After the "Storm" - Jan 17

Jan 17

As per usual, there's not much worth talking about in the morning time or work. So I will just quickly fast-forward to after work...
(sound of tape being fast-forwarded)

After work, I came home and the first thing I did was try and finish writing all my postcards so I can send them out before the post office closes/the truck to send them out leaves. So anyways, I did that, then kind of walked around town a little bit before I returned home. Once I went home the first thing I did (other than refolding my laundry) was to brush my teeth since I didn't do that in the morning because I was so rushed to go to work and the washroom was occupied by someone else showering (yes, the joys of living with 10 other people with only one washroom, haha). So anyways things were fine and dandy until I turned on the tap...that's when I noticed the water was a very murky shade of red/orange/yellow...quite disgusting I know. I filled up a cup of it and went downstairs, and firsted asked Zach about the water, who was in the kitchen doing some kind of great surprise meal for dinner that night and even found a giant cloth to cover the doorway so no one can get in...he said, "yeah the water was like that in the kitchen earlier...but it's better now...and that's the water we are drinking tonight, haHa!" With that, he disappeared behind the curtain and continued with his surprise dinner. I then went to the living room to look for Emilie, who was jamming with Stephen. I showed her the water, and told her that when I flushed the toilet upstairs, the water is the same murky shade of color. She makes a face and then said she will go out to get water for us. As for me, I decided to run the tap a bit longer to let the water clear up a bit, and then brushed my teeth in the same water. That's when I started thinking about Vancouver, because the water there is relatively clean.

Supper rolls around, and it's really quite an affair. Zach and Maxime designed this thing where it's like we are eating in a restaurant, but there's a huge twist. Let me explain this clearly...

So we enter into the "dining hall" (which really consists of a long plain table with two beaches and chairs), which was dark and lit with candles...like a restaurant. Music was played (this celtic flute thing that Cynthia owns and she bought the CD from a museum in Calgary), and then Rebecca turned on the overhead fan and silver strings of graffiti foil started flying around the room from the fan...well more like they dropped from the fan and a huge clump of them fell into my lap...it was quite funny, and Rebecca was like "oops, it was much cooler in my mind"...

Anyways dinner finally happens, and Zach and Maxime comes along with individual menus. The menus however are not your average menus, as there are 16 items and each of them have strange names such as "baked wolf's heart" or "cucumber ice-cream". They told us that we have to order all 16 items, but 4 items will come out per course and our job is to number off what 4 items we want per course. Well because I don't know and I can't even guess what is what, plus since I am so adventurous...I decided to do 1/1/1/1/2/2/2/2/3/3/3/3/4/4/4/4, as did Emilie, who accused me of copying her :P

So after 5 to 10 minutes, our first course arrives...different people have different combinations of different things, ranging from bread/cake/spoon/toothpick to salad/knife/butter/water. This makes things very, very interesting because people may only have a knife to drink their soup, so we see creative ways of eating such was scooping the vegetables with a knife or whatever. For me, first course was such a tease, because I got knife/spoon/fork/teaspoon with no food. Zach and Maxime said everyone has 10 to 15 minutes for a course, so for me it's 15 minutes of watching people eat or trying to eat with their methods...some people speared their food with a knife, while others were rubbing their bread on the amount of margarine they were given. The way Cynthia ate her spaghetti cracked me up, because she would kind of dunk her whole head into the plate of spaghetti and slurp up the spaghetti into her mouth. Mike had a bowl of soup, plus a knife/a cup of juice/toothpick (or something like that). Unfortunately, he wasn't very creative or willing to try eating differently, despite the fact that we were urging him and giving up tips on how he should have his soup. After some "attempts", he just gave up and declared that he had enough...(shakes head)...what a waste of food.

So anyways 2nd course rolls around, but before they came with my 2nd course they took away everyone's 1st course. My 2nd course consists of salad/juice/toothpick/candy...which was cool, except the fact that I had no utensils to eat with, since all my utensils came out on 1st course!! But nothing can stop me from eating my food, so I just ate my salad with my hand, and so did Emilie.

3rd course for me was spaghetti/bread/butter/water...I secretly hid the water under my table because I knew the drinks were done for the 3rd course and I would have nothing to drink for dessert...not something I like.

4th course was carrot cake/extra icing sauce/something/something. This is when I silently pulled out my water from underneath my table and sipped some. People around me were like "where did that water came from?"...they figured that I hid the water and freaking told Zach and Maxime what happened. So they came back and fought with me for my water, with the guys around me helping them...grrrrrr...damn them. And for the rest of my dessert my mouth was filled with a heavy and sickly lingering of sweet taste...yuck. But all in all, the dinner they planned was very good and very creative...(applause)

So after supper we did dishes and house chores (well not everyone) and Aaron comes along with Matt to see Stephen...Emile got really mad that Matt came by when he wasn't supposed to (there's a good story to that which I will tell you all another time) and Aaron talked to her about it. They brought House DVDs to watch on Stephen's laptop, and that's what most of the people did for the evening activity. Me, I went to the convenience store to buy candy chocolates after realizing there were no more chocolate chips in the house (Maxime used them all up for the carrot cake) and I wanted to bake a batch of cookies for my friend who was "malnourished", haha. So anyways I did that, and for a while it was just me in the kitchen baking...and then Zach comes along because he had to make us lunch for the next day. So the two of us were in the kitchen working and casually chatting together for a while...and that's when I decided to ask him "So Zach, are you feeling better now? Is everything ok?"

He started by saying that no, Cheryl and him are not really talking right now, but he doesn't have the anger that he had yesterday...and then he just started talking about his thoughts, his behaviour, how he is with people and in the group, etc. etc. Our conversation lasted almost 3 hours, with him doing most of the talking and me listening to him...I don't really remember everything he said but here are things we talked about:
- his up and down mood swings
- his life in high school...trying to fit in and how he hates high school
- why most his friends are girls rather than guys
- his commitment and trust issues (that's when i was analyzing him)
- him having no personal space in the house (he is not the only one with this problem)
- his relationships (that's when I found out his first boyfriend cheated on him...is that why he has trouble being close to people?)
- how he gets along with certain people in our house more than others...this is where it was really interesting because we talked about a "what if" situation where if the program was to end the next day, he said he probably would lose touch with people within a month...
- Charles...he told me how he and Charles don't really talk in the house and he found out why...Charles wrote him a letter on how he feels uncomfortable around him because of his humour/sarcasm, plus he just doesn't feel like he can click with him (this is one of the ways people in the house communicate with others if they are unhappy with them). He was kind of degrading himself about it (at least that's what I felt), so I argued with him that Charles doesn't mean that, and I can back myself up on that because I actually read the letter (Charles asked me to read it and check the grammar before handing it to Zach, haha)...somehow about discussing this some more, Zach started crying...and to tell you the truth I was glad he cried because he is finally unleashing his emotions in a more helpful way rather than lashing it out negatively
- so so so so much more...i can't remember anymore

Summary: I am sooooo glad Zach and I had this talk, because a) Zach is someone who puts out this showy, happy-go-lucky personality most of the time, but would not really let people get close to him and learn about his "secrets"...pretty much his personality, plus his sarcasm is his defense mechanism to prevent people from getting to know the real him. But he was willing to tell me all these things that even his best friend doesn't really know about, which makes me really sad because he doesn't have an actual friend he can or he is willing to connect to...it must be so lonely.
b) Because he doesn't open himself to people, when it happens...it's like watching a shooting star fly across the sky...a rare event.
c) With this conversation, everything becomes crystal-clear about him...his mood swings, his "talk-behind-people" ways, etc, etc. Cheesily enough, I am going to quote Tyra Banks with her saying "There's no bitch in the world, only people with hurt souls"...Zach is the perfect example of that because beneath his sarcasm and dramatic personality, he is just an insecure person who wants acceptance and change for the better, but it is just unfortunate for him that the one thing our group focus on the most - communication - is his worst problem. So this 9 months will be very interesting and challenging for him.

- The End -....?