Prep for September

Recently, I went to the school and backed up everything on my student account that I want to keep, since it will be shut down as of Tuesday. I also bought a city bus pass for September, the first one I've purchased in literally a year. My last pass was dated August 2014. On the September pass, there is a picture of an apple to represent the month, which I took to signify the supposed tradition of students giving apples to teachers as a show of gratitude (never actually saw it happen...). It appears that even though I got an Adult bus pass, the association of my birth month and the beginning of school will always be a thing...

I updated ,my resume recently. Since I'm gainfully employed, I don't expect to use it anytime soon, but I hadn't updated it since becoming an Independent Facilitator and Direct Support Worker, or since my second go as a Summer Program Leader, since my stint at Healing of the 7 Generations, or since graduating. I just did it for my own self-esteem, and it was really gratifying to be able to make all those changes at once. I sent in an application to the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers. Provided nothing unexpected happen, I should soon be able to legally refer to myself as Gryphon Sibbald, RSSW.

I also finally created a LinkedIn account, which is like a social networking site, but focusing on professional stuff.

Check it out, I have a bio on the Facile website (I'm third from the top): http://facilewaterlooregion.ca/who-we-are/our-staff/

Three more of my sunflowers blossomed. That's five out of seven, now. The other two have two days before I move, although since one of my friends will be living here, he's offered to oversee my garden and allow me access to it, so I don't feel so much like I'm abandoning it.

End of Summer Program

Today was the last day of Summer Program. During the evaluation week, we wrote our perspectives on the summer, we discussed it in-depth with the program coordinators, we got our personal assessments, we compiled data from participant evaluation sheets, we made house calls to get feedback on participant experiences during the overnight, we sorted through photos taken throughout the summer, we designed a collage from participant art based on their overnight experience, we picked up clay art that had been made during Wacky Water Week but took time to finish, and we cleaned the accessible van.

We all got a special lunch ordered in for us this week. We gave a gift to our supervisor, and each of us received a framed sheet with a collection of praise given to us by our coworkers.

I feel like I'm finally "psychologically graduating". After I graduated I kept living in student housing, I went back to my old student job, I kept using my student bus pass, and I kept going to the school to use their printer.

But now my student job is ending, I'm moving out of student housing, my student bus pass is expiring, and my student account will be shut down, so I can't use the printer. When I graduated, it felt like summer vacation. But now summer vacation is ending, and I won't be going back to school/

I had a Facile meeting tonight, and I was getting a ride from my Facile mentor. Right after I said my goodbyes and left the building, she had just arrived and was ready to take me to my meeting. It was exactly like leaving my old life behind and being carried directly into my new.

Impeesa and Kimbercote

Sorry it's been so long guys! I just finished two weeks of overnight camp, in which I couldn't update because I was gone 24/7. I was home during the weekends but my computer is (mostly) broken, and since I have two other jobs, I just didn't have time to access something to update the blog.

First week of overnight we stayed at Camp Impeesa. I went there last year. To review, it's pronounced "Impessa", it's usually a Boy Scout's camp, and it's named after the guy who invented Boy Scouts' nickname when he was fighting in South Africa. It was given to him by his enemies and he said it meant "The Wolf that Never Sleeps". However, it actually means "Hyena"| in Ashanti. It's supposedly haunted by a ghost named "Drumbo Dan" who was killed there after losing his feet, and who therefor cuts off peoples feet off in an attempt to reattach them to his ghost body.

Second week was at Kimbercote. Last year was the first that Impeesa was used, and for at least three years prior to my joining Summer Program and likely more, Kimbercote was the go-to location for overnight. I'd heard plenty of stories about how much rougher Kimbercote was, so I was very eager to experience it myself. It wasn't so bad. The location was far more remote than Impeesa. The cabin seemed older, and had a number of personal touches and quirks, but it was fine for our purposes. It's near Collingwood, it's at the top of a hill, and the view is spectacular.

Over the two weeks we had campfires, went on hikes, went swimming, watched movies, played games, held a dance... A staff at Extend-a-Family has a farm near Collingwood and we went there for a day trip. We also had a day trip at Bingemins water park on the last Friday (scheduling difficulties landed us in Kitchener a bit early in the second week, but we got an extra day trip out of it). At Bingemins we did the wave pool, warm water jet stream, water slides, and mini golf as well as a few games the staff led nearer the end of the day.

It was a good two weeks!

I have a place to live next month! Moving in with a couple of friends. I was getting pretty nervous when I had half a month to find a place and knew I was spending two weeks out camping.

And two of my sunflowers blossomed! I'm calling it a good omen and naming them after my two future roommates.

Wacky Water Week

Last week was Wacky Water Week. We did clay art, we went to a water park, and we played Reverse Paintball (staff got painted by participants, then had them shoot the paint off with water guns).

For the water park, we went to the Wild Water Works in Hamilton, which had a wave pool. water slides, and a lazy river (floating down a river in an inner tube).

The whole week was pretty awesome!

By some quirk of fate, I wasn't doing either of my other two jobs on Saturday, so I managed to visit my home in Guelph for the first time since Summer Program started. I haven't seen them since convocation started, actually.

But the way time lined up, I had to go to the Greyhound station right after work. And since I hadn't had time to change, I was still wearing my swim suit. The first bus that came was supposed to be going through Guelph, then Toronto, but apparently that day it was a Toronto Express, so all the people with regular Toronto tickets got upgraded while the Guelph people were asked to wait. We were told the Guelph bus would be half an hour late, but by that time, it was already half an hour late. We were told the next bus would be going to Guelph, but it was going to London. And then we had to talk another Toronto Express into taking us. Finally got on a bus an hour and a half past schedule.

My phone hadn't properly charged the night before, so it died while I was lined up. And even though I had brought a cell phone charger, there was no outlet and I couldn't leave because I didn't know when the bus might arrive. So I wasn't able to phone home and tell my mother and brother I would be late.

Night of the blue moon too. Felt powerful that my last day of Day Program would be on a blue moon night.

And yeah, Day Program is over! I'm now doing a prep week, followed by two weeks of overnight camp, followed by an evaluation week, after which the Summer Program is complete! Time is moving forward.

Got a pretty significant crop of string beans recently. Since my first batch of tomato plants didn't work out and I replaced them with a set of partially-grown ones, I've found myself in need of tomato cages when no place sells tomato cages anymore.. They're just falling over each other right now. My flowers are flowering, but sort of weakly.

I brought home some snow peas for my mom to make something with. She made them as a side with ramen.

Got my beer machine on the chilling process. Will get one more crop before I move.

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.