Huzzah, Lauren has a blog!
Hopefully this form of communication will work better for me than sending out masses of emails galore. Don't get me wrong, i adore your emails and they are read with great pleasure, but i very rarely have enough time to reply. So i'll try this newfangled blogging thingy and hopefully i won't just give up after 3 posts.
I'll just come right out and admit that i haven't been too stoked on starting a blog or writing emails b/c there's SO MUCH preliminary stuff to explain. But i'll man up and get it over with, so my future postings will be shorter/more fun to write/more fun to read. I'm going to be lazy and just copy and paste bits of a mass email i sent out last week, for the benefit of those who may not have recieved the email (sorry!). Then i'll clarify some things, answer some questions, add some photos, do some cartwheels, and try not to be too corny. I have to go make couscous soon though, so i may not get it all done tonight. ok, enough with all that, here it goes...

My first four days of Katimavik (oct 15th to 19th) were spent at 'Mass Orientation camp' (aka mass-o). It was held at a 'Samesun' hostel in Vernon, right next to a ski run on Silverstar. It was a massive place, quite clean and comfy. When we arrived (around 9:30pm) there was some snow on the ground; it snowed more on Thursday and at one point there was about a foot of snow.
There were 25 people at mass-o, with 3 different destinations: Vernon, Kelowna, and Penticton. There are 8 in my group, but I’ll talk about them later.
There were lots of looooong tedious workshops on all the aspects of the program such as work habits, community, behavioural expectations, etc. When we weren’t listening to Christine, the ‘Project Coordinator’ (PC) for the Southern Okanogan region, we could play pool (with only one cue), foosball, cards, board games or go outside for a cigarette (a shocking number of people in the cluster smoke. Blech). The first couple of days were the hardest. I felt like I was in limbo… part of the time I really wanted to go home and other times I just wanted to get moved into the house and ‘get on with it’! But once I got comfortable talking and joking with some people it got a lot better. One night I had a great conversation with a girl from Nanaimo group about music. It turned out that she was at Pemberton festival as well as the tiny social justice festival in North Van I went to to see ‘Tegan and Sara’(a band I like). She’s in the Vernon group.
By Sunday morning it felt like we had all been at the hostel for weeks rather than only 4 days. We were all itching to see our new ‘homes’, but it was a little sad for all of us to be split up.
Quick Side Note: I SUCK AT FRENCH! And I’m not just saying that. I was definitely one of the worst in the cluster. All the francophone kids actually scared me at first. They were all really well dressed, loud, and overwhelmingly animated. One girl named Amelie was definitely the most loquacious person at mass-o, but interestingly we just found out after we moved into our house that she spent 4 hours in the Penticton house and decided she wanted to go home to Quebec. Also, I recently found out that a girl i was on the Greyhound bus with went back home to Vancouver last week. But anyway seriously, my French is tres mal. I have a loooong way to go, and we don’t start French lessons until the Quebec trimester (April!).
We moved into the house on Sunday Oct 19th. It’s only a few minutes’ walk from downtown Kelowna, so most of us walk to and from work in less than 20 minutes. I love the house! Apparently it was built in the 1920s, so it’s quite small and aged but it’s cheerful and cozy and quirky. I’m sharing a room with Lisette and Jeanette upstairs. The ceiling will take some getting used to, but it’s nice and gets a lot of natural light. And it has a SECRET PASSAGEWAY! Ok, not-so-secret-but-really-flippin-awesome passageway that leads downstairs to the dining room. I had a supreme-o Nancy Drew moment when we found it.
By some bizzare and extremely fortunate fluke, most of the people in my group are excellent cooks, so all the food made so far has been really tasty.
The first week in Kelowna we did a fun scavenger hunt activity downtown, which was great b/c it helped me get my bearings. However downtown Ktown is nothing compared to downtown Vancouver, so I don't think i'm at risk of getting lost. In the first week we also went to a job-search and interview skills workshop, got to tour all of the work sites, then we had interviews with our top three choices. (in the next post i'll tell you more about the work stuff.)
In a nutshell, I’m having a great time so far. I really feel like I can be my crazy self around all the people in the group.
I miss everyone a lot! Feel free to send me emails and texts and snail mail! *hint hint* I promise a postcard in return. eventually.