Welcome to Italy

So I'm house manager again this week. Yes, yes I WAS just house manager just before we left Alfred. I'm also on the Cultural Discoveries committee while we're in Shawinigan and for it we decided to have a theme meal each week and the house managers for that week would have to make one meal from a specific country. This week is Italian cuisine and since this is the first week it's starting and I'm on the committee who came up with the idea I wanted to set a good example. So instead of doing a theme meal, we're doing a theme week. Every meal we're cooking (with the exception of 2 breakfasts) are Italian.

The Menu:

Monday: Penne Pasta
Tuesday: Baked Zita
Wednesday: Stracciatella and Caponata
Thursday: Healthy Whole Wheat Pizza (that's the name I swear)
Friday: Lasagna Magro
Saturday: Gazbacho (Andy's idea not mine, cold soup is not for cold winters)
Sunday: Chicken Cacciatore

We've already done Monday and it was tasty although a little runny, and the rest of the week looks good :)

First Day of Work

So I started my Shawinigan work placement today. I work at École St. George which is a primary school.

This morning I was left...alone...with a grade 4 class whose teacher had to go do something else in another classroom. She stopped in periodically but for the most part it was just me. I understood about 1/4 of what the students tried to say to me and it was a most frustrating ordeal. One of the main things they did was correct some written work they'd done and kept coming to me and asking me if it was right. I am the LAST person they should be asking about grammar.

The afternoon found me without anything to do. Apparently I'm supposed to just go around and ask teachers if they need help with anything, but when they're in class that's a bit difficult. I started organizing the library but then a class came in. Eventually I ended up helping in a kindergarten class. I was still pretty useless but it was better then wandering around aimlessly.

Fire Drill

We ended our first weekly Sunday meetings with a fire drill (planned of course). Chantal had the brilliant idea of turning out all the lights, making us put pillow cases over our heads and putting us each in a different room and then seeing how fast we could get out of the house and to our meeting place. The pillow cases were hillarious, and as was stumbling around in the dark (fortunately I only had to go around a corner and up some stairs to the door), and we managed to all make it to the meeting place in 45 seconds.

PHOTOS: (left) Us in our pillow cases (yes we do look like some crazy cult), (right) Us with our pillow cases up. From left to right (back row) Lesley, Darlene (me), Olivier (middle row) Andy, Becky, Amélie, Mélissa (front row) Tamara.

Nature Walk

This afternoon we went to Cité d'Energie where there was an animal reserve. We saw lots of deer (unfortunately they were behind a fence), and fed some chipmunks and birds. The birds will actually fly out of the trees and eat out of your hand but they seemed to be full because we only saw one come down, although Chantal said one ate out of her hand when we weren't looking (I don't belive her). The chipmunks weren't so brave though, the one that came close darted around us and ate the nuts next to us, but declined to eat out of Tamara's hand.

SHAWHEE!

So I am now in the home town of Jean Chretien, Shawinigan, Quebec for my second trimester of Katimavik. The house is pretty sweet, although there are several things that don't quite work right, and there are rumors of a ghost.

I'm sharing a room with Becky, again, and have decided to try out the top bunk. It's not so bad except that there are a few bolts loose and it tips quite a lot when I climb up the end. Chantal, our new Project Leader, is going to try to get it fixed within a week.

I'm a little behind in updates since I spent the last few days travelling and at Rotation camp, and before that we were busy with a trip to Ottawa and packing and cleaning our house. This upcoming week doesn't seem like it will give me much more free time, but hopefully I'll get all of what I've done in the last week or so up before too long.

Winterlude!

I'm proud to be able to say that I've actually been to Winterlude although most of what we did was looking at ice sculptures (they were pretty cool still). We didn't get to go skating on the Rideau Canal as the line up for skate rentals was at least an hour long and then there was still a lineup to get onto the Canal, but we did go for a walk on it and bought Beaver Tails (similar to Elephant Ears if you know what those are).

PHOTOS: (Left) Me, Shane (from Casselman), and Tamara with an interactive ice sculpture. (Right) Our group eating Beaver Tails on the Rideau Canal. From left to right: Gabby, Becky, Tamara, Mélissa, Andy, Amélie, Darlene (me), and Olivier.

GO!

So we went to the radio show Go! today. It was interesting to see how a live (in Newfoundland anyway) radio show worked, however Go! is definitely not something I would normally listen too, and if I hadn't been watching it as well I'd probably have turned it off. The only interesting part was when they were talking to the MPs as that wasn't completely scripted like the rest of the show was. I don't really think that it was good Katimavik promotion either since they asked two questions, one about what Katimavik was about, and the other about if Katimavik was only about sex. In our opinions at least it was NOT funny.

Final Presentation

Last night, after a few stressful days of planning we had our Final Presentation. It was attended by most of our work partners and a few of our billeting families. All in all it was a big success, despite finding out at the last minute that they'd changed our booking from a room in a college to the Suger Shack out in the middle of nowhere, just because we planned to have food there. Oh yeah, and some people thought it was at 7:30 instead of 5:30 because French time uses 24 hour time, so it was 17:30, and they didn't think the one looked like a one on our invitations.

We had a projector where we showed off some of our many pictures, and we each took turns talking about such things as workshops, activities and parties. We finished off our presentation by singing "Ode to Alfred" a compilation of songs we put together for a skit during Mass Orientation way back when we first got here, and finished with "Time of your Life" by Greenday accompanied by Olivier on his guitar.

Ode to Alfred

Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows
Everything is wonderful is what I feel
When we’re together

High ho, high ho,
It’s off to work we go,
La, la, la…
High ho, high ho (x2)

Gimme a break, gimme a break,
Break me off a piece of that
Kit Kat Bar

Hey oh, hey oh,
On rentre du boulot,
La, la, la…
Hey oh, hey oh (x2)

Feels like home to me (x2)
Now I am all the way back home
Where I belong

Lavez lavez
Savez-vous savonner
Lavez lavez
Les carreaux, les paves
Lavez, lavez

Je vais a l’etable pour tirer ma vache
Pas capable de tirer ma vache
Un bon mmm… chocolate chaud (x2)

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road.
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go.
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why.
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right.
I hope you had the time of your life. (x2)

Each part of the song is meant to represent a different part of our day

PHOTO: Our group at our presentation. From left to right: Andy, Melissa, Lesley, Amelie, Darlene(me), Tamara, Becky, Olivier. Also our first photo as our entire new group.

Turn Your Knob to....CBC Radio One

This Saturday (Feb. 11) my Katimavik group, along with our clustermates from Casselman and Hawkesbury will be on "Go!" a CBC Radio One program from 10:00 - 11:30am.

For more information and to find the CBC Radio One station in your area, visit the CBC website.

Hope you all listen to us :)

Adventures in House Managing Day 2

Today was surprisingly uneventful. I think I've gotten the hang of this house managing deal, or else with all the other stuff that we're dealing with this week, everything that happens seems so incredibly minor. I feel super calm and organized.

We made more bread this morning, which actually turned out :) Olivier's turned out a bit better then mine, which I'm jealous of because I worked hard on mine and I thought his looked rather disaterous at times.

After that I cleaned the bathrooms (exciting, I know lol), and tidied up the living area (not quite a room), for a meeting Gabby was having with members of the community after lunch.

In the afternoon we did dishes (oh the excitement is killing me) and I started working on our welcome package for the participants who will be living in our house starting next week. I'm making a map of Alfred pointing out the points of interest (well, interest by Alfred's standards). I think it's going to be really cool when I'm done. Becky, Lesley, and Amelie (who were all home from work today) helped by making nametags for the doors and cards that we're going to leave on their beds.

Olivier had to leave for his final English class at 4pm leaving me to prepare dinner by myself, but since I'd made it before it wasn't too difficult. I have decided thought that cooking large amounts of pasta in a large pot on the stovetop always ends in burning at least a bit of it. Last time I made it in a crock pot which turned out much better, but our crock pot isn't big enough to feed all of us so I had to improvise. It was still good in the end though.

PHOTO: Tamara inside her sleeping bag. She was a sleeping bag monster.

Last Night

The first day of housemanaging went surprisingly well, although while we were cooking dinner it seemed at one point that we needed a 5th element. We were boiling noodles on one, cooking a ton of meatballs on two, and cooking the sauce on the last, but we still needed to boil separate noodles for Gabby who since she's allergic to gluten can't eat regular noodles. Luckily the meatballs were finished so we put them all together in one pan just to keep them warm.

It was after dinner that everything went downhill.

Adrian after leaving was harboring some ill feelings towards Andy and apparently wrote a 3 page letter to Katimavik (we still don't believe that Adrian actually wrote 3 pages) saying that when Andy had bought him alcohol during billeting for which Andy recieved a Final Warning, was not the first time Andy had bought alcohol for a minor while in Katimavik. Gabby was told to investigate the situation and last night we were really worried that Andy would also be kicked out of the program. Needless to say a LOT of tears were shed last night. Gabby gave us some space to work out issues in our group.

Everything is worked out now though. Andy will be staying in the program, another member of our program will be recieving a Final Warning for underaged drinking, and 2 others (myself included) will be recieving Commitment to Improves (CTIs) for drinking in the house. I'm not too concerned however since CTIs don't carry over to the next trimester, so it'll be gone within the week.

After we were all cried out, and had worked out our issues, we decided to work on our t-shirts that we'd been planning for awhile and had scheduled for the night before all the other stuff came up.

PHOTO: My decorated t-shirt drying.

Adventures in House Managing

Since Krista was scheduled to be a house manager this week someone else had to step up and take her place, that person was me. It promises to be a pretty hectic week since we have to plan and do our final presentation, prepare our house for the next group, and cook a ton of extra food for the final presentation and the next group, as well as food for our entire cluster at rotation camp (just one meal luckily).

Me and Olivier (my co-House Manager for the week) decided to get an early start this morning at 8:30 instead of the usual 9:30. We started by making bread, of which mine turned out slightly disasterous. We still have a bunch of organic flour types that Gabby bought a few weeks ago and told us we should use up this week. So I had the bright idea of making all corn flour bread, which of course doesn't work because corn flour isn't exactly flour, and my mixture doesn't come close to the consistency of bread. I'm going to try to make buiscuits out of it instead, but I have no clue how they'll turn out.

We'd planned on leaving to do groceries at 9:00 having planned out our menu for the week and made our grocery list yesterday, however the bread took longer then planned and we ended up not leaving until 10:00. It worked out fine though because we did groceries in a record 1 hour and were $100 under budget which is good because we'll probably have to buy more things later this week.

This afternoon we get to clean the entire house (except bedrooms of course). I anticipate that it will go well but I'm not looking forward to cleaning the bathrooms as they haven't been cleaned since before billeting (luckily no one used them for those 2 weeks, but our bathrooms get dirty in even a few days and they haven't been cleaned in at least 4.

UPDATE: The buiscuits turned out...edible. You wouldn't want to eat them plain, but with butter or honey they're not too bad

PHOTO: The buiscuits

And Another One Bites the Dust

As if losing 2 members in one week wasn't bad enough, Krista announced today that she would be heading home as well to deal with issues that have arose at her home. It was sad news but we all understand that it's something that couldn't be avoided.

Farewell Krista, and good luck with everything.



PHOTO: Krista, the day before she left.

PANIC

Ahhhh!! We just found out today that we're being flown from Ottawa to Montreal when we move to Shawiningan. In a way it's cool, because well, flying is always fun, and we get to meet up with our new clustermates (ie the other 2 groups that we're near) at the Montreal airport and travel with them by bus to our respective homes. It's exciting that we get to meet them right away because we were afraid that we wouldn't really get to know our new cluster since we won't have Mass Orientation (Mass-O) this time around, where we got to know our current cluster by spending 3 days with them.

The scary part:

I have to pack my stuff to meet with airport luggage restrictions which I was hoping to not have to worry about until we moved from Shawinigan to Stephenville. I think we'll be shipping some stuff to Shawiningan by Greyhound so it may work out ok after all, but for now I'm in panic mode.

Cosmic Bowling!!

Last night our group took a road trip to Alexandria for some bowling. We played 2 games (well, I only played one and then played some pool). Lesley was the overall winner, she has all the bowling skills. In the one game I played I came second on my lane after Andy, but my final score was still lower then everyone's on the other lane.

After the first round everyone decided to play a second game of bowling, but this time it would have to come out of our pocket money instead of our physical activity budget, and me and Krista decided to play a game of pool instead (thanks for paying Krista ^^, I'm still mostly broke). After a poor start for both of us, Krista proceeded to kick my ass at pool...twice, but it was still a good time.

When we finally got back to Alfred at 11pm (not that late I know, but we were up early that morning to say goodbye to Adrian), I promptly went to bed and fell asleep, exhausted.




Photos: TOP Me, posing with my favourite bowling ball of the night, however under the black light it looked light purple. BOTTOM Our entire group now (with me behind the camera) at bowling, from left to right, top row: Andy, Krista, Melissa, Gabby, Amelie, Olivier; bottom row: Becky, Lesley, Tamara.

Farewell Adrian and Shawn

So many goodbyes *cry*.

Last night we had our farewell to Adrian who left this morning to head home, and said goodbye to Shawn by phone. He went home yesterday before we got back to billeting so we were unable to say goodbye in person. He has a chance to appeal his dismissal however, so we might yet see him back. Good luck Shawn.





Photos: TOP Adrian hanging out last night. BOTTOM Shawn after his hair was cut by Amelie a few weeks ago.

End of Billeting

Today I said goodbye to my billeting family, Odette and Pierre Paul Lalande, who I've lived with for the past two weeks along with Amelie and Lesley. We had a great time there enjoying many great homemade meals, and of course, satelite tv.

Our happy return to the Katimavik house was marred by the news that one of our participants has left the program, and another will be leaving us tomorrow. Once again our group is down to 9 members.

Photo: Odette and Pierre Paul Lalande.

Happy Birthday Andy!!

Today was Andy's birthday, and to celebrate we met up at Subway for lunch. Tamara and Becky made a delicious brownie birthday cake which I, of course, ate far too much of.

As my birthday present to Andy I will actually write my bio for his site/our third public relations work:

Bonjour, je m'appelle Darlene Hibbs, je viens de London, Ontario...I will now continue in English...I couldn't pick one favourite Katimavik moment as we've done so many fun things, from out trip to Ottawa to just hanging out and watching movies, but the memories will last a lifetime, especially through our extensive photo journal, examples of which you've most likely already seen if you've looked around this site. I excitedly await the upcoming 6 months with my Katima-family which I'm sure will be full of many more memorable moments.

The photo is from Andy's birthday lunch at subway. From left to right is: Andy, Olivier, Tamara, Lesley and Becky.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog. I've decided that I want to do a better job at keeping everyone updated as to what I'm doing here at Katimavik and figured that a blog was the best way to do so.

It kinda pains me to make a blog, but since I don't have the resources or time here to keep a site of my own up to date, this is the best alternative.

I hope you enjoy it.

We're currently enjoying our stay in the quaint (read: tiny) town of Alfred, Ontario. As we're about to enter our last week here unfortunately this blog won't include much from our first trimester however I may if we have a particularily boring week in Shawiningan write about some of the things we've done here.

Photo is of me next to the welcome to Alfred sign only a short walk from our house. It was taken during a French activity that had us finding locations in Alfred (from French instructions), and taking photos at each location. P.S. It was bloody cold that day and I got frostbitten pretty badly.