More Recapping, and Hard Scheduling

So far, the differences I can detect in my life, before and after Katimavik, are:
-I do the dishes more often
-I make dinner sometimes
-We only eat homemade bread

Being able to make homemade bread is probably the skill I’ve found most useful since coming back. If you can make bread, you can make it white, multi-grain, whole wheat... You can make cheese bread, raisin bread... You can make buns and soft pretzels... and, most importantly, you can give it out to people, and it makes them happy. Try not to give it any context. Just say “I baked a loaf of bread for you.” So far I’ve given loaves of bread to my old employment counsellor and my old employer.

I made almost all the bread in the last rotation of Katimavik. Since it was normally House Manager responsibility to make bread, this was the first time people were doing it on a voluntary basis, because there wasn’t a real HM system (there was a meal plan, but that was it), and because of that, I managed to take the title of group bread-maker. People said that my bread was better... When we were doing a debriefing exercise about each other’s positive qualities, mine kept coming out “Stories, hat, beard, bread”. Three of those I did not have before Katimavik, and I suppose it’s nice to have developed another quality like that so near the end, but I disagree that my bread was better. I used the standard Thunder Bay recipe that I would think the majority of people were using.

I forgot to say in my last update that I’ve not only seen my old employment counsellor, Karate friends, Granddad, and Food Bank friends, but also a couple friends of the family, my former employer, an old guidance counsellor from high school (the one who took me shopping), and someone who used to work for my old employment agency. The last two on that list I saw just by coincidence, when I was grocery shopping. I also met my old employment counselor’s girlfriend.

In none of my newsletters or Katima-Gryphon blog posts, did I ever say anything about the last three major events that happened in Final Rotation. I wrote about them on The Weekly Flock, our group blog, but that was it. We had three week-long projects, that were supposed to substitute for not having a regular work placement, since we didn’t have enough time to get settled into one.
These substitute activities were:
-Mamouidow
-Pow-wow
-Beach

Mamouidow was an event held throughout the community, where everyone moved to an island called Fort George, and lived traditionally for a week. Apparently, until thirty years ago, everyone lived on Fort George. While we were there, we helped the locals build and maintain teepees, prepare food, chop wood, and generally help out where necessary. They fed us so much, we ate barely any of our own food, and since they helped us set up our place, it didn’t really feel like we were working. Since we were hanging out with them all the time, it felt like we were maintaining ourselves as much as maintaining them, and vice versa.

We had a surprise group bonding event. The entire group got heavy into chopping wood. We were mainly pretty terrible. Em and Marie had prior experience, and Devon was inexplicably talented, but me,Cole, Pierre and Clay had a lot of learning to do. The locals had a good time watching us, laughing at us, and taking pictures of us, but they were very cool, and showed us the techniques. It must have been to them like if some foreigners came to live with us, and got heavy into vacuuming, but were terrible at it, and wanted to vacuum all day and host vacuuming competitions, where they just ran into walls and needed to be taught how to do it properly. By the time we left, all of us managed to successfully split a log with one chop.

Our second major event was a Pow-wow. That was about a week long, too. Our job was to maintain a Katimavik booth, and to help with registry for the dancers. Plus set-up and take-down. My job was to tell the adults they couldn’t sign up unless they were in full regalia. That was a bad job. Nobody knew about that rule, and not very many people agreed with it, myself included. The people working with the children didn’t have such a rough time... Children are kind of used to taking instruction from adults, even when they don’t understand them, but I was working with people who were mostly older than me. To them, I was a foreign kid, telling them what to do at an event I didn’t know anything about. It was the opposite of building good relations in the community, and I would have let them slide by, but I did that at the beginning and my boss yelled at me twice.

Plus, sometimes you’d tell them they’d need to get dressed up, and they’d be all, “I am dressed up!” and that would be awkward...

It wasn’t a very good place for a Katima-booth, either. You had to yell at the top of your lungs if you wanted to actually tell anyone about Katimavik:

“KATIMAVIK IS A YOUTH TRAVEL-VOLUNTEER PROGRAM FOR PEOPLE BETWEEN AGES 17 AND 21. GROUPS OF 11 TRAVEL TO TWO OR THREE LOCATIONS ACROSS CANADA, FOR SIX OR NINE MONTHS, EACH DOING A REGULAR NINE TO FIVE JOB FOR A NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATION AND DO WORKSHOPS AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT PROJECTS ON EVENINGS AND WEEKENDS. IN ADDITION, THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MANAGING A HOUSEHOLD AND LEARN HOW TO COOK, CLEAN, AND MANAGE A BUDGET. THE PROGRAM IS FREE.”

Kills your throat. By the end of the day, I think we were known as, “The booth that gives out free cookies, brownies, bread and balloons” and our main audience was very young children.

I couldn’t tell the difference between some of the different kinds of dancing. There were Tiny Tots, Traditional, Grass, Jingle, and Fancy dancers. The Tiny Tots were children under five. Grass and Jingle were male and female equivalents to each other. There weren’t any male Jingle dancers, or female Grass dancers. But I couldn’t tell you the difference between Grass, Fancy, and Traditional.

Our third placement was at the beach. Children who weren’t in school would go to the beach with these life guards and hang out. The life guards weren’t exactly babysitters. I’m not sure what our job was. Most of my group spent most of their time sunbathing (mark of failure for the organization if a Katimavik group can sunbathe in what’s supposed to be their Northern rotation). I figured the best I could do was be another child, so that’s what I did. I just played with the kids. Apparently it was the right thing to do, because I got a Warm Fuzzy from my PL, saying that the lifeguards had pointed me out as having done an exceptionally good job.

So that’s that.

I’m trying to get reimbursed for the luggage I lost going to Thunder Bay. They give you $100 if it’s lost for over 48 hours, and they reimburse you if it’s over 91 days. I sent in my luggage declaration and heard nothing, so I spoke to someone from the baggage department, and he said they sent the letter to my home in Chisasibi. I told him I don’t live in Chisasibi, I was in a program that required me to be there when I sent the declaration. He said to contact my family in Chisasibi. I told him I don’t have family there, and the people who lived in the house I was at are gone, too. He was getting frustrated and I was getting frustrated and eventually we kind of quit on each other. I’m sure that’s just what the airline wants, so the next day I tried again. This time I got a woman, who was a bit more understanding but spoke very quietly, and since it was a bad connection I could only hear a word she was saying every now and then, and answered based on what I thought she was saying, since she was kind of using the other guy’s formula, and I sort of knew what to expect. I asked her to repeat herself several times, apologized, said that this was a bad connection and it made it difficult to hear, but she never made any attempt to raise her voice. I’m pretty sure she wound up telling me to write to claims department, telling them that my address had changed.

I... just want to say that I had my correct address on the actual baggage declaration... I wrote my Guelph address as my permanent address, and the only reason they must think I live in Chisasibi is because that’s what the return address was on the envelope, or because it’s where the claim was sent from.

A friend of the family just got a car and is interested in teaching me to drive, so I can apply for my G2 license. Unfortunately, we were schedule to start next Tuesday, when I leave for Toronto. I’m going to have to reschedule that, too.

I went in to get my blood tested for vitamins D and B12. It’s a reassessment of how I’ve been doing since I started taking supplements. Our family doctor didn’t forget about me, and wrote me out a request while I was away. But when I went to get tested, the receptionist told me that my paper was way overdue, and told me it had been written some time in 2009.

That’s kind of weird, since I left for Katimavik March 3rd, 2010.
I have one video game, three books, and 39 movies to review, coming back from Katimavik. Here are the lists:

Video game:
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Books:
The World According to Garp
Frankenstein
The Little Prince

Movies:
Alice in Wonderland
Greenzone
The Losers
Clash of the Titans
Robin Hood
Macgrouber
Shrek Forever After
Karate Kid (remake)
Iron Man 2
How to Train your Pet Dragon
Pulp Fiction
Fight Club
Law Abiding Citizen
Mr. Brooks
Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog
Silence of the Lambs
Hannibal Lector
The Ring
The Prestige
Get Smart
Watchmen
Ace Ventura, Pet Detective
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Pursuit of Happyness
The Bourne trilogy
The Die Hard quadrilogy
Mama Mia
Avatar
Twilight
The Bounty Hunter
The Proposal
Hot Tub Time Machine
Kick-Ass
The Dark Night

It's the same number of movies as how many tickets I sold at the Women's Expo. I can never make an even 40!

I'll have to do speed-round reviews sometime, but not today!