The Tragic Incident of Inconcievable Pain, and The Proceeding Fun

Arrete! Before you start asking questions about the title and frantically trying to call me, read the whole blog, please. I'm just being silly with the title, in reality it just proves nothings is wrong. Niki would do something like that, and she did, so she's fine. YAY. On with the story.

I wrapped up a wonderful week in billeting by attending La Nuit Blanche, an all night party in Montreal. My most fantastic billeting sister, Arianne, and I headed off to this event with high expectations. Then I discovered my expectations were not as big as the line ups, I mean, wow.

The Ferris wheel was free, this translates to a two and a half hour line up, so no, I did not go on. There were lots of neat things as La Nuit Blanche that you can read about here. I'm sure mum has already looked over this picture with a great leaping of joy in her heart. Yes, that's right Aunt B, I did it! I'm am right that standing next to a real live horse, and I wasn't scared! I'm very happy about that one. For those who don't know, I had a fear of horses. Had. This little devil was hanging around La Nuit Blanche and I was thinking "I've gotta get in on this".

So, Arianne is saving up to volunteer in Malawi (buy some chocolates from her!), and since Katimavik she been really passionate about making sure everything gets recycled. Naturally, we started picking up bottles, lots of bottles. So many bottles we started picking up bags and boxes to carry them. Then while I making my way to the metro paddling awkwardly through this stream of people I hear the sound of glass tickling pavement. This makes me veer off to the side to get out of way (Degage en francais, which is also the Katimavik slogan in French, kind of cruel really). For those of you Vancouverites who were downtown for the Olympics, you'll remember how pedestrian traffic moves, quick, and erratic. This was the same, and of course there was a police presence. One of the three police officers at the metro spotted the bottle and stopped traffic to pick it up. He turns to see where he's gonna put that troublesome bottle, and he sees me. Then he walks over smiles, and puts a full unopened bottle of Corona in my box. I thank him and he starts picking up other bottles for me, the box filled up so I asked him to put the rest in a bag in the corner. Turns out the bag had a full , unopened bottle of Heineken Beer. I never heard of the Montreal custom were by police officers give beer away without asking for age or identification. Oh well! After I caught up with Arianne we were heading for the metro when the janitor saw us and asked if we wanted a bag for the cans and bottles. He brought back two industrial strength garbage bags, so we had a chance to go out and collect even more. This is our army of bottles and cans. The picture  looks pretty suspicious without an adequate explanation. This was about 7 or 8 dollars worth of cans and bottles, I think.

That was billeting, awesome. It was a great chance to be sick and recover and still have time to have fun. When I arrived back at the katimahouse, I was greeted with hugs and a chorus of "NIKI!". I gave Arianne a little tour and she gave me a little, lovely, gift. A card (which was one of the one's she was selling to fund raise for Malawi), a tin of organic fair trade hot chocolate (again a fund raiser), and her very own Katimavik toque. Katimavik doesn't give out toques anymore, so it's beyond special to me. Thank you very much to my marvelous billet family (if you ever read this).

That night Marie-France and I learned that we were set up to be house managers for the week, surprise! But no rush come Monday, because we had an activity with our Collective Projects Committee. It was work at the shelter handing out food for the day. So instead of going to work we all went out for the day to lend a hand.

That evening Marie-France and I went shopping and planned a bit of a menu. The weeks started out with Vietnamese noodle wraps, a recipe from Rachelle, my billeting mother. During the week we enjoyed, curry, stir-fry, breakfast dinner, quesadillas, and pizza!

On Tuesday we visited a city council meeting, met some big wigs. The meeting was all in French so I think most of the group found it pretty un-interesting.

Fast forward to Saturday! We actually had a busy day for a change. We had an adventure to The Biodome of Montreal, and for the first time since the airprot we saw the Potton group! Apparently Potton is just south of Montreal, and by "just" I mean like 3 hours, so they're closer to the American border. So, Potton explored the Biodome with us. The Biodome was incredible, it was a little bit of everything. You start out at the tropic zone, then there's the deciduous forest area, gulf of saint Lawrence, and finally, the polar region. There was a lynx, and a penguin, and and... oh! oh! and a Capybara! You can read more about it here. Now for a mildly amusing picture of us at the Biodome.

We had a really short break before we took off again. This time we were walk to Fort Angrignon (info here). This is unbearably difficult to explain exactly what this was, which is why the website might actually be better at explaining it. It was like a confidence course, team building competition thingy. There were several teams participating, obviously us, Ville-Ray, Potton, a team of PLs and staff, and three teams not associated with Katimavik. We were warned the PL team would win, and they did. Now I can't supply any pictures of this event, because as a team we needed some sort of theme, kind of like a jersey. To set the standard the PLs were a team of mimes, and Ville-Ray was the "Register Sex Offenders", and they were dressed as such. So, our team was "I Just Had Sex" (based of this song), we were beyond ridiculous. Everyone had messed up hair and flies undone, and yeah.... We had lot's of fun with it, but were not going to be putting those pictures up.


After leaving Fort Angrignon, I was a little late getting my bus pass out for the metro and I was running in time to see the rest of the group on the metro, already sitting down. I scrambled down the stairs and jumped down the last few steps.  It was like my bone was a piece of spaghetti and the tremor of the landing shook up through my body as I collapsed to one side. I looked at the metro, the door was still open, so I crawled on my hands and knees and crashed on to the floor of the metro with a great deal of pain in my body. Sure enough that night I inspected the ankle and it was comme un pamplemoose, if you will. I attempted to take it easy on Sunday, which wasn't hard because the only thing we did all days was clean and have our CCK.  By Monday it was time to hit the hospital. I hung around all day to find out it was a really bad sprain and it was gotten swell up further. Subsequently, I won't be going to work this week. That's actually why I'm writing this. It really sucks. However my group has been more than accomodating! Francois has been consistently changing my hot and cold packs, and  monitoring my ankle, this is because he has some experience with broken bones and the like. Andrew was my crutch before I got crutchs and he made his best attempt to deliver my dinner to the hospital (If only he could find the right one). Tiffany has cooked for me and cleaned for me when I need it, and most importantly helped me dress. Marie-France is always aware of where my crutchs are and when I need them. The rest of the group has been really good to me for opening and closing doors, and picking things up of the floor for me. I love my group.

This morning was the last of the big surprises, as 6:30 this morning the gentlemen of the Katimavik house were all awake, why? Why indeed? Well, today March 8th is International Womens Day, something I really didn't know about until it was briefly brought up at the CCK on Sunday. Cody, Andrew, Francois, Landen, and Kyle took it upon themselves to make the ladies breakfast in bed. Yes, that is sweet. So this is what I woke up to...

That's Andrew with two strawberry pancakes (The handy work of Francois), a fruit salad, syrup, and a cup of orange juice. Kyle came in about 2 minutes later with a cup of tea. So today had been the definition of relaxation*. There is no reason to worry about me.


*See "Laziness" for definition