Apathy is Boring is Anything but Boring

So it's been awhile and it would be almost impossible to give you a full catch up, for now the best I can offer is insight through little anecdotes here and there. Katimavik is like a soap opera, if you miss one episode you have missed a lot and subsequently you will be very lost. For instance, I'm not at the Katimahouse right now, the world is silent and I'm in a bed in my own room with a magestic bay window and a crown modeling decorates the chandeleer above. Yes, there's no way I'm anywhere near the Katimavik house. In fact no one is at the house right now. Not even our dear PL, Etienne. Everyone in my group has left for 9 days of billeting where we part ways to live life under a new family, with a new culture. Some will be as far a Laval, as for me, I'm at 15 minutes away from Jolicoeur station. If you recall the metro map the station in the sud-ouest are as follows:
Agrignon
Monk
Joliceour
Verdun
D'eglise
Lasalle
Charlevoix
Lionel-Groulx

Our Katimavik house is at Monk, so my new house is about a half hour walk, not bad at all. Those who are in Laval, they are looking at a 1+ metro ride, on a good day. So I feel quite fortunate.

 

Alors, this is probably the only picture I have of the magic, and it's not even mine. I give Cody credit for this snap of me at the "Apathy is Boring" conference. Last Friday we were thrown into this mess of getting up early and going to "Apathy is Boring" instead of work. Like us many of you are asking "What is 'Apathy is Boring'?" To be honest, even after attending I'm not 100% sure, so I'm going to give the Niki-definition. It appears to be an organization devoted to getting youth involved in politics and volunteering. You can see how this is appropriate for our 'Cultural Discovery and Civic Engagement Program'. The first part was an introduction to the program followed by some entertainment from local musicians. There were about 150 people there, mostly Concordia students, which is no surprise because the event was being held at Concordia University. There was also the Ville-Ray Katimavik group in attendance. We also had the option to sign up for two seminars, an am slot, and a pm slot. I had signed up to see the Canada World Youth presentation for my am, and for my pm there was a presentation on using symbolism in comic books and cartoons to portray a message. Some of the other workshops included YWCA, A few volunteer work shops, and even a Katimavik workshop, which seemed irrelevant to learn about Katimavik while on Katimavik.

The Canada World Youth presentation was really inspiring and I realized I didn't know as much as I had though about the program. It has so much in common with Katimavik it's like comparing the black squares on a checker board, to the red squares on the same board. Same share, same size, but opposite. Similar to Katimavik, they offer a 6 month program, however it's 3 months in Canada, then 3 months over seas. Where we live in a group of 10, they live in a group of 20. Not to say they actually live in a group, they stay with host families for the rotation and then for one week in the middle of the rotation they live altogether in one house. Of course we do the opposite. It certainly raised my interest in the program, and it felt great to know I'm already signed up.

The other workshop I attended was called "The Big Step" or "Le Grand Pas", and they are and organization that distributes comic books to caution kids from gang life. Originally I would call this idea far fetched, but here that's not the case, gangs, violence, drugs and tagging are a huge problem in Montreal. What better way to reach out to kids then with comic books. We saw symbols used in comics and cartoons to hint at secret societies, rascism and sexism. So why not turn artist power into a good message, which was where The Big Steps comes in. They hire writers and artists to create comic book to distribute to kids that gives only an undertone of a good message, as to not scare them away.

To wrap up they ask all of us to answer one of three questions and to then submit your answer to the back of the room. I answered the second question (which was in my opinion the easiest) "How do we get youth involved as citizens?" I  gave a simple answer "We are a motivated generation, it's in our nature to want to help, the struggle is how to get the message to us. That's why showcases like Apathy is Boring work so well in connection people with projects". Now either these were randomly drawn, or they liked my answers because they picked ten people to read out they're answers, four of these ten were from our Katimavik group (0 from Ville-Ray). So Myself, Francois, Andrew and Cody were asked to speak regarding our answers. Now I'm not all too nervous about speaking infront of people, but one of the 150+ people happened to be a political hero of mine, yes, herself Michaelle Jean, the greatest Govener General to ever grace our nation. This a was more than a treat, Michaelle Jean listened to me speak. Of course I got to listen to her speak (even in both languages she is captivating), which is special, but it's not like when you go to a concert, because Neil Young isn't gonna ask me to play for him once he's finished his set (a girl can dream). Afterwards Cody, Val, Andrew, and I waited around for her, and everyone in the auditorium was attempting to speak with her. They all budged in front of us, but we were patient, and just as they were attempting to get her out of there, she turned to us, and I found the words to offer my hand and say "What an honour it is to just shake the hand of one of the most inspiring political representatives of this time." I must of said something right because after that hand shake I got a hug from her, I would later retell this story about 1000 times with a smile on my face. She joked with the Katimavik kids and we got her e-mail because she mentioned she wanted to keep in contact. Wow, right? First the mayor, then Michaelle Jean, how could this get any better?! Stephen Harper (not that he's better, just that he's interesting, like road rash)? Or will they resurrect Wilfrid Laurier?! Who knows?!! Life just keeps getting better here on Katimavik.

After the most meaningful hug of a life time Cody and I went upstairs to mooch some fancy foods from the after party. Riding the high of what will be a page in my book of "Unforgettable Moments", we went to go get a free key chain from this one table. When we got there we quickly found out this table was giving out wine and wine key chains, so acting all cool and collected we walked away with a key chain and a fancy glass of wine. As I was sipping my wine and drooling over fancy food at this political gathering I first thought to myself "Can you believe tat all these people are falling for this? They all think I'm mature! HA! They don't even know about all the Pokemon cards I have back home!" Then I looked around and I thought again "Maybe being mature doesn't mean abandoning childhood so much as in means accepting responsibility. Know me like I know me, if there's two options I'll always take both." At this moment a waitress walked by with curried potatoes and prosciutto wrapped asparagus, I happily took both.

The next day was early to rise for half the group to adventure of the the Biodome for the Seedy Weekend with Kyles workplace: Action Communitaire! The event was for local horticulture and agriculture enthusiasts to buy and sell seeds, while Action Communitaire sells fair trade coffee and sandwich to buy seeds for the spring gardening projects. This was quite fun, Marie-France, and Jessica worked to serve the coffee at the front. While the Anglophones, Cody, Andrew and myself worked behind the scenes making sandwiches. Kyle buzzed around making sure everything was going according to plan because he had put a lot of effort in to the project. We had plenty of time to run around, look at the gardens, inspect the seeds, drink coffee and snack on sandwiches.

Typical moments in the kitchen consisted of talking about cheese, eating cheese, singing, laughing, dancing, saying 'Yagel Bagel' in a variety of ways, discussing more ways to acquire a sandwich for free, convincing Andrew to stop being a vegetarian by talking about sweet sweet prosciutto, taking pictures, cutting buns, commenting on the hot buns, fantasizing about the cheese, pretending we speak french, drooling, constantly washing our hands, arguing about the best way to tye an apron, making a mess, and of course "sandwiches are beautiful, sandwiches are fine, I like sandwiches, I eat them all the time, I eat the for my breakfast and I eat them for my lunch, if I had a hundred sandwiches I'd eat them all at once!"

On Sunday Cody, Jessica, Andrew, Marie-France, and I had the whole day off as the other crew took over. During this time we bought a few cheap clothes at the Value Village. That night we had a brief CCK and moved on with life.

On Monday we had a romantic Valentines day dinner with candles and heart shaped cookies, of course, what is romantic about ten people a table trying to extinguish the candles with there tongue? Yeah. This was also a land mark event, the temperature burst past 0 degrees and it rained! Wow! For the first time I saw it rain in Montreal, cool.

Tuesday we had a trip to the swimming pool, first we went to the wrong one, but eventually we found a Free Swimming Pool. But there's always a catch, no hot tub, just lanes, one pool, just lanes, there's a slide you can't use, just lanes, there's a diving board you can't use, just lanes, and apparently if your hair is too long they'll demand you tie it up. So you guessed it, the lifeguards HATED us. We made the most of it, after all, it was free!

On Wednesday I started to feel sick, and by the evening French activity I was sure the next day would be my sick day.

Thursday: My sick day. It was also the evening of Etienne's evaluation, where we get to tell the Project Coordinator, Julie, everything we like and dislike about Etienne. It was really funny that we had such a difficult time with coming up with any negative comments.

Friday, I wasn't feeling any better so by Katimavik rules if I needed to take another sick day, I had to go to the clinic. At 9:45am I put my name in, and by 1:45 I was served, luckily for me the clinic is a five minute walk from our house, so I waited at home. Of course the doctor told me what I already knew, drink fluids, sleep, don't work too hard, have some pain killers, no surprises. That night was also my first night in billeting, which was a much needed break for a sick girl like me. In fact, I might just have a nap, right now.