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.

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