Sioux Me

Let's play catch up! Today we worked on some PFE forms for our Katimavik Activities. Usually this is a boring task but we have a way of making each activity entirely over dramatic. So, here's a bit of what happened through PFE documents:

Friday 16th, Welcome Party in Shakespearean by Kyle:
"Mark my words Katima lords and worships. Thee shall see what our festivites brought to this town. Fain some of the town people attended. Misfortune was brought upon us, sadley thy efforts did not impress thees people. Hark! thy worships my story is not finished. Even though not to many people attended we galloped and sang great wonders till the beautiful lunar light faded over the horizen. Jesters, pranksters and musicians played for the few people who showed. Great feast were made by the clever Tiffany. Feasting was a wonderful activity."

Make sure to read about it in the Sioux Lookout Bulletin, page 18.

Saturday 17th, Election Preparation in Fantasy by Niki:
"Francois acted as a brilliant leader in this heroic display of telephoning election Canada to ask about our unique and complex situation (namely the cruel distance between us and our individual ridings). Then this spry gentleman jumped vigorously into the difficult task of printing the forms that would eventually rock our political world. Then the caps came off the pens an like an army of bureaucrats we filled out that barbaric form, just another step closer to ...BEING REGISTERED TO VOTE!

The group was challenged at first, even to the extent of having to reprint a form due to an error permanently cast in ink. We learned that the applicant process can be treacherous and unforgiving, especially for those out casted from their dwelling space.
While many of us found the next quest to be impossible, time and team work lead us each to find the great and gloriously powerful piece of ID with address and picture. Truly a heroic feat.
Looking back on the adventures of this wondrous activity it was a sucess with only minor casualties"

 Tuesday 19th, All Candidates Debate in Fantasy by Niki:
"Our clan of mighty warriors and mysterious magicians had come to find an invitation to a meeting of the powerful lords that battle to control this Land of Sioux. Each lord spoke on behalf of their clan, in an attempt to please the people of the land to gain their most incredible power: a vote.
First there was The Fiery Lord Roger Valley of the Liberal Clan. His rage towards the blue Conservative Clan was clear as he viciously attacked the apathetic opposition.
Then there was The Lord of Resounding Power and Beauty of Tania Camron of the New Democratic Clan. Her non-threatening approach managed to be surprisingly intimidating to the other candidates. She used her magic powers to portray love and care, something the people of The Land of the Sioux appeared to yearn for.
Last but not least was The Furiously Content lord Greg Rickford of the Conservative Clan. He is the current ruler of the majestic lands. He claims people our satisfied with his ruling, but the people are not so sure.
Each lord will be powerless without the collectivized votes, and thus, they thirst for the votes of the masses. However the wondering Knight at the back of the room suggests otherwise, he speaks for the ABC Clan "Anyone But Conservative". He strikes a strong blow to the ego of Lord Rickford. "Gahhh!! I summon thee, Beast of Darkness Harper!". In an attempt to consume more votes he called upon with Legislative Monster, but what he didn't account for was the lowering popularity of the beast. And sure enough, without the confidence of the people to back him up the Harper Beast was no more powerful then a kitten.
Lord Valley used this opportunity to continue to strike at Lord Rickford, but his dirty verbal tactics only damaged himself, leaving Lord Camron to absorb more potential votes.
The Great Hockey Warrior Cody brought it upon himself to command an answer from the lords "My Lords, wish ye to acquire my vote? Then answer me this: Do you plan to aid funding to Volunteer Programs like Katimavik?" Then the battle broke out between the lords: who is more superior at not answering the question? Or, better yet, who is more superior at blaming it on someone else?

Valiant Violinist Warrior Andrew went to question the bitter fighting of the lords, but nay, the blood battle had ended: no further questions. "Yay!" called our a towns person "Ye claim that the youth doth not be engaged, and that yay, this young warrior doth wait too many sun downs to command ye a question, and nay, ye listen not!" The candidates claimed to care with the depth of their equivalent hearts, but no answers were given.
Our Clan left with only information, a grand loot. We discovered that the honesty and power of the lords is something to be questioned, and that the great strength of our vote requires much thought."

Other important Activities to mention include the Ropes Course on Sunday, and the Smudging Ceremony on Wednesday.

The ropes course was done through Jessica's work place, New Vision. The course was designed as a team building exercise. We took on four challenges in a variety of difficulties, each one taught us something that would help us in the next. By the last challenge we'd learned so much that we finished the exercise in
about 7 minutes. Which was impressive because they often allocate about a half hour for it.

The Smudging Ceremony took place at the King House after work. Most of you are wondering what I'm talking about, no it's doesn't involve pastel or face paint. A Smudging Ceremony: http://www.asunam.com/smudge_ceremony.html
Two gentlemen, Victor and Charles came over with a large drum and the supplies for the ceremony. It's a cleansing Ceremony to refresh your self of anything negative, and to be in touch with spirits. It's a powerful ceremony, and I found myself whizzing through thoughts and emotions, and then I got a powerful nosebleed. Victor told me he'd experienced this before, and it was a way of cleansing the blood, and that this was likely brought on by the ceremony, very powerful.

In group related news, this week has been very different since the lost of our dear friend Marie-France. I'm still not sure why she left but I said goodbye to her at lunch on Tuesday, and she wasn't there when I got home. The goodbye was particularly painful, because the bus was listed as full and it wasn't certain there was a space for her, if there wasn't a space on Tuesday, she'd leave Thursday. So I must've said goodbye six or seven times. I'll really miss her. She was my room mate all through most of our time in Montreal and she's been on of my closest friends. She was proud too be the first Francophone I'd ever met, and I'm proud to know her. Right now I'm sure she's drinking Tim Hortons Ice Caps with her boyfriend in Quebec. I want to see her again some day, and the worst part is it will never be convenient.

 Je t'aime.

The ugly side of Katimavik is that you meet the greatest life long friends at a time in your life when everything is changing. When will I get to see these friends who travel, or work, or leave for school? Blocked off by the rockies I feel like life with them is limited to now, so it's important to make the most of this. But don't get me wrong, Kyle lives a short 10 minute walk from my house, we'll probably hang out and make bread. The series of goodbyes with Marie-France was once again a reminder of how the end of this is going to be a very very sad time for us. Val is off to Ireland in the Fall. Cody wants to join the Armed Forces, or maybe go to Vancouver Island University. Francois will probably go back to work, or anywhere really, he's that kind of guy. Tiffany is starting right back at her old job the day she returns. Andrew was accepted at Trent University in the Philosophy course. Jessica might spend sometime in Vancouver this summer, but I believe she's also going to school in Autumn. Landen might be working or schooling, or somethinging. Kyle wants to join the RCMP, or maybe move to Gatineau to learn some more French. We made an unofficial agreement about meeting in Montreal in 8 years, a year to work on each competency. I like to think I'll manage to stay close, I want to have these people closer than just Facebook. Don't know where my life with take me, but when I find myself in St. Georges De Beauce I will find Marie-France and in her words "We will take a coffee."

Life and Why I Love It So Much

The Title: once again stresses how amazing it is to be Niki. I'm not being cocky. I'm not trying to make you jealous (it's normal if you are). I'm not overreacting. I'm not trying to rub anything in your face. I'm just feeling really fortunate. So let's go into the "Why are you so fortunate, Niki?"

WELL!

1. I am the chairperson of the group.
2. I have a fantastic job.
3. We're in the paper
4. I am a certified in Nonviolent Crisis Management.
5. We had curry for dinner on April 13th, 2011
6. The Simplest Joys
7. Package from Mum

1) I should first clarify the role of Chairperson for those of you who don't know or don't remember. If Katimavik was a human body, the brain would be the CCK (also known as the KCC). It stands for something, something we never remember. It's a collective meeting where we discuss the week, activities, rules, and house managers. The group is divided into three commitees, with a fourth executive committee which oversees the meeting. In Montreal, there was the Activities Committee, the Collective Projects Committee, and the Second Language Committee. Here our committees are based on the Katimavik Competencies which we are working on. Katimavik has 8 competencies, here in Sioux Lookout, we named them:
          1. Mudkipz: To interact with others in a variety of situations.
          2. KSLARC: To adopt an open attitude towards the diversity of social and              multicultural realities.
          3. Yes, No, Toaster: To communicate in both official languages.
          4. Whorin' Orange (Whorange): To engage in diverse work experiences.
          5. Don't Stop: To apply habits that favour a healthy lifestyle.
          6. It's Not Easy Being Green: To develop an integrated vision of
              environmental protection and sustainable development.
          7. Yo, Degage: To engage as a citizen.
          8. Que Sera, Sera: To prepare to integrate, as a citizen, into the job
              market, school or other life event.
Our targeted competencies in Montreal were: 1,2, 3 and 7, I think.  Here we have 2,7, and 8. My committee is Yo, Degage. However, I was also nominated and unanimously elected to be chairman of the executive committee. Yay, for me! I really wanted that role so I can work on my leadership, which I feel is always lacking.

2) Meno-Ya-Win Health Center is so cool! I play bingo, and test desserts and it is just a fun place to be. I feel that saying  "I'm going to work" has such a negative connotation associated with it, I can't use that sentence. I enjoy my every waking minute at that place. Gift store, extended care, patient wing, or just being lost in the hospital.

3) Page 15 of the Sioux Lookout Bulletin April 13th edition.

4) My wonderful boss, Sharon, managed to get me a spot in the Nonviolent Crisis Management course. Sharon, if you're reading this, thank you very much.  So, an extra little addition to my katima-beautified resume. The course was fun, useful, and all around a very good use of time. I'm proud of my little certificate.

5) There was curry for dinner. A much needed curry. I've been like a drug addict going through withdrawal, I miss my curry so much. Unlike drugs, curry is good for you, so this was a much needed indulgence.

6) Simple joys have kept me abnormally happy since I've been here. If you could see me right now, you'd be the slightest bit worried. Exhibit A, the bicycle: When we got here there was one token bicycle. I managed to uncover a bicycle from the snow with the help of Cody. The epic saga was written out in our PFE form:

"Driven by a boundless passion for a bicycle, Niki ventured through the vicious tundra that is the backyard in search of shy handle bars, just peeking out from the snow. Once the victim was spotted, Niki fixated all her efforts on the target. The bike never stood a chance. The great warrior summoned Cody to help with the intensive digging to rescue the metal contraption. Water was boiled to combat the ice, and after a good 4 hours of valiant labour, the bicycle was rescued. However it was broken ....but that's another story."

Later, other bikes were donated, and sadly, a selection of them were broken. Despite the quality of the bikes, there's something really special about riding my bike through the sun rise in the morning and listening to music. The sunshine hits the water tower and I think, almost every morning, "I will never forget this".

During this week, while I was speaking to G-ma and G-pa, I ran down to the train tracks while the train had stopped, and I laid a variety of coins on the track and then I stuck around to watch them be smushed.

There was also the fancy crackers and blue cheese, I brought at Johnny's (the local grocery store). Simple and joyous.

7) The package from mum was a real highlight. When I got back from work on Friday, there was a wonderful package from mum! My glasses, Vidaela Onion Fig Sauce, Mini Eggs, and Tic-Tacs. So much good stuff. There was a string of canoe christmas light that we put up in the living room. Then there was the Canucks Jersey, don't forget your roots right? Don't worry, mum, I'm not a total Habs fans. I wore it until we won the game, an all around good night. THANK YOU, MUMMY!!

I actually wore that jersey to our welcome party on Friday Night. Our self-hosted quaint  party. It was fun though. We had music and food, and we socialized with some members of the community. We had microphones set up for impromptu Karoke, and the musical stylings of Francois the guitarist, Andrew the violinist, and Valerie the mandolinist.

Other stuff happened too:

Saturday's Ice Fishing brought fun times and no fish. Here's our group out on the frozen lake, smiling hopefully for fishies.

 Later we found that using the fishing stools as ice sleds was a good idea. This is Sarah and I traveling wheel barrow style across the ice.

On Monday we volunteered at the legion for a hockey banquet. The highlight of the night was shoving cupcakes in one another's faces.

 Francois demonstrates the activity of the night.

The next night we split up, half went to help out at another banquet at the legion. The other half went to the volunteer appreciation night at the Extended Care Facility. Val and Francois played music and the rest of us handed out desserts, and of course, ate a few along the way.

We have a lot of fun.

Coming up next time ... the katimavikians try to vote, will they register in time? Snow fell, what will happen to the beloved bikes? Bonfire story time scheduled for Saturday night, will everyone find a story in time? Find out, next time, on Niki's Blog!

Katima Siouxp for The Soul

The first week of work is up and it's time for a blog!

We are like fish taken out of water, cleaned, descaled, cooked, eaten, and some how return to the water alive. This bizarre analogy refers to the adapting and the fact that we are going ice fishing today.

For those of you who keep asking me "well. what do you do in Sioux Lookout?" Simple. WE DO EVERYTHING. We don't have the time to worry about what stores and restaurants are and are not here, there's too much other stuff going on!

Sarah, our new PL, really likes to keep us busy. For instance, my sleeping in this morning really feels like the first time I've had a break. Even our free time is busy! Don't get me wrong, I love it, but this whole thing has been a tidal wave of life in a week. Work, contracts, meeting, the youth forum with Greg Rickford, Van tag, finding time for groceries, meals, cleaning, bouncing between two houses, French Class, and trying to find time to say "hi" the group.

I have found an easy way to update you on our day to day lives here, we have a blog that is (supposed to be) updated daily. It's a group blog that is written in part by everyone, including the past group who remembers the password. To read this blog (and I recommend you do), check for updates here:

http://katimaviksiouxlookout.wordpress.com/

Right now the pictures at the top are of the last group, but we'll likely be changing that soon.

I hope to keep you all updated in one form or another! But for now ....ICE FISHING!

Sioux Lookout: Hub of the North

The beginning of the beginning. Here we are in Sioux Lookout, Ontario. After an exhausting 11 hours in planes and lay overs, we made it. When we landed in Thunder Bay we found  a surprise. The Sioux Lookout group going to Montreal, past the Montreal group going to Sioux Lookout. We spoke for about 20 minutes and talked about what awaits us.

The next surprise was our little plane, our little bear skin plane. Yes, we all played way too much to get our bags on board, and let that be a lesson for anyone else traveling to Sioux Lookout with Katimavik. Unless you have 1 check bag, and 1 carry on where the total weight is 50 pounds, you're going to pay a lot of money. Worst part is Katimavik isn't gonna refund you that money. Not cool.

When we got to Sioux Lookout we were greeted by more than just our new PL, Sarah, but actually members of the community, there to help us to our houses. That's the other thing, we have two houses as of now. Kyle, Landen, Andrew, Marie-France, Val, and Tiffany, are at the "Prince House", named because it's on Prince Street. Or Prince Road. I don't really know because I'm in the "King House", named for the same reasons,  I'm here with Cody, Francois, Jessica, and Sarah. The King house is where we have dinner, and for the most part hang out.

Those people at the Prince house came down to us for a brief snack time and orientation. The walk between the two house is about 10-15 minutes. It was long until ten jet-lagged youth desperately needed bed time.

Whatever sleep we got wasn't enough for the next day.  Our work place tours were all done in one day. To make matters worse that's 13 work placements and most of them are part time. We toured:

The Salvation Army:
The local Sally Ann, gave us a cute little tour, and we all got to take one thing from the store for free! The majority of the work consisted of using the cash register and sorting clothes in the back.

Cedar Bay:
Here we toured the local house ranch, which had a variety of horses. My new horse-savvy-self even petted a couple of the stallions. The work focused around maintenance and feeding.

The Rec Center:
We visited the Rec Center which was particularly neat because were all going to receive free gym passes. So, we'll probably be back there rather soon.

Wawatay Television:
This was the headquarters of a broadcasting company that has a couple shows being featured on Aboriginal Peoples Television right now. However one of there major projects was put on hold due to political troubles, as a result they were later taken out of the volunteer pool.

The Aboriginal Womens Circle:
This was an organization was devoted to bettering the lives of women, so it had a lot of baby sitting style components . There was also a lot of administrative work, xerox, shredding documents and what not.

Meno Ya Win Health Center:
The brand new state of the art medical center that fuses new medicine with aboriginal tradition. The volunteer work was on a broad spectrum of different things, naturally, it became my preference.

Three Day Cares (Biidabin, Norah Love, and Sioux Mountain):
Each consisted of young kids, and SK and JK. For Kyle and I, this was confusing, SK is not Saskatchewan, it's Secondary Kindergarten, and at JK is not "Just Kidding", it's Junior Kindergarten.

Out Of The Cold:
This place was a regular looking building which happened to be both a shelter and a food bank. The previous volunteer had painted an incredible mural on the wall of the womens room. Most of the works seemed like cleaning or maintenance.

Sioux Lookout Anti Racism Committee:
SLARC has been around for a long time in the community, it started to combat racism but has turned into more of a community involvement movement.

Chamber of Commerce:
This was a real unique workplace, working in the tourism center for Sioux Lookout. The real local culture center of Sioux Lookout, they really like their blue berries here.

New Vision:
This was another unique workplace, with a variety of multi-media, maintaince, design, community projects.

All that in one day. Wow. Worst part was the interviews were the very next day. So at 8am we woke up to meet at The Rec Center for 9am to do some interviews. Unlike the way we did this in Montreal, we only interview our top 5 or 6 depending. So I met with Meno Ya Win, Chamber of Commerce, Out of The Cold, The Daycares, SLARC, and Salvation Army. Then we all went home while the workk placements fought it out for who they wanted with Sarah.

Later that day Sarah came home shortly after lunch to announce the news:
Cody is part time at Cedar Bay, part time Out of the Cold. Francois is part time Cedar Bay, part time Meno Ya Win. Jessica got full time at New Vision. Marie-France got full time at Norah Love Daycare. Tiffany is working at Salvation Army and Cedar Bay, very appropriate for Manitoba's cow girl. Val got Women's Circle and SLARC. Landen will be at the Chamber of Commerce and Out of The Cold. Kyle will be working at The Rec Center Full time. As for me, I got my very first choice as full time at the Meno Ya Win health center. YAY!

Later that night Sarah mentioned there was a Ladies Auction Night at the Legion. Since is was a ladies night, the guys were asked to stay behind at the house to work on another project. Val was too sick to go, so Marie-France, Jessica, Tiffany, Sarah and myself left for the evening to help out at the event. The proceeds when to the Sioux Lookout Blue Berry festival, which is apparently this HUGE ten day festival at the beginning of August. My job was to sell drink tickets, very similar to my work with G-pa and Rotary at West Vancouver Community Day. As things go more hectic it became my job to ring the bell for "shooters". This was interesting because now that were in Ontario, Tiffany and I are no longer of legal drinking age, but by the end of the night we were serving the shooters. Which was insignificant to Sarah and Jessica who were mixing the drinks at the bar. The highlight of the evening was Marie-France show casing the items as they went up for bid.

After this evening we, the ladies, went to the Prince house for a while to hang out and brag about our cool volunteer work. Then we had our first taste of running home to beat the curfew. We made it.

On Saturday we took a big hike to the top of Sioux Mountain, where Sarah told us the story of how Sioux Lookout got it's name. If you think I'm gonna recite the story, you're wrong. I'm too tried from the hike to write anymore.