Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Busy Busy Busy



Top: It's sideways, but one of the Jenna Centre infants enjoying her time on Santa's lap hehe!Middle: Josie Cox's spot in the parade, he was promoting local business.
Bottom: Marc and Karine posing for a very cute picture at the parade. We all had our faces painted with little Christmas-like pictures.


Hey Hey Hey!

Sorry it's been quite a while. I've been fairly busy over the past couple of weeks. With what you may ask, well I'm not quite sure, but I have been. Christmas is fast approaching and there is a lot going on here in Chisasibi. The past week alone I had four Christmas parties to help out with so my days were full of wrapping presents and decorating and cooking and serving and seeing Santa Claus and making sure all of the kids got a present. The reason for the four parties is that there are four daycare facilities here and due to my volunteer status, well I was asked to volunteer at all of them, and it was such a blast to see all the different reactions when the children had to sit on Santa's lap.

So, a couple weekends ago, Karine, our Project Coordinator, flew up to have a visit and to have our mid-trimester assesment with the group. It was a lot of fun and she got to experience all of Chisasibi that she possibly could in four days. We were fortunate enough to take part in the annual Chisasibi Christmas Parade, which was TONNES of fun. There were quite a few floats and the whole town came out to see the parade. Of course, we didn't have a float, per say, but we decorated the Katima-van to the best of our abilities and played music as loud as we could. We also brought along lots of goodies to hand out to the kids (and some adults, Angela!). After a long parade route we were then invited to the Mitchuap (city hall) for some goodies and to see who got the prizes for the best floats (alas, we did not win!).

Karine left on the Sunday and we continued on with our Katima-lives until, SURPRISE! Santa Claus himself stopped by the next Tuesday with the fire department, collecting donations and handing out more goodies :). Naturally, myself and a couple others RAN outside to see him because we were so excited.

The next few days at work, our cook was sick so I was asked to fill in for him. Cooking for an entire hungry daycare is not as easy as it sounds hehe.

Sadly on Wednesday night, this would be the 3rd I believe, our dear group member Marjolaine announced to the group that for personal reasons she was quitting the program and heading home. This was a hard hit on the group, as we have all bonded really well and were very sad to hear that she was leaving. So we all made her a personalized DVD to take home to remember us by, and on Friday, the 5th, she hopped on her flight home, with Marc, who was also heading down to Montreal for a week for conferences and meetings.

That weekend was our "48 hours", in other words, free time. Unfortunately, our plans were cancelled so the group stayed home, for the most part, and relaxed. Rachelle and I stayed home the Friday night while everyone went to the school Christmas party and we (don't tell Marc) bought hot dogs and bacon and pigged out on normally banned food hehe. We then started a huge painting project which we're still working on but it is looking SO GOOD and it's going to be amazing when it's finished. I'll post a picture when it's complete.

So Monday was back to work and the house had an Asian inspired dinner, which was really good, then we all sat down and watched a documentary on Metal Music. Very educational, however it's still not my favourite kind of music. Tuesday night, Janie Cox, a Cree Culture teacher at the school came over for dinner for a Greece inspired dinner, for which Garret, Kalleena and myself dressed in togas, and the group worked on the mittens that they started, while I, who am not doing mittens, worked on another little side-project I had going.

Last night, was another regular Wednesday night, the group had a Mexican inspired dinner and then watched Tenacious D: Pic of Destiny, which was loads of fun.

Tonight was much like last night, but we ate perogies, and they was good. Another teacher from the school came for dinner and he brought his guitar, so he and Stephan played together for a bit and it was really nice.

Next week is our last week of work. The daycares are having the Staff Christmas Party on Tuesday night so I am looking forward to that. It's going to be sad to leave the daycare because I have grown really attatched to all the staff and children and they hold a special place in my heart. I hope the next Katimavik group has as much fun as we did here.

Anyways, that's all I've got for tonight. Wish you all the best, take care!
-megan

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

hey, great blog.

I'm in your roation, right now we're in Woodstock but we're going to be in chisasibi next trimester. It's a lot of fun here- there's even a daycare if you wanted to do the same kind of work.

i had some questions about chisasibi- would you mind emailing me at ezrabridgman@gmail.com
-thank