This means it's very much ending. The fact that my Katimavik experience is coming to a close should be already very obvious to me, due to the fact that we as a group have been packing and cleaning this place like mad for the last 24 hours, but I've chosen to ignore obvious realities =D..
I've got photos! (give a little cheer!)
I promised photos from Claude Lafortune's exposition.
This is Paper Monzart just hanging out, throwing paper around, being creative in his slippers.
Confucius, just looking wise, at the beginning of the train of paper statues.
Ganesha, the four armed beauty, always able to balance for photos.
This person is not a paper structure but instead, a Sam, a creature of creation of expositions. She is holding a map to help her find her way out of the confusing obstacle course around her.
A Sam can be found in many different habitats and posses the qualities which allow her to stay up late at night blogging and reading massive religious texts. (This is code for "Sam just finished her Bible challenge and read the entire bible and blogged about it all". Go Sam! Perserverance!
You can follow Sam at herlifejourney.tumblr.com <-- she posts lots of other stuff too so don't be shy)
This is Joan of Arc, she is my favourite. Her horse is also a majestic stallion.
Pope dude, having fun on his ship.
Crazy Moses.
Napoleon Bonaparte, looking wounded and short.
Pontiac the indian just having a smoke. His feathers? Yes, they are paper.
All the little statues having a party.
Mary and Joseph with the babe.
We finished the exposition this week, most of the work being some mindless cleaning and more chiseling of carpets. The next thing is for les bricoleurs, Denis and Guy, to complete the arena-style centre stage for all the newest paper statues to hang out on for the next 11 months.
The three Katimaviks with the staff of the museum.
Guy, Renée, Denise, Jean-François (aka BOSSMAN)
Denis, Marie-Josée, Noémie, Sam, Petra, Jessie, and Mathieu.
You will be missed!
Our Final goodbye to Nicolet - we had so many people come out! Which was a huge difference to our goodbye party in Thunder Bay. The Mayor paid for the catering and we had a few slideshows and some presents for our work partners and billet families. Huge success but bittersweet as Katimavik is permanently leaving the community right as we are becoming known here. :(
We also got some great new t-shirts to sport for this event, thanks Katimavik!
Our gerbil-brained group tried to get a good jump shot for an unusually large amount of time and never succeeded.. (we blame the photographer) I chose this photo from the lengthly archive I now have simply because Antoine and I look so incredibly dumb jumping when no one else is. I even put it to the "extra large" setting for optimal facial feature viewing. Your welcome.
Millie, Antoine, Sophie, Jessie and Eric: Frolicking. Last weekend we went out as a group to take photos of each person's favourite place and work placement. It was a beautiful day and we all worse our beautiful onepieces. Needless to say it was a marvellous day.
On Monday I went for a little walk by myself* on lunch hour after I mailed home a massive box of all the things that wouldn't fit in my suitcase. This is Nicolet's beautiful Catholic church; it was one of the first things I saw arriving here and I see it everyday at work as it is just across the street. I will miss listening to the bells at noon everyday.
* I say myself because it is a rare moment when one goes for a walk or does any activity other than using the washroom by themselves in Katimavik. I will enjoy solidarity when I return home, I imagine.
This is the fenced off railroad bridge just around the corner from our Katimahouse. We go exploring around here every now and again and we brought some of our cluster group members here on New Year's Eve. We also tried watching the eclipse from here, as it is the only major high point in town, but the clouds decided to change that dream of ours into a movie night with no popcorn.
Goodbye front porch which allows for optimal people watching and grabbing icicles from our poorly designed roof.
Just for the cliché effect, I had to get a throw-the-hands-up pose just like in Thunder Bay. Unfortunately Nicolet has even less mountains than Thunder Bay and so I had to substitute the roof of the museum for a mountain. It was a great view though.
Denis was nice enough to take us up the dangerous ladder to the roof after we pestered him in French for a while.
This is another one of those photos I only post for the enjoyment of the reader.
The sun was so bright that I suppose I figured that smiling with my eyes closed would be a much better, optically healthy way to go about things.
Soooo muuuuuchh Poutine.. our goodbye party at the musée.
Note Jean-François taking a mega bite of this fantastic health food!
Today and tomorrow we are spending cleaning out the house and getting packed. We've been doing small debriefing activities over the past week but now the weight of things is really hitting us. It's been fun. It's been too much fun. And I can't even begin to imagine what it's going to be like not waking up to these people in my life. When Martin left we realized the temporality of our program but leaving each other on Tuesday is going to be a full breath of air. I can vividly remember meeting the group in the airport back in September, it feels so surreal to be 5 days from leaving this place and these people.
If Antoine hadn't drilled into my brain and implanted the cliché identifier and made it impossible for me to become sappier than this I would post beautiful metaphors about Katimavik and how it's changed me from a small chrysalis to a large and bold butterfly.
But, I am incredibly happy I said yes to this program and have thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. Did I mention that Katimavik implants promotional material into our brains which we randomly spit out, unannounced?
You should apply if you are 21 and under.
oh whoops, look what just happened..
Goodbye! See you on Tuesday, Rossland!
Petra J
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