My time in Quebec is slowly coming to an end and I know I will miss my home here very much. I have become very comfortable in my new home and with the people in my community. In less than one month I will be heading to a foreign country, where I will be residing for 3 months, living and learning about the African culture. My time will be spent much like it is here in Quebec, working on farm land and learning more as I go along. I have had a lot of thoughts run through my mind lately about what I’ve experienced and what I am going to experience. I have to admit, I am a little nervous about living in a country where running water is considered a luxury and in the village I’ll be staying, nonexistent. Although there will be many challenges heading my way, I know that those challenges will be easier to overcome knowing I have God on my side. This experience is going to teach me many things about myself that I have yet to discover. I have already noticed some positive changes within myself that will help me grow into the person I think I’m meant to be. I know when I return to Canada, I will have a completely different perspective on life and I’m willing to make the efforts to do something positive with it. I believe everyone is given different experiences in their lifetime for a reason, and this one will and has already started to change my life in a positive way. I have made really good friends that I know I will keep in contact with for years to come. The program has been great so far and I have enjoyed my time here. There have been some difficulties along the way, but if everything was perfect it would get kind of boring. Not everything is going to work out perfectly and I know in Mali that will be the case for a lot of things. Thankfully I have a great team that I can turn to when I need them.
During my free time when Rahama and I are not working, we have the tendency to go for long bike rides or walks around Riviere Ouelle. This in my opinion is great, because I love exploring new areas and learning more about the community I’m in. There is this one place I like to go which is located down by the water in Riviere Ouelle. I like to sit on this piece of cement that overlooks the water and watch the sunset while I think about things. I really enjoy this simplicity and the laid back lifestyle. Although there is a lot of work to do on the farm, I always have the much needed time for myself. The other place that I absolutely love going is to the camping grounds as I have previously mentioned in my other blogs. The long bike ride is great for me and it allows me to clear my head and get little frustrations out. Yes, life here is great and hopefully Mali will exceed even my highest expectations as well.
I have always been one who has enjoyed going to new places and exploring everything. Rahama and I seem to go lots of places with our host mom and her friends, as they enjoy showing us around Quebec. We have gone to Kamouraska and St. Denis to tour the churches and the old shops. These are the more touristy areas and remind me of some touristy lakes back in Saskatchewan. This past weekend was a pretty exciting one as we did a lot. On Sunday August 15th, Rahama and I went with our host mom’s friend Francis to a church in a small village called St. Roch Des-Aulnaies. This church was absolutely gorgeous as every church seems to be with all the amazing old architecture. We happened to go to the one service a year where the community is allowed to bring their pets to the service. It was pretty neat seeing dogs and cats in the church while the priest gave his sermon. Even the priest himself had his dog with him up at the altar. Even though the service was in French, I enjoyed listening to the music and was able to understand all the prayers as it was a Catholic church, and I myself am Catholic. After the church service the priest went outside with all the pets and their owners to bless the animals and the bigger animals, like horses that were not able to enter the church. The Saint who this church is named after was very fond of animals. After we watched a little bit of the blessing ceremony, we went with Francis to the basement of the church. She took us under the church where there was an old graveyard that the church was built on top of in the 1700’s. It was very neat and a little creepy seeing all the old gravestones go far under the church, where we could not even walk. Rahama and I thought it was pretty cool, so we took some pictures and looked around for a bit. Afterwards we went to and old mill, that still makes different types of flour today. On the lot, there was an old manor that you could tour called the “Manor of Des-Aulnaies”. We went on the tour and toured the gorgeous Victorian home and the beautiful gardens. The tour was very neat, as I enjoy looking at old things and seeing how people lived in the past. Afterwards we toured the old mill and saw how they make the flour with the huge water wheel. If you ever have the chance to come to Quebec and tour around the Des-Aulnaies area, I suggest you do as there is a lot of interesting history to it. To end the long day, Rahama and I went with Francis and her son on a car tour through the mountains. It's so beautiful here and I absolutely love the scenery!
My group has been really great so far, and I am enjoying getting to know them more and more each day. Our new group member Liam from Ontario had arrived last week and we were able to get to know him as a group last Friday. He is very nice and is Anglophone, but knows some French which is good for him as he is starting the program a little late. He seems to be very laid back and easy to talk to. He had done a similar program to Jeunese Canada Monde called Yitimivik, which is also a governmentally funded program, but they don’t leave Canada. Today (Friday) our group went to some of our team members work project to plant trees. We are planting 150 trees in two days to make up for our carbon footprint that we will be making on our way to Mali. This was for 4 of our group member’s project called “Green Miles.” It was really fun, but extremely hot! There was lots of pictures taken and I’m sure that some of them are laugh worthy. Next Friday is my and Rahama’s project that we have to present to the group for the entire day. I am getting a little nervous for it as don’t know how I’ll do with talking to the group in all French. I know it will go fine though, so all I need to do is keep working on my French and planning out the day. Other than that, my group is great and I am having a blast getting to spend time with them. I hope to upload my blog sooner the next time, but I just get so busy! I know I’ve said it before that I would do it sooner, but I have come to the conclusion that I suck at uploading it when I say I will. Anyways, I hope to get at least a couple more up before Mali, but until then,
Au Revior!
Friday, August 20, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Farm life in the eyes of city Girl
Okay so once again I left my blog vacant for a while, but I promise it won’t happen again. I have just been so busy that I haven’t had enough time to work on my blog. The good thing is I’ll be able to post much more often. I can bike to the camping grounds which are only a short 15 minute bike ride from my home. It’s gorgeous there, and I love going for a walk along the beach when I’m finished and watching the sunset over the St. Laurent River. Quebec’s scenery is quite beautiful and I’m taking as much of it in as I can.
Life here in Quebec has been a little crazy lately. My time here is slowly ending and soon I will be venturing off on another crazy 3 month adventure in Africa! Since my last blog I have done some exciting things that I will most likely never do again after this experience is finished. I learned how to milk my first cow and yes, I actually thought it was quite fun. I like to think of it as my official initiation into the farm life. Even though I’ve been here for a little over a month, I couldn’t leave the farm without milking one cow, as that is a part of my family’s everyday life. When I was milking the cow, I have to admit I was a little scared of having a 1500 pt animal above me, but I got used to it after a while. The one thing I did not get used to or appreciate very much was having the cow’s tail in my face. I was quite disgusted, but found it really funny when Rahama was taking pictures of me and my attempts to keep the tail away from my face. My family has a sweet setup for milking the cows, and cool machines that carry the milk from the cows to the churner. They sell the milk and save some for the family, as there is plenty. Speaking of cows, my baby calve that I named Lucy has been sold, so in her place is a new baby calve which I named Annabelle! I finally found a cute calve that suites the name well, and I assure you this time she is a female. I also found a cat on the farm that I have fallen in love with and I named her Rajah. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a dog over a cat any day, but this cat is absolutely adorable. One of my favourite things about the farm is the animals, and I love working with them. But my absolute favourite thing that I have had the chance to do on the farm was learn how to drive a tractor! I drove it for quite a distance, and I loved it! I am getting quite used to this new lifestyle, but don’t plan on becoming a farmer in the future.
While in Quebec I have spent a lot of my free time getting to know the community and the people who live in Riviere Ouelle. One of my host mom’s friends started a youth group in Riviere Ouelle, so that the kids and teenagers would have something to do. It’s great because there are a lot of people involved and a lot of the teenagers are around my age. We get along really well and they meet every night for about 3 hours except on Sundays. They play football games, basketball games, etc. They also have a cool place to meet when it’s ugly outside filled with a pool table, basketball game, WII setup, Xbox, a computer, etc. It’s a really cool place to hang out, and get to know everyone. The group also does 6 big trips/ activities a summer where everyone who wants to participate can. Rahama and I were lucky enough to have been invited on a trip to the biggest water park in all of Quebec located at Valcartier Village Vacances. We went on a gorgeous day with about 45 other kids and teenagers. The park had huge tube slides, tube rides, pools and around 5000 people. It was crazy packed the day we went as it was absolutely beautiful out. One of my favourite things at the park was a tube ride that was designed around a 1600th century style castle. It was really neat and full of rustic, ancient architectural designs. There were two slides that would take you down into the underground tunnel, where you would ride for about 8 minutes. There was another ride like this called the “Amazone”. It was designed to look like it was from an Indiana Jones movie, which made it really exciting to go through on the tube. You could grab ropes and if you grabbed the wrong one, it would spill a bunch of water on you. The park was a great way to spend the day with new friends and my counterpart.
My group has been great so far and I have had great times with them. We have had two more presentations done by Jon and Djbril and Simon and Yamadou, where we learned a lot about their topics. On Friday July 23rd, our entire group was introduced to our new member from Nova Scotia. His name is Kyle and he is Anglophone! This makes us Anglophone’s in the group, a group of four again! He is very nice and has been picking up French quite fast. Unfortuantly, our group was just informed that one of the Canadians, Simon, is leaving us on Sunday. He doesn’t like it here anymore and wants to go home. Our group was really surprised to hear this news and are now wondering who is going to replace him. The rest of the Canadians love it here, and don’t have any plans to leave. Of course there are hard times with the cultural differences and such, but it gets better eventually. I hope that the new member fits in well and that everything works out fine. This past weekend, our group travelled to a place called Riviere De Loup for a weekend full of activities and hanging out with each other. We stayed in a hostel, which was really nice and comfortable. We had a lot of time to discuss important topics in our group and to just hangout. On Saturday, our entire group went to a club and danced all night. We had so much fun just dancing and the Malians loved it. I was really glad that the Malians had a good time dancing and hanging out. This past week has been full of hard labour. My host brother estimated that Rahama and I had lifted over 800 bales of hay just this past week! Crazy to imagine, but it’s slowly getting easier. I have also lifted and cut more wood and have noticed I’m getting some muscles! The work on the farm has been hard, but it’s been a lot of fun also and a good way to bond with my family and counterpart.
I know this blog doesn’t seem that long for the time I haven’t written, but I summarized everything that I figured was important. A lot of the work on the farm is repetitive and I don’t think that you would want to read the same thing every time. I will be blogging more often as I have already mentioned, so keep looking in for more news on my new life in Quebec! Until next time,
Au Revoir!
Life here in Quebec has been a little crazy lately. My time here is slowly ending and soon I will be venturing off on another crazy 3 month adventure in Africa! Since my last blog I have done some exciting things that I will most likely never do again after this experience is finished. I learned how to milk my first cow and yes, I actually thought it was quite fun. I like to think of it as my official initiation into the farm life. Even though I’ve been here for a little over a month, I couldn’t leave the farm without milking one cow, as that is a part of my family’s everyday life. When I was milking the cow, I have to admit I was a little scared of having a 1500 pt animal above me, but I got used to it after a while. The one thing I did not get used to or appreciate very much was having the cow’s tail in my face. I was quite disgusted, but found it really funny when Rahama was taking pictures of me and my attempts to keep the tail away from my face. My family has a sweet setup for milking the cows, and cool machines that carry the milk from the cows to the churner. They sell the milk and save some for the family, as there is plenty. Speaking of cows, my baby calve that I named Lucy has been sold, so in her place is a new baby calve which I named Annabelle! I finally found a cute calve that suites the name well, and I assure you this time she is a female. I also found a cat on the farm that I have fallen in love with and I named her Rajah. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a dog over a cat any day, but this cat is absolutely adorable. One of my favourite things about the farm is the animals, and I love working with them. But my absolute favourite thing that I have had the chance to do on the farm was learn how to drive a tractor! I drove it for quite a distance, and I loved it! I am getting quite used to this new lifestyle, but don’t plan on becoming a farmer in the future.
While in Quebec I have spent a lot of my free time getting to know the community and the people who live in Riviere Ouelle. One of my host mom’s friends started a youth group in Riviere Ouelle, so that the kids and teenagers would have something to do. It’s great because there are a lot of people involved and a lot of the teenagers are around my age. We get along really well and they meet every night for about 3 hours except on Sundays. They play football games, basketball games, etc. They also have a cool place to meet when it’s ugly outside filled with a pool table, basketball game, WII setup, Xbox, a computer, etc. It’s a really cool place to hang out, and get to know everyone. The group also does 6 big trips/ activities a summer where everyone who wants to participate can. Rahama and I were lucky enough to have been invited on a trip to the biggest water park in all of Quebec located at Valcartier Village Vacances. We went on a gorgeous day with about 45 other kids and teenagers. The park had huge tube slides, tube rides, pools and around 5000 people. It was crazy packed the day we went as it was absolutely beautiful out. One of my favourite things at the park was a tube ride that was designed around a 1600th century style castle. It was really neat and full of rustic, ancient architectural designs. There were two slides that would take you down into the underground tunnel, where you would ride for about 8 minutes. There was another ride like this called the “Amazone”. It was designed to look like it was from an Indiana Jones movie, which made it really exciting to go through on the tube. You could grab ropes and if you grabbed the wrong one, it would spill a bunch of water on you. The park was a great way to spend the day with new friends and my counterpart.
My group has been great so far and I have had great times with them. We have had two more presentations done by Jon and Djbril and Simon and Yamadou, where we learned a lot about their topics. On Friday July 23rd, our entire group was introduced to our new member from Nova Scotia. His name is Kyle and he is Anglophone! This makes us Anglophone’s in the group, a group of four again! He is very nice and has been picking up French quite fast. Unfortuantly, our group was just informed that one of the Canadians, Simon, is leaving us on Sunday. He doesn’t like it here anymore and wants to go home. Our group was really surprised to hear this news and are now wondering who is going to replace him. The rest of the Canadians love it here, and don’t have any plans to leave. Of course there are hard times with the cultural differences and such, but it gets better eventually. I hope that the new member fits in well and that everything works out fine. This past weekend, our group travelled to a place called Riviere De Loup for a weekend full of activities and hanging out with each other. We stayed in a hostel, which was really nice and comfortable. We had a lot of time to discuss important topics in our group and to just hangout. On Saturday, our entire group went to a club and danced all night. We had so much fun just dancing and the Malians loved it. I was really glad that the Malians had a good time dancing and hanging out. This past week has been full of hard labour. My host brother estimated that Rahama and I had lifted over 800 bales of hay just this past week! Crazy to imagine, but it’s slowly getting easier. I have also lifted and cut more wood and have noticed I’m getting some muscles! The work on the farm has been hard, but it’s been a lot of fun also and a good way to bond with my family and counterpart.
I know this blog doesn’t seem that long for the time I haven’t written, but I summarized everything that I figured was important. A lot of the work on the farm is repetitive and I don’t think that you would want to read the same thing every time. I will be blogging more often as I have already mentioned, so keep looking in for more news on my new life in Quebec! Until next time,
Au Revoir!
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