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
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