Summer Time

Just letting our “avid” readers that I’m taking the summer off of blogging. So check back at the end of August when school’s back on!

Lots of love!!!

106 ICE placement #16

Tonight Beth and I went to a surprise birthday party for one of the people in the community. It was fun! Pretty standard; sitting outside with yummy BBQed items. However, the bugs are now out in full force, and since being here I’ve developed a moderately unhealthy fear of ticks. So as we sat there with creepy crallies of all kinds trying to get a blood martini, all I could think is “how I’m sitting under a tree and my feet in the grass… prime tick territory… I’m SOL”.

So the moment we got home, Beth and I had to do the “Tick Dance”. It’s a mandatory procession of steps, a recipe if you will, of the things that are required to identify the presence of a tick on your body (did I mention that these things are practically impossible to kill, and when they get on you they shove their heads under your skin and just sit there and get engorged until they’re the size of grapes! GRAPES!! HEADS UNDER YOUR FREAKING SKIN!!.. it’s sick).

So the tic dance… here are the steps:

1) once inside (now choose your “inside” wisely, it has to be indoors, but not in the area that you live/would want ticks), take your coat off and shake it like crazy.

2) shreik when ticks fall off

3) take off you pants and shake them, follow this with another shriek (it’s not mandatory that there be tick for the shrieking… it’s very cathartic any which way).

4) stump around (kinda like tap dancing) on all the bugs and ticks that are on the ground

5) take off your shirt, shake, shriek

6) continue until you are in your under wear

7) bend over 90 degrees at your waist and shake your hair out like it’s on fire… and shriek.

8 ) Spin around and around while you get your buddy (the tick dance is better carried out with a buddy) to inspect for any of the buggers on you

9) Run into your house, because you’re most likely stripping and dancing like a nerd in a slightly inappropriate place (you can shriek here too).

10) Done!

Thus Far…

Ok, I suck at blogging. But, I am going to make even more of an effort for those of you who want to know what I have been up to.

On April 24th Simon (a buddy of mine) and I got in a car and headed towards North Bay. Simon was only making half of the journey, his stop was Sault Ste. Marie, where he lives. The first part of the journey was a lot of fun. We made several stops just to look around and see the beautiful landscape (pictures will be posted soon).

We made a stop in White River, the birth place of Winnie the Pooh, while there we stopped at A&W for lunch. When we stopped in Sault Ste. Marie, we went and saw Kick-Ass in theatres, which by the way that movie was awesome!!!

We stayed the night at Simon’s parents’ place, they were extremely kind and pretty cool.

The next morning I headed out on the road alone, at first I was a little nervous about driving for 5 hours on my own. But it wasn’t that bad, I made stops every chance I had just to walk around or look at the landscape. In the end it wasn’t that bad at all, truth be told i really enjoyed myself.

I arrived in North Bay, actually Corbeil, on Sunday around 4ish and was very happy to be back.

On Monday I started working for Paul, doing physical labour and all around grunt work. Now it needs to be said that all the stories I have heard about working for him, from Renee and Cam, were convincing enough to put the fear of Paul in me. But, honestly, I really enjoy working with him. It may be the best job I have had in a long time. Yes the work is hard and I do come home sore sometimes. But at the end of the day, I actually feel like I have accomplished something. Would I want a career like Paul’s, no. But I am enjoying myself very much and would gladly work another summer for him anyday.

So for Mother’s Day I went to Toronto. Now a lot of my friends reading this are going to be mad that I didn’t tell them I was down. Well, I told no one at all other then my family that I was coming. No offence and all but I really wanted to spend the weekend with my family. I hope you guys can forgive me:)

This weekend Julia, one of my fellow ninjas, came up so we went out for dinner with the other ninjas (Curtis, Chyanne, Erica, and Kelsey). That was a lot of fun.

Right what else….

Oh wedding stuff… Invites are out, thought you might wanna know that, although you probably already got them.

And on that note, I am going to go now, cheers.

106 ICE placement #15

We had a very good day today. We ended up spending the majority of it on the water with one of the community members. He works as a guide during the summers, and apparently he is quite renown, and I could totally see why today. He brought all over the lake, stopping to show us all sort of neat areas, teaching us some of the history. It was so great. I did take pictures, but my internet connection has not endured my latest attempts at downloading the pictures.

Our guide brought us to painted rock, where there is actual paintings that they guess are about 1000 years old. These things, although slightly faded, were so cool. I have never seen anything like it before (outside of movies that is). It was so wonderful. Then he brought us to warrior hill, where the men used to train to become warriors. We then saw an Ojibway warrior nest, a place that someone would hide our and ambush the Sioux… he said that when they were at war, the water was most likely red due to the blood. He then brought us to twin falls, it was so beautiful.. while there we saw about 5 eagles!! So cool! We ended stopping a few more places.

A good day!

106 ICE placement #14

Beth and I headed to Fort Frances today. We’re staying the night at La Place Rendez-Vous. Nothing much to report, we’re taking the night off and doing some intense relaxing!

106 ICE placement #13

First thing this morning Beth and I went to the Band office to talk to one of the council members. We spoke about population, health issues, housing issues, what the council does and how it works and what the community is planning for its economic future.

Then the other community nurse came into the community from Fort Frances to give us a teaching session on EKGs. Since these things are are almost like reading an entirely foreign language (you know, with the exception that you’re ability to read and diagnose something from it is what could be the difference between someone living and dying). So the way I look at it, the more people who teach me pointers about reading them, and the more I practice trying to read them, the better I will get at actually being able to read them and hopefully prevent patients from dying, or at least, from getting worse.

Tomorrow Beth and I planning on going to Fort Frances, and we are staying the night at “La Place Rendez Vous”. Should be fun!!

106 ICE placement #12

Today Beth and I finally learned how to make Bannock! I had been waiting for this lesson since we got here… this is the cultural thing (other than tobacco) that seems to present at every function, almost every meal.

Bannock is a type of traditional bread. It only had three ingredients (although we were told that you can add a whole lot of extras if you like). The three ingredients are flour, water, and baking powder. The secret though is in the method, and it’s a very unique method at that! I felt so honoured being told how to make this bread. Not even all of the women of the community know how, only some. It seems to be almost like a special tradition present only in certain families. The women are taught by their grandmothers as young as 4 years of age, and keep on mastering the technique until they are an adult.

We were all pleasantly surprised that Beth and I were able to follow our teacher’s guidance and actually make some rather good Bannock (we had been told that the first time you make Bannock, it’s usually hard as rock… and white women usually make “weird” Bannock). Our teacher thought that we had done a good enough job to actually bring our Bannock to the elders for their lunch! I was very pleased with ourselves!

I can’t wait to try to make this bread again on my own for my family (hopefully I’ll be able to do so without rendering it into concrete).

After we delivered the Bannock to the elders, our teacher took us on car ride to some areas that we hadn’t seen before (she even stopped to show us an eagle nest… the thing was HUGE).

The rest of the day was spent doing work and relaxing… We managed to slip in a walk between the bouts of rain even!

106 ICE placement #11

Cedar bath ceremony day.

Part 1: Beth, Lisa and I went out to get out cedar. Now I need to build an image of how the three of us looked. Lisa was wearing jeans, sneakers and a light coat. Beth was wearing, legging with knee high socks, another pair of pants over this, as many shirts, rubber boots, coat, gloves, toque and coat. I had put on panty hose, socks, pants, a tank top tucked into the hose, a shirt, my rubber boots, my coat with the hood on and tied tight. All of this to prevent any ticks from getting on us. So we went to the area with the cedar, gave our tobacco donations, picked our cedar and came back home. Once home, I basically stripped down to my underwear and had Beth inspect he and my hair for ticks. I’m apparently am in the clear, although at the very moment I’m itchy in all sorts of spots, only because I’m thinking of ticks and I’m paranoid that there is one on me despite my militant efforts. (I have serious tick issues).

Part 2: Beth and I went and sat in the room that was being used for the ceremony. Beth went first. When it was my turn, I gave my gift and my tobacco tie to the healer. The helpers had already taken my cedar, added it to a big copper pot with boiling hot water and let it steep for 10 minutes. Then I got up on the table, and the two helpers covered me in a blanket. Then the healer took my glasses and placed my hair in the “right spot”. Then the healer and her two helpers began. First the healer healer took two wash clothes (by the way, all the wet wash clothes are coming from the basin with the cedar water, hence cedar bath). She washed my face and my hair. Then she held two balled wash clothes on my eyes (telling me that she was asking the grandmothers to the taken away any negative feelings/energies I’ve picked up from things I’ve seen in my life time). Then she put two on my ears (she took the other wash clothes off by the way) and it was basically the same idea as the eye thing, but this time it was dealing with things that I had heard. Then, after she took those two off, she put one on my forehead (my third eye), taking away any negativity that was in my soul. Then she took that off, and placed one cloth on my eyes for the rest of the ceremony. The helpers then placed like 9 wet washcloths  on my chest, and the healer, with her hands on my shoulders, instructed me to breath deeply. With every deep breath out, the helpers moved the clothes down slowly down my body until they reached my feet… This is where I was asked to take a very deep breath and to exhale hard while the healer pushed on my shoulders (sort of pushing the badness out), while the helpers kind of cathartically pulled away all of the washcloths. Then one of the helpers smudged me (using the smoke from burning sage and sweet grass and fanning me with bird feathers…I think it was eagle). Then they all ran their hands over my body, but keeping them about 1/4 -1/2 away from actually touching me. This is how they sense underlying issues, they can somehow feel it. We went through this whole process one more time and then we were done. At the end, the healer told me that they sensed two areas with “problems” (this wasn’t her wording… she said it in a much better way)… anyhow, she basically indicated two problems that there’s no way she could have known about… not in a million years.

It was pretty fantastic experience actually. After I was done, I felt relaxed and a little lighter even… but then one of the helpers told that this feeling shouldn’t last too long and that I would end up feeling heavy and tired… and I certainly did. In the end Beth and I couldn’t stay in the cedar bath past 1pm (the other people in the room stay and play shakers with the music and chant).. but with all of the smoke in that room, I ended up just needing to take the rest of the day off of cedar bathing… They continued on for another 4 hours, we’d been at it since 8:30 ourselves.

I wasn’t too sure what to expect… but I went into it with an open mind, and in the end I was really rather surprised and impressed. They were spot on, even with Beth too (I feel being the new outsiders, that we were good test subjects in that they did not know very much about us). It’s quite interesting, and totally unexplainable by any science I know, but I guess it offered me some personal proof that there is a place in life for spirituality (what ever it may be)… and you just need to find what is meaningful to you. I needed to come to peace with myself about that. This cedar bath ceremony taught me this, and the fact that there’s a reason that traditional medicine has lasted so long… because it seems to work!

I am so glad I ended up going to NOSM and going on this placement.

106 ICE placement #10

Well today has been off to a good start… Beth and I got up at 7:30 because we had a teleconference at 7:30 (yup, we got up at the time to get on… it’s wonderful). We had some breakfast and watched an episode of House, after which we went and did some school work).

After lunch we met with an elder. He works in the clinic, and he used to be the chief! We spoke with him for 3 and half hours. He revealed to us some interesting bits of the community’s history. We even covered some heavier topics, which kind of took both Beth and I a bit by surprise, but I was glad that we did. He encouraged questions, saying that none would be inappropriate. It was a great experience! He also invited us to participate in a sweat lodge before we leave. Can’t wait for that!

After this Beth and I returned to work. Tomorrow morning we are going to be getting up early to go and get our cedar branches for our cedar bath ceremony. I am really excited for this, I can’t wait to see what it’s like.

I love you all!

106 ICE placement #9

this is for may 2.

Things today were rather similar to yesterday. Plenty of down time, which still very much appeals to both Beth and I at this moment. The rain has pretty much kept us indoors, but we’ve gotten quite a bit of school work done and we finished the first season of House!

Although I’m quite happy here… I’m starting to look forward to going home. It will be almost 6 months since I’ve seen my parents and Bazil in person, and it’s always weird not having my other half near me. It doesn’t help that I just keep on thinking about how much fun we’re going to have this summer, and so, I’m getting more and more excited (kind of like Christmas). I can’t wait!

Tomorrow we are meeting with one of locals for stories about he community’s heritage. This particular person is the former chief of the community. I have so many questions to ask him. Plus, his wife is the healer that will be performing the cedar bath ceremony on tuesday.

So I’m off to bed (at a reasonable hour tonight)… let’s see what kind of adventures tomorrow will bring!

I love all of you!