Woken up at 6:30 am...by snoring.

OMG. IT'S ME! Do you all miss me yet? I have finished orientation and now I am at my new home for 3 months. The towns I'm in has only about 2,000 people (We are working in Terrace Bay and Schreiber ...which is pronounced scriber..and they have this cute rivalry going on). So far everyone seems nice. There are nine people including me and the Project Leader Terri (now known as a PL). About half the people are from Quebec and are pure french with some english and one guy is completely bilingual because he has lived in Quebec and Alberta or something. So names and provinces or cities when I can remember them are as follows...drum roll please.

Cassandra (or Cass) from Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is nice, but likes to talk a lot especially about home and her sister who is a boxer. She is also the only one with cellphone service even though she uses this weird Nova Scotian one that I don't know the name of.

Rosaline (probably spelt wrong, but that's okay because we call her Rosie anyway) from somewhere in Quebec. I get the feeling that she is from a smaller town. She is also partially bilingual and says sweet instead of soft and cutie instead of cute. Aww.

Sarah P. (Omg, another sarah. What ever shall I do) from somewhere in Quebec as well. She is very quiet so I don't know much about her.

Alyssane (who's name isn't pronounced Alison, but Aly-san) also from somewhereville Quebec. She is very short and doesn't know as much English as Rosie or Sarah, but we still are able to talk.

Madelyn (or Maddy as she likes to be known) from a town an hour outside of Ottawa. She is very nice but likes to talk about home a LOT. And she was missing her Olivier (bestfriend turned 'omg I'm falling for you' boyfriend thing but they have agreed to wait for eachother and not date while she is away. I think).

Me! from Woodbridge Ontario. Yay.

Simon (our bilingual dude) from Alberta. He has dyed his hair as red as my streaks but all over.

And last is Jesse from Vancouver, B.C. He is the guy I was talking to on facebook before I left and is really nice and into Ska. He also demonstrated how to Skank (which is how you dance to Ska) to the full Mass orientation camp thing which was about 35 people and then some of us (including me of course) tried it out. There is a lot of flailing going on in that dance, let me tell you. He also has an orange hat.

Oh, also, there is Terri the PL. She is really cool. She has been out of the country for the last 8 years teaching English I believe and has been to Korea and other places I don't know about.

I woke up at 6:30 am to a symphony of snores and I couldn't get back to sleep so I decided to go on the computer and talk to people in the cold cold office without my jacket or anything on.

Today we are going to be having a tour of the two towns. It's actually really cool. This is the first year that Katimavik is in either Terrace Bay or Schreiber and since they both wanted us in their town we are being shared. Also, there are black bears. There is forest on two sides of our street and the bears haven't gone into hibernation yet so...there are some bears in the neighborhood. It doesn't help that apparently one of the neighbors feeds them apples. I shake my head at her.

OH. There is also a dead car in our side yard thing. It is blue and overgrown with weeds and things but thats okay because it is a car and can't help where the weeds grow.

The house is rented and most of the furniture is donated by the kind people of Terrace Bay, especially this one man named Clark who came and visited yesterday night to say hi and ask when we can take the couch from the seniors centre. Apparently we are either going to ask someone to use their truck to move it...or carry it for a few kms down the street to the house. It's going to be our exercise for the week because the couch is very solid apparently.

I have learned how to swear in French already and we have taught the Quebecois some English words too. They really liked one word that is not fit for gentle eyes and so I shall refrain from typing it here (email me if you really want to know lol).

We are stealing our nextdoor neighbors Wi-Fi and so it only works in the office and girls room (convenient I know). The only downer is that we can only connect one computer at a time, so we need to wait turns. Blah. Also, we need converters apparently because there is a much higher electrical output here for some reason, so we are waiting until the one we ordered gets shipped in from Thunder Bay before using any electrical chargers...like blowdriers. Sigh.Hopefully I can talk more tonight when we get back.

Orentation was great. There were about 30 participants and then 6 support staff and Project Leaders. Everyone got along well and any problems we had with translation we solved through bilingual people and charades. I've been getting French lessons from some of the people (not much of it sticking, but I'm trying) and I now know how to say fork and cup. Un forchette and une tasse. And I think knife is pronounced 'un cutard' or something like that. I can also say 'How do you say' and various words that I didn't know I actually remembered from school. I can't really spell anything correctly though. It's more conversational stuff we are learning.

Also at orientation we did a lot of group bonding and communication exercises and also wrote and drew a lot. Actually, there is a lot of artists in our group. About a third of the people went to an art school and half of the group can draw with or without a schools help. So that is pretty cool. Markers have become very fun in recent days.

And of the three groups that make up our cluster, Schreiber-Terrce Bay has the biggest house. Even though there are six girls in the master bedroom, we aren't squished yet because we are using bunkbeds and they are very well arranged for maximum roominess.

I'm going to go now and take a shower before they are all taken. The good thing is we have two showers and three bathrooms so we can kind of spread out a bit.

Love and miss you all!

Sara