Family Visit

Last weekend my parents came to visit. They came on a two week vacation to camp in Gros Morne National Park, and spent the weekend in the middle with me. I showed them around Stephenville, and we drove the longest, most winding road up the side of a mountain to Joey's Lookout, but it was worth it, the view of Stephenville and the coast was spectacular.

After we went to Cornerbrook and hiked down by the river next to where you enter Cornerbrook. It was an easier hike then I expected, but it was well worth it for the amazing views. There is a part where the trail forks and we only followed one side, because the other requires you to cross the river, and they didn't think it necessary to put in a bridge. I guess it's to keep it more natural, but I didn't feel comfortable crossing the river on rocks, even though there were a lot of them. They looked slippery and I didn't want to fall in with my camera.

That evening we went back to Stephenville to see the fireworks for Canada day. I didn't think they were anything special, but apparently for around here they were really good.

The next day we went out to the Port au Port peninsula and hiked the Gravel's trail. It was a little bit cold that day, but it was still a nice walk. Then we did a driving tour of the peninsula and I managed to find all the spots that we stopped at when our group did the tour guided by the Cochrane's. That basically finished the day, my parents couldn't stay late because they had to drive back up to Gros Morne, which is about a 3 hour drive.

Photo: My mom and stepdad, Kirk, taking in the hidden falls.

Billeting...Again

So I'm in billeting again. This time I'm staying with a man named Robert Dollard who is a retired teacher, and usually rents out his rooms to boarders, mostly during the college school year. Andy is also staying here.

The house is really nice, our rooms are big, and they look like hotel rooms. Each room has an internet connection, so Andy's in heaven. I have to use the house computer anyway, so it doesn't help me much.

Robert is a great cook, I have to watch that I don't eat too much, it would be easy to gain a lot of weight here.

I'm having a good time here, but I'll be glad to get back to the Katimavik house too.

Cluster Day

The Sunday before Billeting we invited the cluster to our house for a hike (or rather a walk on a well established trail, hikes need land excursion forms), and a fire down on the beach. The Deer Lake group arrived on time, as expected, and although we expected the Corner Brook group to be late, we didn't expect them to be an hour late. It cut into our hike time a bit, but we still made it farther then we had on our previous trip to the Gravel's hiking spot, due to the fast pace lead by me, Tamara, Devon and Phillipe.

It turned out to be a perfect day for our outing, and I miraculously managed not to get burned (I think I'm finally getting this sunscreen thing).

At the end of our hike we returned the house where the groups prepared their own meals. My group had a delicious vegetarian chili prepared by...me of course, and a raspberry jam bar dessert, that I believe a lot of the other groups got into as well.

After dinner we went out to the beach to have a fire....and were hit by a huge Tsunami...jk...

anyway, we had a fire, cooked smores, some people had romantic walks on the beach, and the evening was cut short by Deer Lake having a nearly 2 hour drive back. Corner Brook left shortly after, and the day ended.

Photo: Our cluster on the boat that is at the begining of the Gravel's trail. Can you pick out me?

Surf and Turf

Last night we went to a Surf and Turf at the Lion's Club (for FREE!!). We had lobster and steak, both of which were delicious, and something we'd never be able to afford on our grocery budget. I planned on getting 2 steak instead of a steak and a lobster, since although I don't mind lobster, I definitely don't love it, but after eating 1 steak and helping Melissa out with her lobster, not to mention the seemingly never ending supply of lobster legs that a man at our table kept giving me (everyone was giving him their bodies cause he likes it and most people don't, and he kept giving me the legs off them), I was too full to try for my 2nd steak, although I did help Melissa with hers when she gave it a shot (she wasn't able to finish).

After they gave out awards to Lions members for the past year, and swore in (or whatever you want to call it) the new officers for next year. Then we got to do the dishes, which wasn't too bad except as usual there were not enough dish towels to properly dry all the dishes, which really frustrates me. Why...if you have so many dishes, do you only have like 6 dish towels? The one I was using was damp when I started, and I was still using it at the end (I used 2 others in the middle, but both go dirty drying pots and kettles with dirty bottoms). I swear when I have my own place, I'm going to go out and buy a TON of dish towels, I hate running out.

3rd Day of Work

What 3 posts in 1 day? Shocking I know.

Anyway, today was actually a really good day at work. We spent the day inside a bunker (maybe someday I'll tell you about how Stephenville was founded as an American Army base) that is used to store sets for the theatre festival. It was dark, cold, and had been recently broken into.

Well, basically me, Tamara and Melissa were pretty much useless. Gregg our boss was moving things around so that one of the directors could come see what was there and if any of it could be used in her play, Gregg was also seeing what he could use for another play (he designs the sets among his many jobs). All we did was occasionally help him move stuff and drag stuff outside to the junk pile. Did I mention that to get in he had to remove wood that had been screwed to the door to keep it shut after it was broken into?

Now you may think that this sound horrendously boring, and perhaps it was, but in Katimavik you certainly learn how to keep yourself entertained. The three of us passed the time by making up stories where we each contributed a line or so at a time.

Our most complex story was about a boy who was hiding in a bunker when an air raid started. All the other townspeople wanted in but he wouldn't let them so they all died (we had a bit of a morbid theme going on all day as you'll see). All but a little girl who was hiding in the bunker too and ate all his food. When he finally caught her he ate her (all the food was gone, of course this was logical), but he could feel her inside him so he stabbed himself in the stomach to kill her more thouroughly and slowly bled to death himself. There were more details but I won't bore you with them.

Two other stories ended on the second line with me having the people the story was about shot, and one became a story about Adrian, Melissa and Katimavik, but that's too long to tell here.

Then there was this guy in a van hanging around staring at us, and we were joking that he thought we were breaking into the place. Well it probably was true because sure enough, a little while later the police show up, but as we were supposed to be there left us to it.

Now at our lunch break we had one hour so we ate and then for the last 20 minutes went out to lie on the hill near our work. At two o'clock (lunch hour end) we got up to go meet with Gregg again but he told us he was going somewhere and would be back in 15 mins, so we went back to the hill. At 3 o'clock we finally decided to go inside and see what the hold up was and finally left. We moved a few more things around and then had to wait for the director (Julia) to arrive, which took about another hour in which we climbed on top of the bunker and sat up there for awhile.

She finally arrived, wearing flip flops as Gregg had predicted (you'd understand this importance if you'd seen the state of the floor), she looked around a bit and then left.

Now the day gets interesting again as we left the bunker. Instead of turning back towards the main road, Gregg drives in the opposite direction back into the middle of nowhere, and my active imagination takes over (if you don't like horror you might want to stop reading here). Now of course the rational side of my brain tells me that he's probably just taking us on a tour of this part of Stephenville, perhaps to see some of the things he's been telling us about during the day, like the tunnels under the base that go all over the place. However the irrational side of me is saying, "He's taking us into the woods and he's gonna kill us". No, no, there are three of us, we outnumber him. But what if he has a gun, he could shoot us all before we could react. But wait, killers usually torture their victims first. Well, he could kill 2 of us and torture the 3rd before killing them.

Then of course since we were driving down a dirt road with the windows open dust started filling the car, but the wind was blowing it around strangely so my overactive imagination decided that he was going to gas us unconcious.

Then we got out of dirt roads and onto the highway, going in the opposite direction of our house or work. I decided at this point that he wasn't going to kill us, but he was going to kidnap us, and none of us even had the guts to ask where we were going. I made the comment that we were in Arizona (all the streets in the army base are named after US States) thinking that if we got away we could use that as landmark.

Then we arrived at the building that had the tunnels underground and it turned out my rational side was correct, and he was just showing us around town.

Humourously enough though as we walked home from work later I discovered that Melissa had a very similar train of thought as me during the car ride, even about using Arizona Rd for a landmark. Tamara however was blissfully unaware of any potential danger.

Our Group on the Katimavik Website

Ok so this is slightly old news, but I just found the link for it. Head Office stumbled onto our group website (I think through our Shawinigan Project Coordinator Elizabeth) and put in on their website. Along with a good picture of our group :)

http://www.katimavik.org/New.asp?Num=784

Stephenville, Newfoundland

Sorry I haven't posted in so long. Hopefully I'll get back to updating more regularily now that we're at our final placement.

So I'm in Stephenville now and I love it. The scenery is beautiful and the people are so nice. My work placement is at the Stephenville Theatre Festival and sounds like it'll be a lot of fun. Me, Melissa and Tamara all work there together. We spent the last two days organizing videos, books and scripts in their archive room. Today we're off to a bunker where they store sets to look through what's there and see what's junk. It got broken into a little while back so they don't know what's left in there.

We've been on a few hikes in the area. Last Saturday we went for a hike to the Gravels which is out on the Port au Port peninsula. We planned to hike the whole trail which I heard is 4.5km but about an hour or so in it started raining. We tried to go a little further to see if the rain would stop, but it definitely did not so we hiked back through the rain and went home. Let me tell you it is not warm here.

Then on Monday, because it was a holiday, all three groups got together in Corner Brook and hiked on what I believe is cross-country skiing trails (when there's snow obviously). It was super muddy so we got quite wet on our feet, and rather muddy, but it was a good time.

The house here in Stephenville is huge. One of the nicest places that Katimavik uses. We have 3 living rooms full of couches each. Our basement is huge, and very dark at night making it great for playing Sardine's in the dark. We've started playing a new game Camaflage too where someone yells "Camaflage" and we all have to hide. The person who hides the closest without being seen wins and has 24 hours in which they can call their own Camaflage. It's a lot of fun, especially in random places, like in the middle of a muddy forest.

Well that's what we've been doing so far here.

Youth Volunteer/Earthday

Yesterday we went to volunteer at a camp for Youth Volunteer Day, which was also Earthday. It was a super long day but we had a lot of fun. It was slightly frustrating at times because we've had a busy week and wanted some time off, and there was a lot of time at the camp that we weren't actually useful.

The camp itself was beautiful, situated on Lac de la Coeur (Heart Lake) and was well maintained. We noticed this especially after the really bad camp we visited for our rotation camp between Alfred and Shawinigan.

Our main reason for being there was to 'animate' an activity for them, that ended up only lasting for 20 minutes. We did a treasure hunt style game where they were given a list of things to find and bring back. One of the things was the signature of as many Katimavik participants, so we got to go hide and they tried to find us. I picked a really hard spot and didn't think anyone would find me, but four groups did. One of the groups also wanted to take my socks, as red socks were one of the things they had to find, and surprisingly I was wearing matching socks that day. I didn't give them my socks thought, mostly because they were gross and sweaty and I really didn't think they wanted them that way.

One of the best things about the camp was this cool boot camp style obstacle course that we got to do a couple times, but more details later, I have to go cook breakfast.

Tofu

Shocking, I know. Me and Tamara, being house managers this week, made a super delicious vegetarian lasagna with Tofu. No pictures unfortunately, just the memory of it's deliciousness.

72 hours in New Brunswick

This past weekend (Easter Weekend) we had our 72 hours off that we get once a trimester and is usually only 48 hours unless it's on a long weekend. I decided to go to New Brunswick to visit Shanel. We volunteered at the Boys and Girls club's Easter event giving children (an adults) tatoos. It was a lot of fun although I found it slightly ironic to be volunteering on my break from Katimavik. We also went shopping, and drank (only a little I swear ^^), and watched some movies. We stayed home most of the time because it was cold and rainy there except for the first morning.

PHOTO: Me and Shanel at the Boys and Girls Club.

Billeting

Sorry I haven't posted in ages. I spent the last 2 weeks in billeting with the wonderful Hill family. They are a foster family that was currently fostering 5 teenage boys which made the house very active and interesting. They took me to see a movie in French, L'Homme C'est Elle (Man is She) and I actually followed the movie. I can't say that I understood it all, but it was a very visual movie so everything I didn't understand from the actual words I could figure out from the actions. We also went out to eat several times, all of which were delicious. Most notable was the Suger Shack on the second Saturday. I ate so much. They also took me to Montreal one Thursday, but it was for her daughter's doctor appointment which went long so we didn't have time to go shopping. I had a good time none the less.

Unfortunately I will have to post picture's later because Andy lost mine so I have to get copies from my billeting family.