No more witch talk!

Mid-Project was really great. We stayed at this house (like a bed and breakfast but much more Russian and we had to cook for ourselves) on the spit. (like a skinny piece of land in sticking out of the mainland)

And throughout this post I”ll probably sound really cheesy and cliché, but it was actually a really wonderful heartwarming experience. Maybe I should be a script writer for the carebears..”if we just work together and love each other, everything will be okay!!”

Somehow I feel much closer to many people in the group, and some conflicts we were having before (it kind of felt like our team was falling apart) were settled.

Plus, the spit is beautiful. One day we went hiking along the sand dunes. One side is the Sea, and about 1km away is the gulf. So we saw both beaches. In between there were sand dunes and a forest. We had some free time to walk along the beach. The waves here huge and the weather was freezing, but the air was so refreshing or breathtaking or some other word that I can't think of but should write here to describe the air. I could have listened to the waves for hours. I wished that everybody in the world who I care about could have been standing there taking it in with me.

I strayed a bit too far and was late meeting the group (although I didn’t realize it cause they decided the meeting time after I wandered off) So some people thought I was eaten by a sea monster, but at least I was having a swell time.

I even got over my fear of peeing in the forest. Apparently, I’ve been very adament about not ever doing this my entire life. When I was five, according to my dad, I made my dad’s construction crew stop the job so the foreman could drive me 20 minutes to the nearest bathroom cause I was just much to dignified for the forest toilet. So, this time I figured out the entire process on my own, and I realized that it’s not actually that bad, and the forest is probably much more sanitary than public washrooms anyways.

The weather was freezing for hiking, but I came up with a clever idea to bring some cognac so we could do some shots at lunch and warm us up. When I shared my idea originally, half the people thought I was nuts, and the other half thought I was joking. The Russian supervisor thought it was a good idea, and we bought it. It was called “five star” and a huge bottle was $9. Tasted kind of like scotch, and unless you’re my grandpa, you could see how unpleasant shots could have been. By the way, a label named “five star” is very misleading. But it sure warmed us up!! Body AND Soul.

Overall, the biggest challenge was the cooking. Every meal was cooked from scratch. You might think this wasn’t a huge deal, but groups of 3 cooking for 16 was something I’ve never done before. For one thing, “there are many ways to skin a cat” (as Eckhart would say) and it’s sometimes difficult when other people tell you that you have to do something a certain way or the whole will come to a screeching halt. You’re pretty confident that your way is okay, because you’ve been doing it that way for many years and watching your mother and the Urban Peasant and roomates and professional cooks in a restaurant doing it your way for years and the world is still in one piece..(sort of.)

We bought all the food before, and had to figure out what was bought for each group and make sure not to use the food that was bought for another meal. Breakfast today we were supposed to make crepes (Canadian, right?) except there was no milk to be bought anywhere in the town. Russian reality I guess. Even Turin, Alberta (Population 43 on a good day)has a store where you can buy milk!!) So we thought about us Canadians going to wander around asking any Russian farmers if they had 5 litres of milk to spare. We chickened out, but the thought of it made me crack up.. just imagining.. us after a couple beer harassing some people in the middle of the night.. got milk?? Like about 5 litres? From like one of those cows or something?

The last lunch, somebody grabbed what they thought was a chicken that belonged to the group. When really, it was somebody elses duck.. So they start cooking it and halfway through some lady (the owner of the duck) came in and started telling them that it was hers it wasn’t even a chicken!! The Canadians just nodded and smiled at the lady. It was pretty funny.. we were going to tell them that it was Canadian tradition.. we always steal somebody’s food, cook it up and then serve it to them.. All without consulting the victim first. It’s a part of our culture..

We did some fun activities like spiderweb, where as a team you have to get everybody through a giant spider web in the forest made from string.. and nobody can touch the string. Then we did a game called nuclear meltdown where you have to try and manouvre cups around that are being held by strings which everybody is holding. And then half the group goes blind. Challenging things that were kind of frustrating at times. People yelled at me, “WATCH THE CUP!!” And I was thinking about how on earth I could do that having a scarf tied around my eyes (I was chosen to be blind.) We learned to trust each other. The importance of trust in a team is something I overlooked, but now I see how important it is.

We also had the opportunity to participate in Russian “bagna” It’s like a sauna, except you have these bundles of birch leaves and you wack eachother with them. It’s like exfoliation meets massage meets nature meets rage. It’s supposed to be really relaxing, but the person who wacked me was not very well trained in bagna wacking and went a bit out of control leaving my back with unusual sores.. like a bruise but red and small and not as painful. Like all the blood cells in my back just broke and left me with red markings. I came out of my room and was showing off my back, like “hey guys, you all have this, right?” And they’re like “um. NO that’s not normal at all” So next time, I’ll let an experienced Russian do the wacking. All in all, I felt so good afterwards. It smells great and you’re just sitting there sweating, relaxing, talking, wacking eachother, drinking beer. It’s an activity I definitely wish I could do more of in the future.

We had to write letters to everybody in the group telling them what we liked about them and what we thought they could improve on. This was interesting too, just to see how people see you. I was expecting people to tell me to shut up during group activities, cause I sometimes wonder if I’m too opinionated or loud. (for some reason with this group, I’m not shy at all) And people were like, “you know, you should really open up more because sometimes it seems like you don’t want to share all your ideas.” It’s kind of like things you might hear at your funeral, and it left me feeling good having had the opportunity to be completely honest with everybody and boosted my self-esteem reading about how people notice the things I do and who I am.

Now, I’m feeling pretty positive now, and I guess that’s a good way to start my 5th last week in Kaliningrad.

Banana picture to come.