Get Your Game On Week

Last week was Get Your Game On themed, a week dedicated to sports and other high-energy activities. Some highlights were the Drum Fit exercise routine, and our visit to see the Waterloo Warriors.

For Drum Fit, we had an instructor come in and talk us through some exercises involving exercise balls and drum sticks. Since we did this last year, I'm pretty sure I blogged about it then as well. The reason it is called Drum Fit is that most of the exercises involve using the exercise ball as a percussion instrument. I really like this form of fitness, because the way the instructor talks you through it, you don't realize that you are doing some pretty intense work until near the end when you're finding it hard to stand. I wasn't quite as beat-up by the end of it this year than I was last.

The Waterloo Warriors are the University of Waterloo's sports team. Their football players took us on a tour of the training and fitness areas of the campus. They then had us do a number of drills, and we ended by participating in a game of football with them.

The Waterloo Warriors were a new trip concept for this year, and so it was pleasing to see that it went over well. The Humane Society trip for Vibrant Volunteers was also new, which I forgot to mention last update..

It was a really smooth week. Other activities that came along well were our Mission Impossible game, where participants attempted to sneak behind barriers and retrieve balls for their team, our Tarp Toss game, where people threw balls through targets positioned on giant mats, and Minute to Win It, which had teams filing through stations and attempting to complete tasks in the span of a minute.

This past weekend I got to catch up with someone from Katimavik. This guy wasn't in my group, but he was in a group doing the same rotations as us, in the same span of six months. So when I was in Summerside, he was in Thunder Bay, and when I was in Thunder Bay, he was in Chisasibi, and when I was in Chisasibi, he was in Summerside. We lived in all the same houses, and only met briefly but learned about each other's groups from the stories we left our Project Leaders and placement agencies with,. It was great swapping stories with him and putting together the pieces of such an old puzzle.

Vibrant Volunteers

We just had our Vibrant Volunteers Week at the Summer Program. We went to the Community Centre, the Family Centre, and the Humane Society. Facile runs through the Family Centre, so my boss from there got to see me working my other job. Kind of like when one of the Extend-a-Family higher ups showed up at the Student Life office while I was working for the Respect Campaign. Bosses colliding.

Actually, I have Vibrant Volunteers to thank for getting me acquainted with some of the Facile folks. When I applied for Facile, I didn't expect to know a handful of people because I'd led a group there for Vibrant Volunteers almost a year previous.

I was a little salty last year about actually having to work during this week, since I'd become accustomed to being paid to play. But a coworker pointed out that I'm getting paid to volunteer, which made me feel better.

At the Community Centre, the team I'd led was in charge of assisting preschool kids. Snack time was a sight to see. I saw some of those little ones pulling out those yogurt containers that you can eat in like, two scoops. But these children were small enough that they had to lift these cups with both hands. To them, these tiny cups were the size of large bowls of soup.
These kids must eat their weight in food every day.

I just got a large crop of snow peas from my garden. They are so sweet and delicious. Does anyone know a recipe that snow peas can be used in?

I fell off the flexitarian wagon again. Since I work three jobs, I find that I have less time to do such everyday tasks as making lunch. And there just doesn't seem to be a quick, frugal, allergy-conscious, non-microwave, vegetarian option, which is what I need. So on a particularly energy-draining day I picked up a large ham, carved big, meaty slabs out of it and made sandwiches. Haven't really looked back since then. Oh well, these increasing vegi stints must at least lower my overall meat intake.

Hidden Talents

We finished Hidden Talents Week. Some highlights were a magic show, bowling, and watching a movie. I've got kind of a thing for magic shows. They're usually marketed to children, so as an adult, I have limited opportunity to go to them. You assume that they are marketed to children because as an adult, knowing there's a trick behind everything will ruin the magic. Besides, with the knowledge you gained in your Developmental Psychology class, you'll probably be able to detect all the tricks anyway.

But last year's magician blew me out of the water. If anything, as a child I had the excuse of magic to write away what seemed to be impossible, and the fluidity of my perception of reality made what appeared before me less abnormal. As an adult with a more cemented sense of what can and cannot be, having those perceptions challenged gave it much more impact. And knowing that there is a trick behind everything but failing to perceive it created the sense of being teased, and caused doubt in the reliability of those five senses to determine the reality you've grown so attached to.

If anything, it's better as an adult.

Developmental Psychology didn't help me at all. I knew to look in linear patterns if the magician moved in a non-linear way and vice-versa, but it came to nothing. He still made a rabbit appear out of a balloon that was placed on four-legged table with a thin surface that I could see on all sides, a balloon smaller than the rabbit itself. And he still turned a plume of fire from a lighter into a live dove. Astonishing.

This year's magician was very charismatic, very engaging, and very personable. But his tricks were a bit lacking. Very entry-level stuff.

The movie we went to see was Minions. Got to see it on the opening day. It was good, but it's a prequel to the Despicable Me movies, and since I've watched neither of those, I felt like I missed out on a lot of inside jokes.

Bowling was bowling. I'm not the best at it, but I'm not quite the worst anymore.

Today I went to the Latitudes Storytelling Festival, and a Latin Music Festival. They were placed side-by-side, so when I was listening to the stories, the Latin music kind of served as mood-setting, and the story and the music more often than not failed to match.

Around the World Week

I forgot to mention in my last post that I'm scared of heights. The primary struggle for me against the rock wall wasn't physical (although that was a very strong secondary struggle), but rather mental. When I set my foot on that blue foothold that I couldn't get up last year, and glided up the rock wall almost effortlessly, my emotion at that time wasn't pride... Just a horrible trigger for my fear of heights. Pride came later.

The whole thing was like a trust exercise. It wasn't one of those automatically stopping protective mechanisms connected to my gear, instead we had a "belay team" which comprised the Summer Program staff holding a rope connected to my harness. They would catch me if I fell.

And I did fall, both on the rock wall and the vertical playground. I was able to climb until I could no longer, then make a move I knew I couldn't make and trust in the team to preserve my life by catching me. I was nervous that they wouldn't be able to hold my weight, just because I amk the largest in the crew, but I put my faith in them, dove into my fear, and found that they could support me.

First week of Summer Program is over. This year we have walky-talkies and fanny pack (and our team is thusly named the Fanny Pack). It's been great reuniting with returning participants. This week was Around the World Week, the only one not booked to full capacity due to being interrupted in the middle by Canada Day. We had a reptile show, where I was able to handle lizards, snakes, a tortoise, and a caiman a member of the crocodilian family). We also went to African Lion Safari.

Remember how I said that when I was a kid, at the Birds of Prey show, they had me and some other kids engage in a foot race against some vultures, and even though they promised me the vulture wouldn't use its wings, it did and took the win with foul play? And then when I went back last year, they had the same show, the kids won, but they announced the vultures as the winners? Well this year, the kids won again, but at least they admitted it.

They need to end that show. It's been going for like, 15 years at least, and the vultures never win. Those are some slow vultures.

Also, remember how I said that last year, during the elephant show, the woman fell off the side of the elephant and playfully teased her two fellow presenters as they tried to help her up? And that when I was a kid the presenter ripped her pants during the performance, causing me to wonder if these comedic blunders were a part of the act? Well this year, the same exact incident occurred as last year, causing me to think that it's scripted.

Unique to this act is that one of the elephants decided to take a poo right as it posed for the crowd. I feel like that might not have been part of the act, although it certainly added to it. But what do I know, it could just be a new addition.