20 Days Later

It seems that I can't ever keep a promise of when I will write next. I'm sorry family and friends who are reading this. I know it is pretty frustrating when I say that I will post tomorrow and I don't post for another three weeks. I am truely sorry for that. However, if you knew how crazy everything was in the last three weeks then you would know just how little personal time we get to relax and when I do have that time I don't feel much like sitting in front of a computer and typing out an endless list of events and happenings around the house.

But anyway, too much has happened since my last post, so I am not going to go into a lot of detail about New Years. Instead I will list the events in point form and continue on from there.

1. Marathon and Manitouwadge arrive and hang out.
2. We eat a lot of pizza.
3. We dance a hell of a lot and like no one is watching, even though there are a LOT of people watching.
4. We do a count down and a bunch of people kiss each other while everyone else cheers and is generally happy about it being 2009.
5. We watch a scary movie.
6. We go to sleep at 2 am-ish.
7. We wake up at noon-ish (I think) and see that we have been snowed in...again.
8. We celebrate that we get another day with eachother to do with as we please.
9. Cassie and I have a little freak out about what to feed people and how.
10. We some how still get people fed...I don't remember what or how though.
11. We clean the house and kitchen specifically (it REALLY needed it) and I have a small army to do my bidding.
12. We all pile outside to have fun and enjoy the winter weather.
a. We play keep it up with huge exercise balls.
b. We build a hot tub out of snow.
c. People go inside and make hot chocolate for everyone.
d. Other people (me incuded) stay outside and cover two people in snow and give them anatomically correct...appendages.
e. People deliver our hot chocolate to us!
f. We go inside when it gets too cold to pretend we are actually in a hot tub.
13. We set up a spa in our dinning room and give free manicures, pedicures, hand massages and facials.
14. I become a master hand massager and nail polish applier.
15. Cassie and I make dinner and are stressed because of the amount of people versus the amount of food.
16. Dinner works out (amazing!) and everyone is fed and full.
17. Everyone goes to sleep again.
18. Terrace Bay/Schreiber people wake up very early to go to Thunder Bay and let the other groups clean our house for us.


That was my New Years. Now, my Thunder Bay excursion in point form.

1. We arrive in Thunder Bay at 11 am.
2. We are staying at a cottage owned by a friend of Terri and it is absolutely gorgeous and so comfortable.
3. We have a sex workshop that we call Sex at Brex...or Sex at Breakfast with Terri's younger sister.
4. Terri runs away from said workshop.
5. We have fun talking about sex and then go into town.
6. We pick up Mike, Maddie's boyfriend from the airport and he comes to stay with us for during our excursion.
7. We do some touring, but it is REALLy bitterly cold, so we stay in the van most of the time, and only go out for short amounts of time, and do some shopping and watch a movie in the theatre.
8. We visit the Terry Fox monument, some waterfalls, see more deer, see Terri's little niece, go eat at the Hoito, and see beautiful houses and a fantabulous view of Fort William at night.
9. We go back to the house and watch movies.
10. We wake up to a lot of snow.
11. We try to shovel but don't get very far.
12. We play boot hockey on the lake.
13. I do a bit of snow shoeing and then we go back and make dinner and watch a movie called Joyeux Noel.
14. We wake up and shovel more.
15. We try to get the van up the driveway but it isn't happening so we call the owner and he helps us.
16. First we try pushing the van, then we lay down salt and push, then we put down wooden boards and watch the van drive up like it hasn't been having problems the entire time.
17. We drive Mike to the airport, and we do some more of our planned activites.
18. We stay another night because the roads are very dangerous in the direction of home and our PC tells us NOT to try to get back.
19. We wake up early, clean up and drive home.

And so ends our Thunder Bay trip.

From there, we worked for another two weeks, then packed up and got ready to leave Terrace Bay and Schreiber. We did our last one-on-ones. Mine was very late in the evening and we had to end up doing it in the van because everything else around town was closed. We came home pretty late because the talking, and being out of the house was very nice. The next day we had an award ceremony with Terri and also got to get some constructive criticism from her about what we could do better as a group, which was good to hear. Then it was time to say goodbye to Terri. We all gave her long hugs and thank yous and then hopped back on a bus to Thunder Bay with the rest of the cluster.

We stayed in a beautiful church basement side recreation gym thing and had a mini MassO/Rotation camp thing for two days.

We packed up again and went to the Thunder Bay airport.

We hopped on a plane to Toronto.

I got to see some of my family and friends! My mom, dad, sister, nonna and friend Suneet came to see me for about 40 minutes which was nice for all of us. I got hugs and kisses and cookies and it was really really REALLY nice to see everyon, even if it did pass by really quickly. I wish it could have lasted longer, but we had to then hop on to an airplane to Montreal.

From Montreal we met up with our two new groups that are part of my cluster and we waited around for a bus that would be taking us to Trois-Pistoles, Rimouski and Mont-Joli.

We got in at about 2:30 am and were greated by our new PL (or AP in french) who is named Denise. By the time we all got to bed it was 3:30. We then had to wake up to be ready to leave at 10 am and see work placements.

We had a very long day of touring with very little sleep, so towards the end we weren't as awake as we should be, but we got through it and then had to go home, eat, and print up resumes in French.

The next day at 11 am we had our interviews with five different places. I did two of my five almost entirely in French, with only a little help from Denise towards the end when I needed a question translated, or a specific answer said correctly. I was very impressed with my french abilities..not so much with how my interviews went on a whole (I did much better in Terrace Bay) but I was actually able to make myself understood to people with very little to no english. It is very different talking to people you don't know in french than how it is to talk to people in the house in french. In the house, you know people aren't going to judge you, and if some one laughs or you screw up majorly, you know it isn't serious and someone will always help you to fix what you have said. But out in the real world, if you say something rude or incorrect, people are too polite to correct your mistake and you just feel kinda foolish. So the fact that I had to talk in french with some old ladies and proper Quebecois men was kinda nerve wracking. But having Denise there to translate certain things was very helpful and relaxed me a bit and then also being able to do some of my interviews in english was a nice break.

Today we had a small Mass-O type cluster meeting just to meet everyone and go over all the behavioural standards and stuff. It was a long 5 hours ended by a pot luck dinner and dessert and then we all went home.

I found out tonight that I will be working at the hospital (also known as CSSS, but we add an infinite amount of S's to it because we can never remember just how many there actually are) and I will be working with the very old people there organizing some activities and visiting seniors and basically doing anything that I am comfortable with. I also get two hours in the morning to work on my french and on Monday's I start at 12 and end at 7 pm. I also get a drive every morning from our neighbor Patrice (who was also the person to interview me) and he comes home with me to eat lunch with me, Denise if she is home, and whomever is house manager that week. I'm a bit apprehensive about working with seniors because I don't really know how to interact with someone with Alzheimers, etc. but I am excited to try. Also, Cass did this job in Terrace Bay Hospital, so I'll just have to ask her if I don't know what to do. We all start work on Tuesday, so one more day of freedom and then I am jumping into my new life all over again.

I have a lot to say about the town, the area, the house and our position in the house (it rocks just by the by) but I really need to sleep, so I am going to leave that to my next post, whenever that shall be.

Night,

Sara.