Lucky Number Thirteen

Last week our Katimavik group got the chance to see an Omenica Ice hockey game at the local Vanderhoof Arena. It was a playoff game against the Huston Luckies and it was their final home game. Anthony’s work partner (I guess mine too but they didn’t really like me to much since I wanted to do more than scrub the arena windows) gave him the go ahead to use a key and sneak in the back Zamboni door to see the game free of charge. It was their way to thank us for all of our hard work, but in a lapse of communication it was not told to the security people, for the game, that we were invited by the arena manager and we were forced to pay a whole six dollars fee. For a playoff game it was extremely dead. There was maybe one hundred people in the crowd and that was including the Katimavik group. Puzzled we waited for the people to arrive and the start of the game. The game started but still only a few dozen others had joined us to cheer on our local hockey team.
Forty-three seconds into the first period the Huston Luckies scored a goal. It was at this point that another fan leant over to me and informed me that in the last three games the Omineca Ice had been outscored twenty-eight to six. After hearing that statement I prayed for a miracle which would never come. For the next two hours I wanted a hockey team get out played, out smarted and demolished. Half of the Ice’s players were either suspended for misconduct or they were at a wedding in the Dominican. They were at a clear disadvantage from the beginning. It was so bad that the head coach, for the Ice, found himself in the Beer Gardens instead of on the bench, with his players, during the third period. When it was all said and done they had been slaughtered thirteen to one. For someone who is not a fan of the sport this does not do much to help its cause. My future with this sport is grim. I may watch the gold medal hockey game for the Olympics on the T.V...but that is only if I am forced.

17 to 71

In Vanderhoof I got the chance to join a pick up badminton league. My partner there, for most of my games, was an amazing woman and her name was Ann. She was British and her love for the sport was incredible. Although she never told me her age, and I should not speculate on it, she is extremely full of wisdom because she was already travelling and living on her own by 1950. She taught me that badminton is a sport for the ageless. Everyone has their limitations but badminton allows growth for everyone at all stages of life. Even though it is a surprisingly strenuous sport, Ann was able to move around the court with great ease. Her sense of humor was also quite infectious. We shared some great laughs and it proved that friendships can cross generations. Thank you Ann for all that you taught me. Whether it was on the badminton court or off the court and related to life situations, you left a great impression on me.

Saying my Goodbyes

It has been nine days since my last blog post but relocating to Newmarket Ontario has been crazy and not to mention extremely busy. Nevertheless lots of stuff happened in Vanderhoof, before I left, which is blog material, so for the next seven days I will post an entry about my various goodbye stories to all of the people in the small town of Vanderhoof BC.

A Taste of India

This past week I have been saying my various goodbye's to all of the people to whom I have met here in Vanderhoof. Yesterday it was saying goodbye to my billets Zoe and Davy Dhillon. For 10 days in November and December they graciously took my into their home and let me stay with them as our project leader took his time off and "skied it up" in Jasper. Spending time with them was fantastic. They led a very active in healthy lifestyle, a lifestyle I would like to live when I become older and have family of my own. They way they talked to each other and communicated even through all the stresses of life was incredible. They have a dog that is barely a year old, named Teeka, and a gorgeous baby girl, Anya, who is only seven months. On top of it all Anya began teething while I was staying with them. They were super nice, easy going and fantastic to talk to. Anyways, the Dhillon's left yesterday, with their seven month old baby, to New Delhi India for a month long trip in the East-Asian country.

I am super jealous of the trip which they have planned. India looks like an amazing place to visit. I would love seeing a country where development is everywhere and seeing old traditions integrate with the twenty first century ideology. The other reason I would like to go there is because of the food which is unbelievable. In London the only Indian cuisine is a restaurant called Curry's and although it is pretty good I rarely got there. A plus, while staying with Zoe and Davy was that I got tons of Indian cuisine. I did try to replicate one of their dishes called chennas, a chick pea dish with spices,back at the katimavik house after billeting but I failed miserably because I didn't let the chick peas soak enough and then added ten times the amount of Coriander seed to the dish. It was so terrible that even Tom, known for eating anything, had to make a trip to A&W. In closing this couple left an amazing impression on me and I wish them all the best of luck not only on their twenty four hour flight but on their amazing journey which will take them half way around the world.

One Hundred Days of Katimavik

As of Thursday, I had spent one hundred days in the Katimavik program! It does not feel like it was one hundred days ago that I was in the airport, past security, crying for my mother. So much has changed and I feel like I have learnt so much from my project leader, my work placements and my fellow participants. I realize that I missed posting a blog about "one hundred days on Katimavik" on the actual anniversary, but life is not perfect and neither am I so here I am on the morning of day one hundred and two writing about two days ago. This has been an experience like no other and although there are things which I wish went differently I could not have asked for a better group. As we end our trimester in Vanderhoof I am slightly nervous. Newmarket will bring new opportunities but also new problems to overcome. I can not lie, there are definitely people I want to see as a I return to Ontario. I miss many friends and family dearly and not to see them would be a unbearable. I am hoping that seeing them will give me a boost of energy I need to “keep on truckin” though this program. Newmarket here I come and all I can say is I hope you don’t disappoint.

Smithers (Part Two)

When I left my blog last night I had written about my Cross country ski adventure. Cross country skiing is an amazing sport and I have a new found respect for the sport. I think the next step that I should take is trying and mastering biathlon because me with a gun and on skies would be the perfect combination. Any how back to my trip, after recovering (slightly) from the ski workout we all packed into the van and went to the movie store (to get films for the night) and to eat at Masayama, an authentic Japanese restaurant! Well almost authentic. The food was delicious but the only Asian person in the whole building was Shoshana, and she is part of our Katimavik group. Hundreds of pictures were take at the restaurant for no particular reason (most of them hideous) and one included an epic shot of Jessica fighting with me over the last Tempura (deep fried vegetables). My nose looks like a hundred times bigger than it actually is and my neck is freakishly long. Upon returning to St. Joseph's (our sleeping facility) we had a quiet night of watching movies and laying on virtually non existent mattresses as "beds".

The following morning we woke up bright and early, with aching bodies, to go on a hike. The trail was called Malkow Lookout and it was suppose to take two hours round trip. Unfortunately we read the signs wrong and ended up walking half way up the mountain and then we took a path which gradually brought us back to base. Determined to reach a good lookout point, half of our group decided to ``rough it out`` and make our own trail which went vertically up. Getting up the trail was not terrible. Pictures were taken and we even got on my camera a shot of Bigfoot. Unfortunately our sighting turned out to be a girl in our group who had strayed from the path (...oops). Coming down that ridge was not as fun. Gravity did not help us out at all and we hurtled down the side of this `trail`. Over all it was a great trip. On our ride home we stopped in Huston for a photo shoot with the World's longest fishing pole and we made it the whole way home with out any bathroom breaks, which takes skill!

Jessica and me fighting over the last bit of deep fried vegetables!

Jessica and Me looking very fine ;)

Bigfoot sighting!!!!! (it turned out to be Jessica...wow she is very popular in this story)

The World`s biggest fishing rod!

Half of my Katima-fam on our ``off the trail`` lookout :)

Smithers (Part One)

This past weekend our Katimavik group got the opportunity to travel to Smithers BC (after a grueling excursion protocol procedure) to see some of the beautiful mountains which Northern BC has to offer, seeing that Vanderhoof is the "Geographical center of BC" and has no mountains. We set out before sunrise on Saturday and arrived in Smithers, without incident, around eleven am. Our sleeping facility was an elementary catholic school that would have had a beautiful view of the main ski hill, if there weren't so many clouds. It was so dreary that seeing the base of the mountain was hard. Nevertheless we unpacked our van and headed off to the Bulkley Valley Nordic Center to go cross country skiing.

The temperature was about minus two degrees and lightly snowing so the conditions were perfect. We started on a trail called Pooch Paradise. It wasn't until half way through the trail that I realized that they named the trail Pooch Paradise because dogs were aloud to run along side their masters. After breezing through the four and a half kilometer trail, half of our group moved on to Pine creek trail which was ten kilometers. Cross country skiing is much harder than it looks. I spent the whole time trying to keep up with my Project Leader who had a serious advantage of me because he is over six feet tall and his strides are ridiculously big. Nevertheless I finished the trail with him and then skied a little more through the pain. All in all Tristan and I skied for eighteen kilometers. I felt really good mentally but I was so sweaty and disgusting that I was thankful for the down time we had back at the school. Our trip back did hold some excitement as we saw the first of the four moose we would see on the trip. Part two in my Smithers story will include eating almost Japanese food and climbing a mountain, but I am extremely tired and still hurting from my ski/outdoor adventures that I must get some much needed rest.

Andreanne and me getting ready to ski!

Jessica and I ready to take on "Pooch Paradise"

What is the plural of Moose; Mooses or Meeses??

In Memory of a Fine Lady; Spotted Love

Working at Riverside has been an experience like no other. Both workers and tenants are fantastic to spend time with. The only unfortunate part about Riverside is that since most of the tenants are older the chance of someone passing on is quite high. That is what happened on Tuesday night to one of my favourite tenants. She was a lady who was extremely nice, who was always out of her room socializing and brightening everyone’s day. About a month ago while she was walking down to one of the music nights, which is put on here at Riverside, she fell and broke her hip. She is known to be a very determined lady, since she has already recovered from two strokes, so recovering from this should have been a breeze. It was not to be.

After a successful surgery mid December, she was transferred back to the Vanderhoof to start physiotherapy. Her mood was pretty good and upon visiting her, I felt her road to recovery would have been tough but well within her ability. She was surrounded by flowers and cards, one which included a huge Dalmatian pop out card. This was not a new card by any means because it had been given to her while her husband was still alive. Inside a simple hand written note which said “...from the moment I spotted you I was in love....” when I asked her about the card she said it gave her strength to carry on a fight go get better. That visit was unfortunately the last time I would be able to see her. Slightly after Christmas her body could not take the strain and began to shut down. She passed away on January seventh days before her ninetieth birthday. I take comfort in knowing that she had a long and prosperous life and that she has a loving partner waiting for her on the other side.

A Night of Fine Cuisine (11:11)

I love pancakes period. It is on that notion that I came up with the idea that making pancakes as a midnight snack was a must. Seeing that cooking by myself can be lonely I decided in convincing Shoshana that making Pancakes at eleven eleven (for no particular reason) was an amazing idea. She, being extremely gullible and persuadable (just joking :)), agreed and when the clock struck eleven eleven we began our work.

Our first problem, that we encountered, was the fact that there was only two eggs. Lost in a frenzy we could not abandon ship and not cook anything because we had been looking forward to this all day so we set about making our own creation. Twenty minutes later our delicious concoction, which included pasta sauce, molasses, Parmesan cheese, jam, cranberries, wasabi, chopped bologna, sardines and basil, was simmering on the stove. Having this mixture over pasta would be good but not great, so it was decided by my amazing partner in crime to add popcorn and M and M's on top. Surprisingly it turned out relatively well and it didn't taste like vomit. We shared our creation over a candle lit dinner together where we professed our fake undying lover for eachother while Handel's Messaish played in the back ground. So all it all it was a pretty uneventful night at the Katimavik house but nevertheless I thought it was blog worthy.

Our cooking masterpiece :)!!!!!

My Poor Lonely Blue Mittens

One of my favorite presents that I got this Christmas was a pair of blue hand-knitted mittens from my billet family. I don't need the big expensive presents to make me feel good. If a present has meaning behind it, the value can be way greater than the hundred and fifty dollar IPod from Walmart! That is exactly how I felt about these gloves. I had wanted a pair, for running, ever since I got to Vanderhoof and Zoe who sometimes runs with me took note and found the perfect pair. My time with these mittens was almost cut short the other day and the heroic story of how I saved them is the topic of todays blog post.

It all started the day after New Years when I was called to duty to help clean the hall at which we "partied" the night before. I wore my mittens and a funky elf hat to the hall and put both of them in my coat pocket. Karina, a really nice girl from the Prince George, thought it would be funny to take them and hide them in the Christmas tree at the hall as a joke. That wasn't the funny part. That came when she forgot to tell me she hid them and then left. Upon discovering that they were missing I frantically began to look for them but to no avail. I returned to the Katimavik house crushed only to have Karina remember her prank and let me in on the "joke". The hall was closed for the weekend so I knew they were safe so I decided to ask Sarah my boss at the arena for the number on Monday so I could retrieve my mittens.

I arrived pronto on Monday (actually I was twenty minutes late but that is a different story) to get the number only to find that she had decided to take the day off. Desperate measures needed to be made so I was forced to sneak into her office to find the number, which was a success. Therefore I made a date with Art, the owner of the hall to pick them up, although upon arrival I was horrified to see that volunteers had taken down Christmas decorations and along with it my mittens. After that "spackle" a round of phone tag commenced.

After calling four different people I found out that the tree was moved to a storage yard where somebody found the gloves and then gave them to a friend who gave them to her daughter in Fraser Lake which is over an hour away. I honestly did not think that I would see them again but then Maggie, the girl who had them, said she had an identical pair and that she was coming into Vanderhoof anyways the following day so at 1:15 pm we met up at the Co-op and I was once again reunited with my woolen mittens. They are now safely in my house......somewhere!

Have I told you I want to be a Ginger!

I need to tell people that even though I am only seventeen I have already started a bucket list! It does not mean that I am planning to die any time soon but from my point of view half of the things I want to do before I ‘pass away’ are way too strenuous or bizarre for an older aged version of me to attempt. I have the regular things on my list such as running a marathon, eating seal and buying my way into space but none of these things can be accomplished while on Katimavik. Therefore I decided I wanted to accomplish another point on my list which was to dye my hair red.

Now I feel like I needed a reason to make such a drastic change to my hair colour but I could not seem to find a single valid reason in support of this endeavour. However on Wednesday I got an opportunity which was too good to give up. The whole Katimavik district came up to Vanderhoof for the New Year’s weekend and one of the planned activities was a Talent Show. Call me crazy if you must but we (as in my Katimavik group) thought it would be funny (maybe incredibly inappropriate) for me to sing a straight faced version of Springtime for Hitler from the Musical Comedy “The Producers”. If you are unsure of what the song is, it is basically a song about Hitler and the regime which mocks them through actions so if you take away the actions you are left with an incredibly racist song. We needed to make my musical number legitimate therefore going all out and bleaching my hair was a necessity. I was totally expecting it to look horrible but I was pleasantly surprised to see that my hair wasn’t a disaster and that it turned out reasonably well. It might look strange and actually kind of funny, but it is all in the name of Musical Theatre and hopefully my number will get a few laughs (after the fact of course). So to make a long story short I did not accomplish one thing on my bucket list but it was still an event in my life which was worth blogging about

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The Skies and the Trees

It was a crisp Wednesday morning at the Katima-house. The sun had yet to rise but everyone was up. The mood was maybe a bit moody but it was only seven in the morning. Nevertheless by seven thirty all eleven of us had piled into our Katima-van to make the hour long trek to the Murray Ridge Ski hill.

Now my skiing experience has been extremely limited seeing that in London we only have an excuse of a mountain known as the Bolar Bump. Therefore upon arriving and getting our proper equipment at the ski hill we all decided to start off on the bunny hill. I thought that I would have been terrible seeing that I have not “legitimately” skied before but I felt extremely comfortable skiing down the gentle slope of the bunny hill so therefore I decided, with Andréanne, to go to the very top of the mountain. It only seemed logical that if I could ski the on the bunny hill that I would be able to tackle the whole mountain. Our first obstacle unfortunately came right at the bottom of the hill. Murray Ridge does not have a ski lift, but rather a contraption known as a T-Bar. It took more than ten minutes of uncomfortable balancing and nervous screaming to reach the top of the mountain and what we experienced was only the easy part of our day.

The view was extremely beautiful but also very high. I was quite unprepared to the fact that I was going to half to ski for a full five six minutes just to reach the bottom. We picked the ‘easiest’ trail to try and accomplish but it was still way to difficult for my level of skiing. It only took me only 500 meters to experience my first fall and it was pretty harsh. I had forgotten the importance of turning so I went straight off the trail into a small tree. I hit pretty hard and it was enough to open a cut on my head. I was fairly displeased with myself but then realized that scrapes and bruises are all part of the sport and I got right back up and slowly went down the hill with Andréanne falling every few hundred meters until I reached the bottom of the mountain twenty minutes later.

I am a very determined person so I continued to go to the top and struggle through the ski runs. Other falls include one where my bindings got twisted forcing me to walk half of the mountain (worst experience ever) and doing multiple face plants in the snow. Overall it was a great day. And my final run of the day I reached the bottom of the mountain without one fall. It was a perfect day to ski and I got some amazing pictures. My body might now be sore all over but it was definitely worth every wipe out.

Happy New Years

I cannot believe that it is 2010! Time is flying by so quickly that before I know it I will be back in London for the Summer. Our plans at the Katimavik house, during New Years, were and are still extremely crazy. We decided to invite the whole cluster up to Vanderhoof for a New Years Eve Party. That means thirty three other people arrived yesterday to our house to ring in the New Year and stay for a few days.Last night we went altogether (as a group of forty four) to the New Years dance where a hypnotist preceded the dance. I volunteered at this 'show' and got the opportunity to prance around the stage as a bunny rabbit at easter. All in all I am having a great (but hectic time) this New Years but I cannot lie, come January third having the house to just the eleven of us will be an amazing blessing.

Happy New Years!!!! Hope everyone had a fantastic time last night as they rang in 2010 :)