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.