The Waiting

Agony. Excitement. Enthusiasm. My carefully selected words for "the waiting". Yup, it's well past my ideal sleeping hour and I am wide awake. I've been reading just about everything on the Katimavik website, I read the Facebook stuff, the twitter stuff, watched tonnes of videos from past groups, read blogs from current groups, and most recently I read the Wikipedia article. After reading it over one part stuck out to me:

"When the Conservative government of Stephen Harper was elected, the organization was instructed that its funding was under review and that it was to cease recruitment activities. A letter-writing campaign was organized by Katimavik and funding levels were maintained until October 2010 when the government announced 3 year funding in the sum of $15 million per year, a reduction of approximately 25% from previous funding levels ($19.7 million)"

Ouch, Stephen. I don't want to get too political here, but now I have someone other than myself to blame for the wait list. Endless nights of me thinking "Why must I be a generic white girl from BC?!" I figure it must be that my socio-demographic category is so common and that there is this flood of white girls from BC applying to Katimavik and I just don't stand a chance. Whether that's true or not I'm blaming Stephen. LALALALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!!

On to the matter at hand. I have lai out my finest winter ware for Montreal. Sorels snow boots, Columbia snow pants, fleece lined mittens, and and arctic weather coat that's about as tall as a preteen boy. My personal favourite is the fleece lined jeans, all the style you get with jeans, but keeping in the warmth. The truth is, style or not I hardly ever wear jeans (although I'm wearing them now) mostly because it's either to hot or too cold from jeans. In Vancouver they can only truely be worn in late August September, and May. But lordy, these fleece lined jeans! They are fantastic.

I've spent a good deal of time agonizing about little things, like "Where did I put that French-English English-French Dictionary?" "What if there's no one at the airport when I get there?" "What if I pack two bags and everyone else only packs one? Or worse, what if I pack one and everyone else packs two?!". 've also tried practising my French, attempting to read all the names of products only in French. Those who known me will be saying "Niki, you speak French, don't be silly". It's true I was in French Immersion for Kindergarten until the end of grade 2, then I started French from the begging again in grade 5 and continued that until grade 7. At the begging of High school in grade 8 I had a chance to start all over again, so I started again. That carried on until grade 12, when I stopped taking French. So I actually learned French three times, and I know the words, and even some of the verbs. I am awful at formulating a sentence, and to a certain extent, comprehending a sentence. But worst of all, I lost my beautiful French accent. No matter how bad I messed up those verbs my teacher would always tell me I had such a prefect French accent. It's true, years of general humour have given me a multinational assortment of accents, from my delightful Borat Kazakh, the gruff old Englishmen, the humble Irish women, the friendly German, the respectful Mexican, and of course the American (need I say more). Most recently I've had the chance to add a little Newfie to the mix thanks to my East Coast Brother. In my past venture to Mexico I even took a little "Learn Spanish in 6 Weeks", and I quickly learned how similar French and Spanish are. My Spanish was brilliant, I fully understood the police officer who pulled us over saying "Muy Cero" about the ticket, very expensive. The downside to this was the destruction of my French accent, now it's this horrible mess of Spanish and French, which sounds worse that your average "West Coast Canadian French". Banjoor. Murcy. Or V-wa.

Despite the French, and the packing, and the Harper government, I think things will be great. The French will come back over time. I can get some pointer on packing. And for Stephen, he will see the error of his ways some day. You see the problem here is that he is 51 year old, that means he was born in 1959, and Katimavik started in 1977. He was almost 18 years old, the perfect age, and he missed his chance. I'm guessing he didn't go of course, because if he had, he wouldn't have cut the funding. Well, I'm gonna go on Katimavik, and I'm gonna have a blast, and if I ever become Prime Minster, Oh, I have some ideas....