagers than I do.  But when we arrived at our destination of a top floor apartment, they turned into mindful, calm people who spoke slowly and wished the woman of the house Joyeux Noel while gently kissing her on both cheeks.  When they dropped me off at the Centre des Arts they gave me bear hugs and gave me double kisses also.  I suggested in what might be described as a kind, holiday tone, that they have a Joyeux Noel and they laughed and said "Why don't you have a Joyeux Noel!!"  That has been the craziest 15 minutes of my life in little Nicolet, thus far. (Besides Sam's speeding fiend of a boyfriend..)

Before or after that, one of the two, the day doesn't really matter, we went out of town a ways and walked along a beautiful snowy boardwalk to a viewpoint of the St. Laurence.  It wasn't a very clear day but we did take some group shots, just for the sake of it.  The area is a protected bird sanctuary; the forests are all untouched and the road doesn't go right out to the river. There was no noise.

Martin and Eric bought their hideous, wonderful one piece ski suits at the Thrift store while they were house managers together, a $3 investment for each of them.  It was an interesting week when they were in charge, every meal had the addition of food colouring in some portion.  Blue mashed potatoes anyone?

My last day of work was the 22nd, but I didn't go because I chose instead to have a ridiculous head cold matched with a throbbing head ache and as a result slept for 17 hours straight on my top bunk.  Then I got up, did some laundry and then slept for another 12 hours.  After waking from my state of semi-coma I thought it would be a great time to partially lose my voice and become a coughing, grumpy mess.

During my hibernation, the rest of the group thought it would be a great time (or rather, it was on our schedule) to have Winter Olympics, Katima-style.  They ventured into our snowy outdoors and made snowmen and threw spherical chunks of snow at one another and had a jolly, Pre-25th time.

We didn't do much that evening, and the next day being the 24th was a suuuper looong sleep in day.  I was cured of 95% of all illnesses when I got up and in pretty fine form for the rest of the day. Antoine put half a turkey in our piece-of-crap oven at 8am and by 7pm that evening it was a cooked to a tasty perfection.  Just took 11 hours.  Many thanks to his parents for the turkey, our budget wouldn't have allowed for a turkey that week because of our New Year's Eve plans (in future post).  We all made some part of Christmas dinner and had to dress pretty because Valerie, our program leader, loves pretty people and despises sweatpants and sports bras.

Just whipping up a cake, no big.

At 11pm seven of us went out to midnight mass at the church and as it was mostly anglophones, save Martin and Valerie, we had to wait for obvious sit-down, stand-up, get-on-your-knees-and-pray cues from the other churchgoers in order to look like regular people.  Being a Quebecois church it was Roman Catholic and extravagant.  The building is shaped for optimal audio quality and each pew has a speaker.  This was a pretty monumental event for me as I've really only been inside churches to take pictures and see people get married or attend Girl Guides during earlier years of life.  Needless to say, I didn't understand one word of the sermon and could only sing along with Silent Night, but it was a fabulous experience anyways, and a way of doing Christmas I've never tried.

Joyeux Noel! On the morning of the 25th we opened presents and ate delicious food and had a dance party in our kitchen.  At 12pm we got into that famous white Katimavik van and drove out to our french teacher's family's farm.  The house had an indoor pool and hottub and a huge living area where everyone ate food, played dominoes (mexican trains!) and spoke loudly. It was the perfect afternoon.  Marie Douval, our french teacher, was born in Romania and her parents took her and her siblings travelling as kids.  I'm not entirely sure what her first language is or how many she knows, but she's pretty excellent at teaching us French!

The 26th was our boy Scott's birthday.  For a nineteen year old to be completely happy on his birthday, we discovered, he needs - a cake composed of three doughnuts, hot dogs and fries for dinner, and winning a game of football.  We figured the physical activity would counter the sugar induced hyperactive state we knew Scotty would adopt.  Antoine had Scott for secret santa the night before and bought him a football, because the only thing Scott loves more than watching football is playing football. So we went down to our riverside field (previously and since used for events such as Trois-Rivieres vs Nicolet snowball fight, chuck the penguin, and homemade toboggan race katimaa-cluster style.. stay tuned) and kicked around the old pigskin for a while.  Can anyone tell me if I can use pigskin in this sentence?  Scott's team brought home gold so he was a happy, legal-in-all-provinces, boy.

Young Creechan, opening his football.

The next three days consisted of badminton at the Police Academy gym, a hilarious movie filmed in Montreal called Filiere 13 (highly recommended!) and French games, which are apparently helping our knowledge of this confusing language, but seem to just bring out our competitive energy more than anything.  We had a visitor on our games night, a previous katimavictim from down the road.  He had a nice set of locks and a full beard and this matched with some excellent handstand skills made poor Martin quite envious.  The most enjoyable part of the evening was watching them turn beet red, upside-down and smiling.

We also painted the daycare Eric and Julian work at during the week, Gripette.  The man who showed up to give us directions was much more interested in going snowmobiling that afternoon than putting his 110% into painting, so we had a full 6 hours on painting under our belts by the end of the day.  It's hard to say if it looks better than it did before, but painting sure felt satisfying!

Martin, hard at work.

Sam and Jessie, hard at play.

Coming soon.. maybe even tomorrow, but don't get excited..

Part II - Ringing in the New Year, Montreal, and Batard the cat. (you should look that up, yea)

A belated Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Quanza, whatever you celebrated; ditto that for New Years.

"Never Year's Day is every mans birthday" - Charles Lamb

Oh look! Some fireworks, just like Petra promised..

photo credit: Walt Disney 2010 New Year's Eve, Beijing China

say it

I've been meaning to do this for a while.

And unfortunately, I'm going to have to keep on meaning to do it until I actually do it.

The holidays have been long and energizing and all kinds of crazy. I've got a blog post up my sleeve somewhere and it will come soon, but it's still a little embryo right now and needs nurturing.

Also, due to the amount of French I've been speaking I'm losing the English language faster than my $3/day allowance so the timely practice of spell checking my work is highly necessary for readable posts.

I hope everyone reading this had a great holiday season and rang in the new year with a smile, and possibly a resolution if you're that kind of person.  Remember, don't fix it if it aint broke.

all my love,
Petra