So, You Think You Can Do Katimavik? (3/4)

Need context?

1) First things First: What is Katimavik? Click Here
2) My Reasons for Choosing Katimavik. Click Here
3) Oh the places I would go: My three communities and beyond. Click Here
4) My Katimavik Group: Randomly-Selected Brothers and Sisters (below)
5) But what did we do all day? My three wonderful work placements Click Here

——————————————————————————————–

4) My Katimavik Group: Randomly-Selected Brothers and Sisters

My group poses in front of the welcome sign to our 3rd community. If you're wondering why we all have short hair, read on.

To say we were all different would be an indisputable understatement. We were not only different, some of us were polar opposites. Yohan was an anarchist, atheist, self-proclaimed punk from gritty Montreal, QC; Jon was a devout Christian and the proud owner of a pet goat in his hometown of boat-studded Lunenburg, NS. Courtenay was a feminist vegan from the lovely island of Victoria, BC; Ian was a smooth-talking meat-lover from our nation’s capital.

We started out as complete strangers forced to live in close quarters. In our first house in Leduc, all six girls lived in one room with three bunk beds. The five guys (who had two rooms between them) laughed at us then…but stopped laughing when they had to share an even smaller room in our even smaller St. Jovite house in the next rotation. It was compromise or bust.

For any given characteristic I might isolate, there were at least two people in the house who stood at either pole. There were introverts and extroverts, Francophones and Anglophones, conservatives and liberals, neat-freaks and pack-rats, city slickers and small-town kids. Still, to be fair, there was usually a continuum: shades of grey along which to have countless meetings about empathy.

You probably assume that we wanted to kill each other.

So, You Think You Can Do Katimavik? (2/4)

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition–Alan Alda

Me, at the age of 18, on my second day of Katimavik.

Need context?

1) First things First: What is Katimavik? Click Here
2) My Reasons for Choosing Katimavik. (read below)
3) Oh the places I would go: My three communities and beyond. (read below)
4) My Katimavik Group: Randomly selected brothers and sister. Click Here.
5) But what did we do all day? My three wonderful work placements Click Here

______________________________________________________________

2) My Reasons for Choosing Katimavik

At first, my parents didn’t understand. I had obtained an entrance scholarship to York University, I was receiving good grades, I was involved in the York community…why would I want to drop it all for a so-called gap year? I explained again that I needed time to figure myself out, that I didn’t want to go into my second year without any idea of who I was or what I wanted, and that I needed to do something other than sit in front of a pedagogue. That was my official plea.

Off the record, I was really desperate for a change that was big enough to give me some much-needed perspective. You see, even though older people scoff at teens that use the word, I truly felt that I was heart-broken. In the summer after high school, my first love had promised me affection and loyalty and he packed his bags for Carleton University. Long story short: he broke that promise.

It wasn’t so much the pain of the break-up—though that was considerable—it was the fact that I finally realized that I had been putting so much effort into being someone’s girlfriend…I barely knew myself. I wanted to experience something new, different, challenging and to physically distance myself from everything that came before it. Thus, as a wide-eyed 18-year-old, I packed my own bags.

So, You Think You Can Do Katimavik? (1/4)

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not. ~Dr. Seuss

Maggie & Julie take a moment to leave the beach a little prettier than we found it

I know, I know. When I last mentioned Katimavik, I promised that I would blog about my experience before the end of June. In my defence, a nasty flu has kept me away from my to-do list for several days. On Canada Day,  as I lay in my bed sweating and agonizing,  I really did want to write. It would have been the perfect day to explain how Katimavik taught me to love Canada…and so so many other things.

The thing is, I now realize the enormity of the task! How can I explain the single most life-changing experience that I had in my teen years? How do I summarize the grandest adventure of my young life? I guess, like I once told my katima-sisters Maggie and Lisa, I have to break anything serious down into little steps.

I’m only going to do one step today (hey, I still have the flu, it’s just not kicking my ass anymore) but it’s a short, sweet introduction. I hope that someone considering Katimavik stumbles upon this and finds something…familiar, perhaps encouraging, in my words.

Some friends visit me at a katima promo-booth at the CNE. (I'm the one in blue stripes)

1) First things first, What is Katimavik?