Perth - Gracias 2010: Canada World Youth Adventure Finale

Wow.  The program is over!!!  We've all gone back to our respective countries, cities, families, lives prior to the program!  It's been a long time coming and I'm sorry about the delay but I think I owe the avid readers of my journey one last update to bring everything together.  Sorry it's so overdue!!  The last couple of weeks of the program were really busy and I didn't have much time for writing a final update until NOW!
Mid - Project Camp:
We had a great mid-project camp just outside of Gracias.  Erin ran an excellent workshop focused on Gender and Equality to expand our views and think critically about the harmfulness of gender stereo-types. Jon ran an activity to improve our group dynamic by having each member of the group sit for 10min with each other member of the group to give critical feedback.  Laura ran a workshop on the issues involved in international development and had us participate in a community development vs international development debate.  The main arguments for community development being that the community knew best what the community needed and would do better to work for and amongst themselves to make improvement rather than become dependent on outside aid.  International Development on the other hand can often bring finances, studies, technologies, etc that may not be available to the community.
Xmas:
For Xmas we were allowed to leave Gracias to travel with our counterparts to their hometowns.  I went with Gaby to Siguatepeque which is where she currently lives and Lago de Yojoa which is where her family is from.  We mostly hung around the house. . .although I persuaded Gaby to climb a small mountain with me one day :)  Lago de Yojoa was really beautiful and small.  Getting to know Gaby's family was also a really nice experience.  Her Dad speaks English very well and her Mom also understands. . .which wasn't really helpful for learning Spanish, but certainly made it easier to communicate.  In Honduras family gatherings and special occasions are usually marked by the making of Tamales (corn flour stuffed with a bunch of things> meat, rice, vegetables and steamed).  Xmas is celebrated at 12am on the 25th by hugging everyone in the vicinity and setting off masses of fireworks!  It's kind of scary.  We returned back to Gracias on the 26th.
New Year's:
On the 31st we celebrated with our host family another Honduran tradition which I didn't understand at the time.  Usually our host family ate very late at night (usually around 9 or 10pm)  So I was expecting to eat around that time, as usual.  However, after 10:30 I was getting really hungry and a bit annoyed because we had to wait for dinner to go out to meet our friends.  Finally we figured out that our family was waiting until 12am to eat dinner!  It turns out that there is a tradition, or belief that you should wait until midnight to do something that you want to ensure for the following year.  So, for example, if you would like to travel in the new year, you should pack up your suitcase and walk around the block with it at 12am!  In our case, our family wanted to ensure that they had a lot of delicious food coming to them in 2011.  Worth waiting for, I think!
EADs and Group Activities:
The next Monday (3rd) was Javier and Jon's EAD where they focused on needs and wants and it's relationship to Quality of Life and Standard of Living.  We also watched a documentary about international development in Nicaragua.

Group excursion to Celaque

That week we were back at work which for Julia and I meant planning an activity for our debriefing!  But I'll get to that later.  That weekend we went as one of our final group activites to Termas de Rio just outside of Gracias which is another Hot Spring location.  It has a bunch of pools of increasingly hot temperatures with one really hot one, onsen style (like in Japan) and I was excited by that!  We had a really good time there together and I got pretty sunburned. . .but it was super fun!  The next day most of us went on a 2 hour short hike up Celaque, the highest mountain in Honduras.  Gracias is at the base of Celaque, so we had an amazing view of this mountain throughout our stay in Honduras, but this was the first time we were actually able to climb it.  We didn't get anywhere near the top as we didn't have enough time and not all members of our group were keen on climbing. . .but hiking for a day was a lot of fun.  We went slowly and took in a lot of scenery while singing a lot of Bob Marley, thanks to Juan Carlos.
The next day we had another EAD by Marie-Filote and Marlon to give a more in depth look at the politics of Honduras.
That week we finished our work projects and had our 8pm curfew extended so we could watch movies and sing karaoke on week nights as a group! yay!  All the while Julie and Dayana were working hard (the rest of the group also helped!) to organize a charity concert set for Saturday.  The concert was put on in the fort to raise money for underprivileged children in Gracias.  We had Nelson Pavon (a "Resistencia" protest musician), a local band from Gracias, and DJ Angel from Tegucigalpa.  The concert didn't attract as many people as we would have liked, but it still went well.  Some of the attendees were upset by the political ideas of Nelson Pavon and left early, which was unfortunate but was a good learning experience for us.  The concert ended a bit early because some people were drinking in the parking lot and the police were advising us to end it.
The next day we went to a small community in the mountains to do surveys for the sector project of ASONOG and CWY.  We had to interview women from the community to find out what their knowledge was about different issues regarding health and nutrition, reproductive health and hygiene.  The information will be collected and analyzed by the 2 organizations to determine what kinds of development projects would be suitable for the regions we surveyed.  Unfortunately we ran out of time and had to delegate an organization in Gracias to complete the surveys for us.
Debriefing and farewells:

Farewell Party

The last week of the exchange we did some debriefing activities so we could start to analyze our experience and think about how we will communicate it to people back home.  We want to make sure that we are not creating stereotypes or generalizations as much as possible while educating and sharing what we learned.  This can be very difficult, especially when few people really want to listen to every detail and the entire story of your experience.
And in no time at all we were having our community thank you dinner.  Saying thank you to our host families and the community of Gracias, giving thank you gifts to our counterparts and project supervisors, crying a lot and saying good bye.  We left Gracias on the morning of the 22nd after tearful goodbyes from our host Mom and Dad and sisters (our little host brother refused to get out of bed and was too sleepy to cry!!).  In Santa Rosa we met up with the other CWY groups and made the final split from our Honduran counterparts.  Everyone cried.  I even shed a tear!  It was a really sad hour between when we got to Santa Rosa and when we left for San Pedro Sula.

Que Lindos <3

The Canadians all spent the night in San Pedro Sula, sharing shocking rule-breaking stories from the exchange and reflecting on the good times we spent together.  The next morning at 4:30am we left for the airport and while checking in we heard a horrific scream from the front of the airport.  When we all turned to look we saw our HONDURAN COUNTERPARTS running in!!!!!!!!!  They had lied that they wouldn't be able to come to see us off so that they would be able to surprise us at the airport!  sneaky!!!  So we had another picture and crying session before we left to get on the plane.  It was a really nice surprise :)
Back in the Motherland:
Back in Canada on the 23rd we were ROCKED by the -20 C temperature outside the airport!!!  Winter in Canada is COLD!  We had 3 days of debriefing in the hotel airport with Tracy, who coincidentally also ran our training before we started the exchange.  It was a really interesting session that helped us to reflect on the exchange and put the skills and knowledge we had gained from our experience into more concrete terms (that would be helpful for interviews and employment).  Alot came out in debriefing as well about our group and things that had been going on behind the scenes.  There was a lot of drama that was previously unknown to everyone that was finally shared with the Canadians.  I think this allowed for a lot of closure and a lot of realizations about why some things happened the way they did.
Personal Reflections:
For me, the CWY experience was amazing all in all.  I watched a lot of people go through the experience and come out as much more informed, confident and stronger individuals.  We learned to work and live and think as a group, but even more, as a family.  It sounds kind of sentimental, but it's really true.  I believe that the CWY experience is a kind of paradigm for the world we live in.  We are all a part of it and we all play an important role and are equally responsible for making it work in a harmonious way.  All of our actions are connected.  There are limits on what we can and can't do and if we push them too much (like the environment currently), there will be consequences that will affect everyone.  When we think only of ourselves and fail to think of the impact our action will have on others everyone suffers.  When we push our boundaries and leave our comfort zones far behind, we will surprise ourselves of what we are capable of.

No Siesta! Just Fiesta!

Our family's pet Watusa!

I strongly encourage anyone who is still eligible to apply and participate in Canada World Youth!!!  It's a great experience.

and in the infamous words of our Perth-Gracias group: NO SIESTA! JUST FIESTA!!! :)

Perth - Gracias 2010/11: Canada World Youth Adventure VII

Estamos muy bien pero, como siempre, hemos estado muy ocupados!

and I think we´re all starting to realize that:
OMG, ONLY 5 WEEKS LEFT OF THE PROGRAM! where does the time go!?!?

Dig it!

This weekend will be our mid-project camp, then we leave for the holidays to visit our counterparts´ host families for a few days. . .and by the time we get back it will pretty much be January!!  Then we will be back in snowy Canada on the 23rd!  Unbelievable.

As I mentioned in Spanish, we´ve been very busy the past couple of weeks.

Co-operation, makes it happen

We made a garden in the Youth House where Gaby works a couple of weeks ago.  We dug the beds, put in an irrigation system and planted some seeds.  Hopefully something other than grass will grow!

Irrigation system. . .the ground looks vertical. . .o_O

2 weeks ago we started off with Gaby (my counterpart) and Guillaume´s EAD which was focused on HIV/AIDS awareness and education to prepare us for our activities during HIV awareness week.  After their presentation we were invited to a panel discussion by Norman (our Honduran supervisor), the Gracias coordinator for HIV awareness, Dr. Mazier (my host dad. . .who is involved in EVERYTHING) and another presenter who I didn´t know.   This year´s focus for HIV awareness week was to raise awareness about Human Rights of people living with HIV.

Copan Ruinas

That week we participated in a parade to raise awareness in the community, followed by street fundraising throughout Gracias.  We also had a board game tournament in the central park for youth in the community who we played games with and simultaneously educated about HIV and safe sex.  We finished off the week with a futbolito tournament. . .which is basically 15 min soccer on a smaller field.  The youth in the community had to make teams of 6 and compete against each other.  Between games we again, had educational activities.

The next day we crammed into a bus for a 3hr drive to the Copan Ruinas!!  Although it was a rough ride for all of us, we really enjoyed the day in Copan.  And for all of you familiar with the World Heritage Site obsession of Japan, I've got another one checked off now! 

Copan Ruinas

The next day, after a full day of site seeing and bus travel, Julia gave a presentation about the political state of Honduras and gave some more perspective into the military coup last year and motivations behind it.   There´s an interesting article which shares some of her sentiments here.

Iglesia in Gracias

Gracias street corner

The next day was Julie and Dayana´s EAD where they gave us a tour and some critical thinking activities related to IHNFA (Instituto Hondureño de la Niñez y la Familia) where they work.  Their EAD had a pretty strong impact on our group and produced a strong desire to take some action to make the conditions for the children at IHNFA better.  As much as I appreciate the sentiments of our group and hope to affect positive change, I am also concerned about considering the kind of help that would be most beneficial and would induce the least amount of negative consequences.  Our program is only here for 3 months and we are the first year of a 5 year program.  I have a hard time believing that we can possibly understand the full situation of Gracias in only the short time we´ve spent here and I would hate for our group to end up having a negative effect on the community because of very good intentions manifested in a very damaging way to an already existing and functioning organization or other system.  Another dilemma in development work!  One of our Project Supervisor´s posted an interesting article about some of the negative effects of short term volunteer work from the telegraph.  The comments are interesting too.

Huh!  Fancy that!

We also took part in a campaign to inspect people´s backyards for potential mosquito breeding grounds.  It was part of the health organization´s campaign to prevent Dengue.  The same week, one of the major Honduran soccer teams came through to play a tournament in Gracias so we were volunteering to help them out as well.  I guess some of the players were on the national team as well and played in South Africa.

During that time we had a few issues within our group.  2 of the volunteers got caught breaking rules of the program and were almost sent home.  We had to have a big meeting with the supervisors about it and have now all been given a number of extra rules that we have to follow.  It´s been quite dramatic and kind of tiring.  Fortunately, most people are still in good spirits and it hasn´t had too much of a negative impact on the group. . .other than the week that it happened.  Hopefully it will help to bring out some of the underlying issues of our group dynamic and make us stronger.  

  

Baleada making!

mmmm street food

Finally, this week was my EAD!  Luz Dariela and I talked about Human Rights and about Canadian company Goldcorp, who have gold mines in Honduras.  There is a very interesting 6 part documentary about it here.  It´s about an hour in total and I highly recommend it to everyone.This weekend will be our midproject camp!  Can´t believe we are already at midproject!

Perth - Gracias 2010/11: Canada World Youth Adventure VI

Cheque.

We have now been in Honduras for almost an entire month!  It seems like much longer in day to day time but much shorter overall. . .if that makes any sense?

Coffee drying in the sun

The days are still pretty nice, warm and the nights are a bit cool.  Apparently it gets "cold" in December, but we´ll see about that I guess.  It rains relatively frequently because we are in the mountains but not very hard or for very long.  Our diet still consists mainly of tortillas, beans, eggs, platanos, coffee a few vegetables and for lactose and meat eaters chicken or pork, cheese and mantiquilla which is like butter but with the texture of cream.  It´s great.  Other than potaste (chayote), that I seem to be given a lot for lunch as my "meat alternative", I love the food here.

Coffee plantation on the mountain

Inspecting a water system

Work has been interesting.  For the first couple of days Luz and I did mostly nothing but sit in the office and occasionally were asked to do some data entry for the employees. . .then we met another volunteer from the peace corps.  She's a civil engineer.  I immediately bombarded her with questions that I didn´t have the language capacity to ask in Spanish to my other colleagues.  Her job generally consists of designing, assessing, monitoring and planning water systems and the needs for them in the 5 municipalities the organization works with.  Many of the small communities within the municipalities don´t have access to running water and she is primarily working on helping that issue.  She has been working in Honduras for almost 2 years and has some very interesting insights about the organization and the work she is doing.  The ones that are most interesting to me are:

Iglesia in San Sebastian

1. During the military coup last year, many of the past employees lost their jobs and the current director, who was an employee before the coup, assumed the directorial position of the organization.  The peace corps volunteer questions the effectiveness/benevolence (?) of the new director and thinks that alot of his actions are politically motivated.  She is constantly worried about the real motives of her being sent to certain municipalities.  Ex.  If there is an election coming up in San Sebastian (one of the municipalities) and the director sends her out there, at the current mayor´s request, to design an irrigation system (when some communities still don´t have access to running water), her visit under that mayor´s request could help sway the vote.  She tries to be conscious of this and avoids situations where she feels she could have an influence.

2. She is concerned about the work she is doing that could be done by a Honduran national.

Street scene: Gracias, Lempira

These are examples of 2 big problems that I have often come across in my experience with development work.  Maybe not formed exactly like the first one, but politics and corruption are often huge obstacles (or helps if you are the "right people" or paying enough) to development work.   And, it always seems to make much more sense to me to have the nationals of a country working toward their own development as a nation. . .or at least provide training so that when foreign volunteers leave, a local will be able to fill her place.  It´s always much easier to say than do though for a myriad of reasons.

Celaque

This does not mean I hate my job.  Not at all.  Quite the opposite really.  For me, being given the opportunity to learn about these issues more intimately is perfect.  I´ve also been able to do some really cool and interesting things so far.  I went on a 6 hour hike in the mountans surrounding Gracias with the Peace Corps volunteer to inspect an existing water system and assess the problems and whether or not it needs and expansion.  That was possibly the best day of work I´ve ever had!  We had another day where we were brought to a warehouse full of donations (mostly swedow redirected from Haiti earthquake relief. . .proof that donations do not always get to where you expect them to go. . .which was one of the complaints I had to defend when fundraising for Red Cross back in 2006).  We had to sort the donations- shoes, diapers, underwear, coveralls, medical supplies etc.-into 5 equal parts to donate to the 5 municipalities.  But once they left the warehouse the distribution, assurance that they would be getting to people that actually needed them, was entirely out of our hands.

Interesting stuff.

Random Goat in the street :)

Sunset on Celaque

 As for the group, we are still doing pretty well overall.  We´ve had 3 birthday parties already, and 3 EADs where we learned more  about Honduran vs Canadian culture, Public health and agriculture and coffee production.  More running, yoga and an event for Stop Violence Against Women day. 

So. . .I think that brings us to the end of November!  I´m sure I will have lots more to update about next time!  Hope you are having a great time wherever you are!

Perth - Gracias 2010/11: Canada World Youth Adventure V

Men in the aldea cutting sugar cane

I've really gotten behind.  3 whole weeks have passed since I last wrote!  Ok, so I realize that 3 weeks isn't THAT much time, but as I learned in India (for example), a whole lot can happen/change/completely flip over in just 3 weeks.First and foremost, I've arrived safely in Honduras!!  Our whole group made it to both the beautiful camp we did our orientation at (close to Lake Yojoa) and Gracias, our host community, intact and unscathed.
So I guess I should give a bit of an update about Juan Carlos and my trip to Montreal for the first ever CWY Learning Forum!  It was a very interesting week for both of us.  When we got on the bus at Carleton Place to head for Montreal it felt so strange to be leaving our host community and to be on a bus full of people that I didn't know.  Not to say that I knew everyone in Perth, but I suppose, living on the farm, seeing the same 3 people everyday for almost 3 months and getting to know intimately, my new Honduran/Canadian family. . .and then leaving them all behind to be out on my own for a week felt very very strange.
When we got to Montreal we checked in to our hotel and set off to find some Indian food (since Juan Carlos had never tried it before).  Since neither of us know Montreal very well, we weren't having much luck. . .BUT!  one of the men we asked for directions was so excited that Juan Carlos also spoke Spanish that he offered to buy us dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant close by!  He was really nice and was from Barcelona.  It was a great introduction to our week in the big city.
The first day of the forum was organized and run by the Ottawa/Kenya exchange (yes I realize it's a city and a country, and I feel weird about that too. I don't know the name of the city in Kenya the youth are exchanging with, but the name of the organization is Kenvo).  The day consisted of 3 workshops centered around youth empowerment and were led by youth from the Ottawa/Kenvo exchange.  It was very well run and led to very interesting discussions and conclusions about youth engagement, youth's relationship to organizations, and resources available to youth.  We had a talent show that night by the youth for the international partners of CWY and CWY employees, including the president of the organization.
The second day was essentially the same workshops, led by youth, but for the international partners.  All of the youth that had been there the first day left (except for 10 of us) and were replaced by 90 presidents, and program managers from all of the international organizations that partner with Canada World Youth.  It was very interesting to see the different opinions that the "adults" had compared to the "youth" and how diminished we felt the youth voice became, in actual numbers and also in seeming importance, especially considering the conference's aim was to promote youth empowerment.
The following days focused on different topics, and knowledge sharing between organizations.  The first day focused on Environment and Health, then Gender Equity and the last day was for coming to some conclusions and ended with a public cocktail party and "youth panel discussion".  I won't go into too many details about the rest of the forum and my opinions, although I'm very open to discussing them further.  However, I felt that the real purpose of the forum was much more to give Canada World Youth a more recognized name, keep international partners happy and actually put faces to names for a lot of people.  CWY has undergone a lot of changes in the past year due to government pressure and threats of funding cuts and so they've had to reform some of their aims.  I think the forum probably had a lot more to do with that than youth empowerment, but it was still a very interesting event to be a part of!
After the learning forum, Juan Carlos, our project supervisor and I got on the train to Toronto and left for Honduras the next day with our group!
We arrived in Honduras, after a stop over in El Salvador (which looks beautiful from the sky!) around 9pm on the 30th.  We stayed overnight in a hotel in San Pedro Sula and then bused to our orientation camp. The camp was in a beautiful forested (jungled?) area in the mountains with waterfalls and lots of greenery.  We were pretty busy having group discussions and official orientation stuff but we also had enough time to go swimming in the waterfalls and go on a few hikes, which was really nice.

Waterfall at orientation

Swimming in the waterfall!

View from the camp

Then on the 6th (?) I think, we headed out on a bus to Gracias!  It was a pretty long bus ride!  When we finally got to Gracias we were all pretty tired but excited to meet our new host families and spend our first night together!
Gaby and my host family are Dilcia and Carlos Mazier with their 3 kids Karla, Nicole and Tato (whose real name Eduardo!).  They are really nice and a great host family for us.  They also have a lot of animals. . .2 dogs, 2 parrots and another bird, 5 rabbits a rooster (who wakes us up every morning at 5:30 -__-) and a Watusa!  Gaby and I now share the same room in the back of the house too and only have access to cold showers. . .which isn't amazing, but it's ok!  Unfortunately I haven't been able to acquire a bike yet so I've been running instead.  There are hot springs and lots of mountains in Gracias so we've been running to the hot springs (about 6km away) and back as a group on the weekends.

Traditional dancing performed by the local children

We decided as a group at the beginning of the Honduras phase to split up some counterpart pairs for work project purposes.  Gaby and I decided that it was more important for us both to be doing work that we were really interested in than to work together, so we ended up splitting up for our work projects.  I¨m now working at Colosuca which is a development organization that works in the five municipalities surrounding Gracias and is working to help the municipalities both achieve the Millenium Development Goals and to encourage tourism in the area.  I´m now working with Luz Dariela who is another participant in the program and it´s pretty cool to get to know someone else a little better and in a different setting, though sometimes I miss Gaby at work

Colosuca building

For now I think I will leave it at that since this update is already getting very long. . .We´ve also had 2 more interesting EADs and I´ve learned a bit about Colosuca and am continuing to learn about politics and it´s relationship to development work. . .which is always very interesting to me but I will leave that until next update!

Street scene: Gracias

Dusk in Gracias

Parque Central

Street scene: Gracias

Castillo in Gracias

Perth - Gracias 2010/11: Canada World Youth Adventure IV

Lanark: Country roads, take me home!

We're already at the end of the Canadian phase of our program!!!  We still have another week in Canada, but due to some unexpected events, I probably won't have time to send another update before heading out to Honduras on October 30th!So, without further ado, I will try to sum up the last incredibly eventful 3 weeks of my life!  It looks like this update will be full of web videos!

Gaby's first frost

Firstly is probably thanksgiving.  Happy belated Thanksgiving!!!  My family (including my brother) all came down to Perth for Thanksgiving and celebrated it with my counter-part, host family and their parents and kids as well!  It was really great!  It was also very well timed.  The night before Thanksgiving we were making pumpkin pies and playing board games and not really paying very much attention to the temperature outside.  When we woke up in the morning we realized that we had gotten our first real frost!!  Gaby was VERY excited when my Dad came to pick us up for breakfast to see the frost!  We didn't get a chance to return to the farm until after we had met up with everyone and had our pot-luck Thanksgiving dinner in town. . .but when we got back, we realized that the frost had killed everything!!  Although I know it is the natural cycle, it was quite sad to see the crops we had worked so hard on for the past 2 months, dead.  The true meaning of Thanksgiving was a lot more clear and real to me this year.  Giving thanks for the year's harvest, that so much, for a relatively short period of time, was sown from the land. . .and now to enter into the cold, fallow winter.
The next week we had our EAD led by Erin and Gaby (another Gaby!).  They had us focus on toxins and harmful substances contained in everyday things that we use.  They presented "The Story of Stuff", to give us a quick outline of the impact a consumerist lifestyle has on our health, human rights, the environment, etc.  It's a very interesting video that I saw a few years ago but was very good to revisit.  I highly recommend it! 
Following their EAD we had an interview for a learning forum in Montreal and then went to a meeting in Perth for a "transition town" initiative.  First I will talk about the interviews.
Canada World Youth redesigned the way they run their programs due to threats of funding cuts last year.  Now, all of the programs that CWY does are 5 year programs where the youth change each year, but the exchange destinations remain the same.  As a part of this, CWY, along with it's many partners have decided to hold Learning Forums as well.  This year will be the first Learning Forum in Montreal where youth from many different groups participating across Canada, with their many counter-parts from around the globe will all meet together to discuss the learning that is going on in the program and youth involvement. The good news was that our group needed to be represented at the forum, the bad news was that only 2 out of 18 of us could be funded!  So we had to have interviews for the forum.  Our group is full of amazing individuals and really, anyone would be fully capable of representing our group at the forum, but in the end Juan Carlos and myself were chosen as the representatives!!!!! :D  So, I will be heading off to Montreal tomorrow until the morning of the 29th (the day before we leave for Honduras!!) for the forum.  I'm really looking forward to it! :D

stop climate change clothesline!

So onto transition towns!  The idea of a transition town is to create a tight community that is committed to curbing their use of non-renewable resources (namely oil, gas, coal) and investing more in their community!  Here is a very informative video about it!  Judging by the number of people who came out to the meeting, it looks like they might be able to get this idea up and at least walking pretty soon in Perth!

Then on 10/10/10 we, along with 7343 groups in 188 countries, participated in a public action for stopping climate change.  The action was organized by Erin in our group as a part of her work placement and 350.org.  Our action involved painting t-shirts with messages about stopping climate change and hanging them up on a clothesline to promote the idea of air-drying your clothes to cut down on both energy usage and expenses.  We did the activity at the farmer's market in Perth and it was very well received.  We got our pictures in the Perth Courier, EMC and there was an interview done for one of the local radio stations as well!

10/10/10 clothesline for 350.org international event

The following week Annabelle and Dyana did their EAD focusing on indigenous people.  They brought in a very interesting guest, Ben Powless, to talk to us about some of his experiences as an activist for indigenous rights.  We also had a visit from Shalak, a Montreal artist who taught us more about art as a means of expression and tool for social change.  She let us experiment with some spray paint, caps and wooden boards that she prepared for us and taught us how to make sweet graffiti letters!


That pretty much brings us to this week where we have been doing our debriefing of the Canadian phase of the program.  This week we've been talking a lot about power and privilege in our group, stereotyping and what to expect in Honduras, etc.  We watched this TED talk which was extremely interesting, about the dangers of the "single story".

Shalak's workshop

Fall in Perth!

Tonight, finally, we had our Thank you dinner for the Perth Community.  It was a Hallowe'en, potluck, costume party and it went AMAZINGLY.  We started off the evening with an activity where different tables were given different numbers of coupons to determine how many helpings of food they could get.  Some tables had 4 coupons each while other tables had only 1 coupon each.  We made the guests believe that there was no option for more food and no possibility of getting more than their coupons' worth.  This obviously created some frustrations and anger, to the point where a few guest yelled at us for our unfairness.  When everyone was sitting again with their various portions of food we read the "if the world were a village of 100 people" statistics.  Everyone immediately understood what we were getting at.  Since our program is focused on Food Security and that is interconnected with access to food, we decided to incorporate that activity into our Thank you dinner to facilitate discussion about the issue.  It went very well.  Following that, we had the typical sentimental Thank yous, gifts, awards, presentation, weeping, laughing, singing, dancing AND SNOW!!!!!!!  Yes, we just had our first snow here in Perth this evening!  All of the Honduran participants were SO excited!!!!!  It was really the perfect ending to phase one of the program.
So tomorrow I will be saying a goodbye to my host family/work placement and the wonderful community of Perth to head off to Montreal for the learning forum and this time next week I will be just a day away from HONDURAS!!!!!!!!!!!

Canada World Youth REPRESENT!

Wish me luck!  I will try to send more updates if possible from there too!
AND  if you, or anyone you know is interested in doing a CWY program, APPLY!!!!!  You must be a youth (between the ages of 17-24)!! Application deadline for next year is December!

Perth - Gracias 2010/11: Canada World Youth Adventure III

And now it's time for:  trecera actualizacion!!

紅葉: Fall leaves in Perth

Yep, I'm starting to learn more spanish!  Slowly but surely.
I am still in Perth, still on the organic farm, still having fun with Gaby and my Perth-Gracias group!  And yet, much has happened since my last update!
Firstly, the leaves are changing colour already up here and it is absolutely spectacular.  This is the first fall in 3 years that I have been in Canada, and although I always loved driving the number 7 highway from Kingston to Ottawa during university, I have a whole new appreciation for Canadian autumn since I have been away.  I understand in a much greater way why Japanese people are crazy about Canadian 紅葉 which means coloured leaves.
So what have I been up to?
Farmwise - a lot of harvesting, weeding, covering beds, planting spring crops.  We've already had our first frost up here!!  And, although it's been pretty warm since, we're expecting another one this weekend.  So we will probably be doing another big harvesting tomorrow.  I've also become an expert vegan pumpkin pie maker ;)  So you'll have to ask me about it next time you see me if you want some :) haha  Kristine and Malcolm are still wonderful and very accommodating to Gaby and I.  I think we lucked out on our host family for this half of the program anyway!
A number of weeks ago Kristine took Gaby and I to Ottawa for the day.  I took Gaby to do some of the typical Ottawa tourism.  We went to parliament and the market, ate beaver tails(!) and then we met up with one of my friends (that I haven't seen for 4 years) for dinner!  It was great, even though it was raining and pretty cold all day.
2 weeks ago we had a very interesting EAD hosted by 2 members of our lovely group on the importance of conservation areas.  They work with the Rideau Valley Conservation Authority to protect watersheds, stop the erosion of and conserve shorelines, maintain trails, get rid of invasive species etc.  It was really interesting to learn about how even a small change in the shoreline can greatly damage the ecosystem of a body of water.

Back field at Blue Chicory

Then last week Gaby and I decided to go check out a potluck lunch held by MERA, a volunteer group devoted to promoting arts and crafts in and around McDonald's corners (where I live!).  We were the youngest people there by at least 20 years.  But we got to interact with a number of ladies from the community and learn about the interesting projects they're going to be sharing with each other over the year.  I'm so sad I'm leaving!  They have looms to learn weaving, felting, pottery, basket making, spinning, and of course knitting!  It was really interesting to see how excited the ladies were to share their skills with each other and how friendly and connected they were to each other as well.  Yay small communities!  By the way, I've also just completed (close enough) a pair of Alpaca thrums! aka warmest mittens EVER!  Next I will be working on a pair of Newfoundland mittens, the pattern for which I acquired through very curious circumstances. . .oooOOoo
Last weekend we had our mid-project camp.  It was held at Camp Davern, a YMCA/YWCA camp.  The purpose of the camp was to evaluate our program thus far, talk about the learning that we've done through our work placements, host families and community, and group/counter-part pairs as well as consider things we can improve on for the remainder of the Canadian phase and the rest of the program.  We are the first year of a five year program between Perth and Gracias and so it is important for us to make suggestions for improvement for the coming years.  I was on the planning committee for the camp evaluation activities and I think, although they didn't go off exactly according to schedule, they went over really well and were really well received by the group.
We also had a talent show on the Saturday night that I wrote my first rap for!!! haha  Hopefully I'll be able to get it on video and somehow make it available later.  My costume was amazing though.

Perth Rap Presentation: old skool style

Lonely rodes of Lanark County, great for cycling!

On Monday I went to see David Suzuki give his "Legacy Lecture" in Ottawa.  I've seen him speak before but it was still very interesting.  He focused alot, as he did last time, on the disharmony between our economy and ecology.  Although they come from the same  "eco" which means home or household, they both seem to embody very different meanings.  Dr. Suzuki's main argument (I guess) is that until we can see worth, in economical terms in our environment and in the things that are most important to us (loved ones, connections to people, memories, etc.), we are in serious trouble.  Nic Marks, whose TED talk we watched at camp had a very interesting and very related (I think) topic to talk about.  The Happiness Index :)
Today we volunteered at a water awareness day!  We taught 108 elementary school kids about various aspects of water, the water cycle, conservation, watersheds, wetlands, oilspills, etc etc etc.  Takes me back to my elementary school field trip days to St. John's outdoor center :) hee hee.

Canadian Autumn is spectacular

Again, sorry for the length!  There was A LOT to update on.  I'll try to send another update before we head off to Honduras.  There will probably be alot more to update on before then!

Sunset at Blue Chicory, believe it or not, this is a real photo!