Orientation Camps Finally Over!!

Loving the city of Moncton, not to big and not to small, with lots of thing to do and see. It also doesn't hurt that everyone here seems to be incredibly happy and friendly. For those of you who ever plan to visit New Brunswick, heads up, it is not a fishing province. In the two or so weeks I have been here, I have seen one small fish market, and have not personally met a fisherman. Next weekend our host family is planning on taking us to Fredricton and maybe we will see some fisherman there?

So far everything has been pretty slow going. Last Friday we finished our community orientation camp and found out our volunteer placements for the next three months. Dorothy - Ann, from Ghana, will be working with myself every Tuesday and Thursday morning, bright and early at 6am at the Rogers community TV show. I am hoping that I will eventually become a morning person. Till then I am going to have to rely on some good coffee and a kick in the but from my host family and my counter part. As well on Fridays I will be working at Youth Quest, the local youth center. I am really looking forward to work on some new youth programming in the Community.

As far as everything else, things are running smoothly. This last weekend my counterpart Ernest and I saw WWE (Wrestling) live in Moncton. Can't say I am the biggest wrestling fan, but Ernest seemed to really enjoy it. Ernest has been a great counterpart. Everything has been great and he seems to balance me out well, he is an introvert, I am Extrovert, he is a morning person, and I am a late night person. There couldn't of been a better match. As well the family has been great. Stanley the cat, who I am severely allergic too, got me really sick and the family actually took the cat away for the three months that I am here. But for a few more day I am taking four different types of pills and I have two inhalers, oh the joy!! But I am glad the cat is gone and the kids seem to be more happy with the fact that I am not sick instead of missing their Stanley. I am so incredibly happy that I was put with the host family I have now.

Bible Camp?

After 30 hours of no sleep, expensive airport food, and crying babies in the seat behind me, I finally arrived to the beautiful city of Halifax. At the airport I was introduced to 17 other Canadian students taking part of the Canada World Youth Program, from all over the country. From there we all packed on to a bus and travelled to Mount Traber Bible Camp where our orientation camp began. At the camp we got ready to meet the 18 other participant from Ghana who arrived that night.

The 5 day camp consisted team building workshop, dancing (traditional Ghanaian dance!!), singing the "culture shock", and many long drawn out workshops that everyone seemed to enjoy :). As well we managed to talk about the showers for about half an hour with the director, trying to come up with a schedule, until everyone became frustrated enough that we eventually just let the director decide (giving the 18 boys 8 showers in the morning, and the 18 girls 2 showers in the morning?). But besides that it was great to spend time with everyone doing late night swims and attempting to speak french.

After the camp, we were bussed to our host community (Moncton), where we were met up with our host families. My counterpart, Ernest, and I, were placed with a family with four children, and a cat. Bryce and Stacey Ford (the parents) were great people who brought us the their heritage home in the center of Moncton. The 4 Children are all under the age of 8 and are quite a handful. Ben, the oldest, likes to read and play in the sand, Eli (6) is more quiet and composed, Matt (4) is very active and loves to wrestle, and Molly (2), who loves to be naked!!