An Interesting Change

As you guys may have all known by now, my blog is now in private mode. This is a bit unfortunate, because I like the idea that anyone can do a random search and accidentally stumble upon my blog, and enjoy it at the moment. However it is this exact trait that made me decide to privatize my blog...I will get into the story later. But right now, sorry about the extra step.

Before I start, let us get accustomed to one thing. This - è - is now an apostrophe. I am now using another computer in the cafe that is less important (with all the allo stop stuff and other cafe/organization documents), because I donèt feel like getting kicked off anymore while I write. Caprish? I was going to add in quotations also, but I actually found it in this keyboard. My goal today - 2 blogs.

So let us start...I now must contemplate whether I tell everything in a ¨what happened today¨ point-of-view, or just go to the main events. Main events it is.

Mondayès main event (man the ¨apostrophe¨ cracks me up) - first day of going back to work after house manager week, and I found one part of the cafe flooded. Water was all over the floor at that part and my job for half an hour or so was to dry up the water. Apparently the ceiling of that area of the cafe had holes, and Monday happened to be raining. Rain + holes = you get the drill. Other than the part with me mopping the floor (which I actually didnèt mind that much), it was rather amusing, and slightly nostalgic in a way because the rain pitter-pattering into the buckets reminded me of Vancouver and the rain/rainforest/etc. In fact, if the cafe is in Vancouver, they could name it the ¨Rainforest Cafe¨, haha...yes I am lame :P. The whole day, Marie Pilote (director of La Boite à Bleuets) plus Claudie had to deal with the landlord and stuff like that, and for me that was the amusing part because it kind of felt like watching 2 chickens running around with their heads chopped off (not in a mean way, of course :P)

Mondayès Mike Moment: All of us English kids were in Lucieès French class, and we were discussing about holidays. Lucie told us about Quebecès provincial holiday - St. Jean Baptiste Day, to which I asked who he is and why he was chosen over other saints. She explained that St Jean Baptiste (John the Baptist) was the one who baptisted Jesus, and he was the cousin of Jesus...with that, Mike created a classic moment for himself...although Stephen and Zach saw it coming:
¨So does that mean Jesus is French, because of his cousin?¨

Tuesday/Yesterday - 3 to 4 main things happened, and all in all an interesting day of events.

1) Quebec discussion - I donèt know whether you guys still remember, but I said I wanted to invite Alexandre Cloutier (the MLA of the Saguenay-Lac St. Jean area) to come in to the Katimavik house and talk about issues in Quebec (culture, differences, separation, you get the drift). After 1 email and letter later (I sent it on Monday), I decided (along with the suggestion of Lucie) to look for other possible candidates. A very good candidate for me was a man by the name of Stephan Tremblay, an ex-politican who Alexandre Cloutier actually worked for before becoming a politician himself. And luckily for me, Stephan Tremblay is actually the vice-president of La Boite à Bleuets himself.
Originally I got Claudie to ask Marie-Pier about this to Stephan Tremblay, and Marie-Pier said she will ask. Now with my experience in asking people for favours, I knew the chances of her asking are relatively slim, just because it doesnèt concern her. Perhaps it was fate or whatever, but yesterday Stephen Tremblay showed up for a meeting and although I had seen him a couple of times in the cafe, I had no idea that he was Stephan Tremblay until Marie-Pierès dad (who is also part of the La Boite à Bleuets organizations) called him ¨Stephan¨. Everything immediately clicked and I thought ¨itès now or never, Angel...hereès the giant ham sitting there waiting for you...you donèt need to go through people or find him in other methods...go ask him!¨ So despite myself being a bit nervous (because the opportunity was unexpected and I had never talked to him previously) and feeling that what I was doing was a bit inappropriate (because Marie-Pier said she would ask him), I went up to him and with my bad French introduced myself and explained what I wanted...the result:
He said yes (I think), but he will have to check when he is free, and he will get back to me. I immediately gave him my phone number and Valerieès contact information...now I just have to wait. But I am not going to get my hopes up because you know how it is, men with womenès phone numbers (oh snap).

2) Mid-Trimester Reflection: This is something that the Project Coordinator does with each group in her cluster. In Blind River, Cara (our PC in Ontario, who quit after we left Ontario) was the one that does this, and the whole thing pretty much is about how the group is doing, and the PL, etc...when Cara did it, all of us were doing billeting and the whole thing took around 3 hours, since she included meditation, painting, all that fun stuff. The PC in Quebec (Veronique Frigon) was much more practical and to the point than Cara (not that I have anything against Cara), although it was ¨interesting¨ to have Veronique doing the mid-trimester reflection because previously to this, many of us have never talked or even met her before. However, she was one cool lady, and she only took an hour to do our mid-trimester reflection. That is because she focused all her questions about Valerie, and we didnèt have to answer questions about our group dynamics and etc. That one hour was interesting, but not in the sense of ¨wow this is mentally stimulating¨ but more like ¨I am learning things that I never really knew because I was in obliviation¨...I am not going into great details, but the meeting pretty much consisted of all of us sitting in the living room, and Veronique interrogating us (well not that bad, but you know what I mean) about Valerie. And a good half of the meeting consisted of the Frenchies answering majority of the questions and the English kids staring into space/trying to understand because a good part of the meeting was in French. Only when we demanded for translation (which was often) do we get one. But it is not that bad, and soon we were given an explanation of what they said after the French part was said. And in my opinion the meeting got to be more about the ¨English group¨ when I mentioned that Valerie wasnèt close to the English speakers the way she was with the French speakers...that got interesting...and some stuff I discovered that I never really knew (or kind of had an idea but only until yesterday did I truly understand because of the group dynamics):
- Valerie apparently was relatively moody, and the French kids had to guess when she was in a good mood in order to get a good advantage with things (as in you canèt really talk to her if she was in a bad mood)...this I didnèt really know about.
- Valerie doesnèt really have great patience like Emilie did. If anything she was usually the first one to want housemeetings to end (this I saw but I guess the Frenchies got the brunt of it), plus other things.
- The French kids felt she didnèt really know the dynamics of the group because she never really knew there were little tensions in the group until last Sunday in the group meeting (will talk about that in another blog), and could realy afford to spend more time with the group instead of working in her room/computer room.
- Stephanie (and Cheryl I think) thought she complained a lot. This I didnèt know.
- (The biggest problem, in my opinion)...Valerie pretty much planned majority of the events for us. In the words of Cynthia ¨when we first got here, we donèt really know what is going on because we were new and therefore didnèt really plan activities...Valerie helped us out by showing us around and filling the calendar..but that continued and no one really planned anything in the group...and therefore no one really know what is going on half of the time¨ (only though she said it shorter and sweeter). Well to be more precise, because Valerie is from the area (Laiterrie), she knew all the things around here and had all these ideas...and delegated to only the French kids for work, while the English kids didnèt really do anything. (There was a slight bitterness in the voices of the lovely Frenchies as they explained this) Veronique thought this may be one of the reasons all these little tensions started happening in the group. Honestly, I never really knew the Frenchies have been doing all the work, but it was obvious that Valerie planned many, many activities for us.
Rebecca also pointed out that when she tried to plan an activity (Ecological Village, Alma Big Clean Up, under environment committee), Valerie would say it is a really good idea, but would add in her input and eventually turn it into something different (Alma Big Clean Up = Backyard Big Clean Up, haha).

However, on a more positive note, we did discuss the positive things about Valerie (energetic, driven, very organized, an overall nice person), and the meeting ended with us telling Veronique not to give Valerie a hard time, and then Veronique explained why she was absent for so long and why we never got to meet her. Apparently she went through a bad time during March/April, plus she had to deal with the irresponsibilities of Cara (who was supposed to give Veronique information packages about us but never did)...she apologized and promised she is now reachable 24 hours a day (I must say Cara wasnèt like that at all). All in all she seemed pretty cool, and she said we get to go to Quebec in 2 weeks!!!
This meeting made me realize that a) the English group do not really have a close relationship with Valerie (but do we really want to with the stuff the Frenchies said?¨and b) differences/boundaries caused by language, plus responsibilites (whose responsibility is it to bridge the gap? Although she didnèt talk to us like she does with the Frenchies, but donèt the English kids have a responsibility to close that gap too?) . Things to reflect on...

3) THE BIG DEAL - MY BLOG...(sorry I will write about that later in the night/next morning...it is now 5:00 pm and I gotta go home for dinner...I canèt be late or I will get bitched at by the group and/or get a CTI...pah...damn I did not reach my goal. My new goal - have both blogs up by tomorrow morning)
*A couple of hours later*
Hello I am now using the Katima-computer...I have decided that since tonight is free time, I will most definitely finish this blog, and wake up early tomorrow to write the other blog I promised. So where was I? Yes MY BLOG
When I got off work yesterday, I saw Charles hanging out in the kitchen with Maxime and Stephanie...very normal until he said "Angel I saw your blog today"...only he said it like "Angel I saw your block today" with his heavy French accent, so no one really got him, including me...but everything clicked in for me, and in my head I was like "uh oh...I need to talk to him". So after the meeting with Veronique, I immediately followed him into the computer room and asked him about it. So he told me that during his inactive period of work, he was bored and was simply searching in google using words such as katimavik and blind river...then he stumbled upon my blog and spent a good 2 hours reading my entries, looking at photos, watching videos, etc.
His thoughts - very interesting, wants to read more...and no he was not offended about me uploading his pictures and videos without his permission...and when I talked about him.
My thoughts - Hooooooooly Shhhhiiiiiiittttt (chill in body)

But now thinking back, I think it was fate that he found the blog...it definitely opened up many conversations that we don`t usually have, and it allowed us to really sit down and discuss about things (if you can read between the lines Charles and I don`t really socialize with each other), group dynamics, etc. So I got to hear some of his thoughts, and it was definitely a bonding moment...yes I am kind of glad that he found the blog, ironically enough. But with both Cynthia and Charles knowing about the blog (even though Cynthia still haven`t found it), I have decided to set it to private, very unfortunate...but ironically enough I am allowing Charles to read my blog, haha.
Since Charles I know you are reading this right now, here goes: I know you promised you wouldn`t tell anyone, but if I find out you did...[insert your worst nightmare here]...=)

4) So because Charles and I were looking at the blog and looking at photos and stuff, there is now evidence of my blog...so I was clearing the history on the computer and chatting to my friends about what happened when suddenly I felt a pair of hands slapping on my shoulders...normally I am not that jittery, but it was just the idea of getting caught and the surprise element that scared me...and I screamed my head off, which made Zach laughed his ass off (he now likes to scare me every now and then). Then Zach noticed that I was clearing the history, which he began interrogating what I was doing...and I got all flustered and started frantically closing all the windows and stuff. Yes I know, how smooth of me...it just made him so much more suspicious and he was like "you know I could easily find out where you went"...I was just like "ahh you are annoying"...closed my conversations abruptly without any goodbyes and just left the room. Zach (always the one to have his last words) said "ha, you never say that...something must be going on".
Why am I such a bad liar? Why does Zach have to be so damn sharp?

Ok I think that`s all I have to say for this blog. I really need to go to bed early tonight because I am working at 7:30 am tomorrow, and I want to wake up early tomorrow to write the other blog. Plus I have rejected Maxime`s plea of me going to the bar with everyone (minus Cynthia and Mike, I think) because of this so I really need to go to bed, or else Maxime will shatter me to pieces (and she can because she is 6 feet tall, and I...let`s just say I am not).