DRIME time!

Time for more stories!! Last night was a fantastic time; we participated in "Battle of the Sexes" for our Mandatory Fun/Team Building evening. It was a random set of events that tested different skills both genders were more accustomed to including obstacle courses, tests of fitness, organization, cooperation, communication, bravery and gluttony. After a very close score, the women won overall!! Woohoo! Our prize is a social next Friday night planned by the men catered and targeted entirely to the female gender. Although there've been some suggestions made that we will be watching "Braveheart" (apparently for the William Wallace factor), I'm confident the men will plan a fun evening for us.
To explain the picture shown in the last entry and tell a story I know you've been curious about...I shall proceed in telling you about last Saturday's happenings. The director of DRIME (Disciples Ready in Mobile Evangelism) Tanya Price joined us for the day to train us in the art of "driming". DRIME is an organization that "exists to reach people for Christ through choreographed street drama, empower others for ministry through drama and evangelism training, and produce passionate, discipled leaders through purposed community"(drime.com). If you search drime on youtube.com, you can see examples of these dramas that we learned (our groups specifically learned the ones entitled "please", "ragman", and thief"), there's also the ministry video on there which gives a clear outline of who they are and some great examples of their work(http://youtube.com/watch?v=VR615vEtHe8). So, basically...it's a choreographed drama set to a song that tells a story from the Bible, or just on the truths of the Bible. The specific drama that I participated in was based on the Bible verse John 10:10, which says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." and was set to the song "Idioteque" by Radiohead. In our drama I was one of three girls (symbolizing steal, kill, and destroy...I played the one being "destroyed"..it was dark/morbid, yet powerful.). The drama began with Jesus (in the professional drimes, and the ones on youtube.com, Jesus always wears a white tshirt to be distinguished from the others...everyone else is in all black.) creating each one of us in his image and then Satan slowly making his way into our lives. Soon we were under his command and participating in self-destructive behaviours. After a rigorous path of destruction it parellels us breaking the shackels of Satan's control with Christ's crucifixion and resurrection...symbolizing that he died so that we can be set free from the hold of our sin. It's hard to explain exactly how the drama played out, but it was very powerful and I found myself overwhelmed while watching another group perform. It was a very different way yet very relevant way of illustrating God's impact on our lives. Like they say in the ministry video, everyone can relate to music and drama. The day was very intense/draining, both physically and emotionally. But we all came away very empowered and excited to use this new tool.
On an entirely separate note, one of the big lessons that I've learned over the past few weeks here and I'm confident will continue to learn is effective time management. The upcoming time commitments of project and work ( I start my job on Monday! yay!) have forced me to map out a weekly schedule so that I can a) get the most out of my "project" experience through participating in ministry activities, building relationships and completing assigned homework and b) stay in contact with people from home through phone, email and blog. In doing this, I've set aside time on Tuesdays, Thursdays and once on the weekends for blogging(...just so you know when to expect them!). I think this is best in keeping everyone up to date on my happenings but also allowing me time to experience happenings. As well, I've set aside a specific time to reply to emails, so please forgive me if I don't respond in a timely manner! ..Just thought I'd let you all in "the know" of things!

wild week

Wow...I can't believe it's been a WEEK since I last blogged...the past 7 days has flown by! Time here seems very strange...part of me feels like I've been here for months because so much has happened since we arrived, but other parts feel like time is flying by and before I know it home time will be here! Strange, really.
This past week has been quite the adventure, like most weeks here! Sunday I went to church with Gilberto, Joanna and Denise. We attended Faith Tabernacle; we like to call this day "A Series of Unfortunate Events"...similar to the blockbuster favourite you know and love. To set the stage..it was raining, like it is most days in Halifax...but on this day Joanna and I had done our hair without knowing that it was raining outside (all of the females reading know what I'm talking about...straightened hair + rain = a half hour that you could've spent doing something more productive!) ....UE(unfortunate event)#1: on the way to church we got stuck in traffic due to the Bluenose Marathon, which went through Halifax this past weekend (you might have seen it on the news). As we drove around trying to find an alternate route we discovered that the marathon literally cut right through the part of the city that we needed to cross and there was no way around it. Eventually, we were allowed through..although it put us 20 minutes late for church. (funny quote: "This marathon is holding up the economy of the city!" - Gilberto). UE#2: Finally, once arriving we discover that the road that Faith Tabernacle is on was undergoing construction which meant that we had to park on a side street and walk in...in the rain. UE#3: I accidentally stepped on the back of Joanna's sandal and it broke! ...it was easily repaired, but counted as one more addition to the UEs of the day. This concludes the unfortunate events of that day, church was delightful - I think I might go there again next Sunday...I'd like to see what it's like to show up on time and talk to some of the people. I appreciated the diversity of the church, both in age and culture; there were a healthy amount of people from every age range, from babies to seniors, as well as ethnicities.
Well, I'm going to have to cut this short, I'm headed out the door...more stories to come! Tonight is "Battle of the Sexes" during Mandatory Fun time, so I'm sure that there'll be some good stories to share from that!
Happy Friday!

P.S. This picture has nothing to do with the story mentioned...but it leaves you guessing what the next one will be about!!

Back in Blogging Action....God provides!!

We're back in business!! The lovely folks at blogger.com helped me to sort out my problems! Hooray!...back to blogging goodness.
A lot has happened this past week and I've learned a lot, I'm not really sure where to start blogging! I guess my big news to report is that God provided a job for me this past week!! hooray!! I am very grateful for this and the perseverance and trust I've developed throughout the process.
Welll....I guess it all started Wednesday, what a great day it was!! I had two job interviews: 10:00am at St. Joseph's Children's Centre(picture, right) and 1:30pm at the YMCA. Both went fantastic! I was able to arrive early at St. Jo's which gave me ample time to properly prepare myself for the interview (including finding a comfortable limp-free way to wear my shoe which conveniently sits on a sore spot from walking to church wearing them last Sunday..)...the interview was with two very nice and professional women directors of the centres. The questions were nicely mixed between developmental ( all those classes I'm taking at school are finally coming into use!) and situational. God really blessed me with clarity of mind and I was able to articulate myself clearly. They both seemed quite pleased with how things went and offered me a position! Unfortunately, it was just as a Substitute Teacher so the hours weren't guaranteed; I told them that although I would love the opportunity to work for their organization ( their mission statement/outline was fantastic! I really appreciated everything they stood for.), I needed to make a wise decision in concern to my financial situation...so I told them I'd let them know after I knew how the YMCA interview went....they were very understanding of this.

...in between interviews I was able to partake in what I've discovered is one of my favourite pastimes: exploring/travelling by myself! As much as I love people and being in groups, I really love venturing and exploring new things by myself and finding my own way!...I find a great deal of satisfaction from successfully navigating the city transit system, or just reaching destinations on foot using a map...maybe it's me overcoming my long history of having a bad sense of direction (when I first began to drive, I wasn't sure how to get to my grandma's house...about a 15 minute drive away that we drove weekly...)....or maybe I'm just weird...but over the past few weeks I've discovered that I love discovering Halifax and exploring all the cool things it has to offer!...included are a few pictures from my journeys...I went into this really random yet cool bookstore...there was books everywhere!...stacked on the floor, stairs..it was a unique experience. I also window shopped at all the little stores downtown, I'm looking forward to discovering them more when time permits....Anyway...moving on to interview #2!

...After finding my way to the YMCA ( okay, so my sense of direction is stilled minorly flawed and I had to do some backtracking..but I got there...that's the point!) I was greeted by a lovely lady named Rhonda. The interview was facilitated by her and another woman named Barb. This interview was alot more laid back and casual, which was nice. It went quite well and, while leaving, the women seemed delighted that I had applied and told me that they'd notify me by Friday.

Welll.....Friday came......the phone rang.....and I got the job! YAY!

I'm going to be working at one of two YMCA centres here in Halifax. It's at Purdy's Wharf (if you care to google), which is right on the waterfront (yay, ocean view!). The centre is in a business building (the employees bring their children to the centre)...it doesn't have a pool and fitness centre like most YMCAs, but apparently we take the children across town to the other centre for those types of activities. It sounds as though I will be helping out in the day camp/care, wherever I'm needed. Although I think it would be nice to be placed in one direct room/age group for the purposes of building relationships with the kids and other staff, it will be nice to mix things up and maintain variety. I'm excited because I'll have the opportunity of working with a large age range of children (who am I kidding? I'm excited and thankful to be working with kids this summer period! :) I'll be working with Rhonda as my supervisor(one of the women from the interview), which I think will be fun, our personalities seemed quite similar during the interview so I think we'll get along well. What else...the job will be full time (40 hours/week) which is great!....the walk is about 30-45 minutes, which will be good exercise everyday...and I'll be by the water everyday, which I'm looking forward to. The job starts May 28th, however, one bittersweet aspect of this job is that it requires my presence until August 31st. This is bitter in the fact that I won't be able to spend much time at home with my family before heading back to school; I've talked to Rhonda and she said that there's a strong possibility that I'll be able to book off the last half of the week to be able to head home early(yay!). The advantage of this is that I'll be able to explore Halifax in August after the official program of our missions project has finished, so there won't be scheduled events in the evenings...I'm looking forward to this time because there are lots of festivals and touristy things to check out in the summer and I'll be able to experience Halifax at its finest!

....Speaking of home, I've realized while here that there are a few distinct things that remind me of Ontario(either Guelph home or Courtland home):

• Country music...there aren't many Country fans out here! Fortunately I was able to find a station on my radio in my room so I can wake up to the sounds of home every morning.
• City Transit - public transit buses look and feel no different here than Guelph...although I think that the drivers are a bit nicer! (everyone out here is super friendly for that matter though)
• the small town atmosphere of Halifax
• (Strangely..) the air freshener in the bathroom (Lauren!...I told you it would!)
• Laughing and being silly with roommates
• The significant amount of green space Halifax has to delight in
• The recycling system!! I was pleased to discovered that it's very similar to Guelph's.
• I know there are others...but I currently am having a lapse in memory...

Conversely, I've also discovered a few things unique to Halifax some that I love..some I could live without:

• the people here are extraordinarily friendly!
• the houses here are uniquely beautiful
• the names of the streets are stamped in the sidewalk!
• the weather is very unpredictable!...it gets very foggy sometimes...and then we hear the fog horns roar from our room! (we have a nice ocean view...it's pretty cool!)
  
• unique towers and parks
• the city is rich with culture and history

Well, I think that's a wrap for me tonight. I hope you enjoy my exploring pictures, some of them are from the Public Gardens, which I was able to delight in after the YMCA interview...it's a lovely little park in the middle of the city. I hope you all enjoyed your long weekend! Ta ta for now!

Apartment 704!

Some of you might be wondering what life is actually like here on project, you might be saying "well sure Nicky, you blog about everything under the sun lately except what's actually happening in Halifax." Well, those updates are on the way...they just take a little longer to write. Coming soon is one entitled "Heartbroken for Halifax" which I hope to be gripping and powerful. (haha..I sound like a movie critic or something...bear with me.)

In the meantime, I'd like to let you in on the fun that happens here in Apartment #704. I live with 3 other lovely ladies, named Erin, Amber and Veronika. Veronika is my roomate ( see picture ) and we get along wonderfully as we both tend to be quite silly and love to laugh. Veronika attends York University and is enrolled in the Kinesiology program there. We have been able to keep our room quite tidy (for now, we'll see how that goes once the jobs are underway!) and enjoy laughing about random things. Our room is often the site of visitors as we are currently blessed with accessible wireless internet (others are not). We are laptop twins often carry on conversations sitting at our desks back to back facing our computers.
Residing in the room adjacent to ours is Erin and Amber. Erin also attends York and is in the Design program there. Erin is a very talented artist and has blessed our quote board(a collection of paper taped to the wall where we write down funny things that people say) with a beautiful drawing of a lighthouse. Amber attends the University of Saskatchewan(!) and is enrolled in the pharmacy program (which I also find very cool; I used to work in a pharmacy and so I love understanding some of the random lingo she says sometimes. I also run to her with any medical related question which she finds quite amusing...she's taught me a lot about the pharmaceutical industry and some cool Western Canada lingo; for example, out west they call hooded sweatshirts "bunnyhugs"...cute, yet it doesn't make sense...bunnies don't have pouches!)
We are all different but it's a delightful mix and we are enjoying living with one another. We have coordinated having "apartment time" during some meals and spend time getting to know one another more, which is nice. Pictured is our first apartment meal! (from left: Erin, myself, Amber, Veronika)

One particularly adventurous event we have encountered was the recent explosion of our toilet. Water was spewing from everywhere! We quickly discovered the quality of our apartment's construction as the water flowed under the wall and into our front entrance. After a flurry of reactions, Erin quickly had the janitor sent up, I had stopped the source of the water, Veronika had a handle on mopping (see picture for hilarity). This nice little mess took me a good while to clean up and as a result I was a half hour late for weekly meeting; we were reminded, however, the importance of having a sense of humour on project!

Hope you're all having a great start to your week!

Testing 1...2...3

Hello to my blog-readers!
Thank you to those that have commented on my blogs, I just wanted to encourage all of you to do the same!! I really love hearing your thoughts and comments. Please feel free to mail, email or call me as well, I have the internet here in my room and am able to check my email regularly! I'd love to hear how your summers are going and what's going on in your lives!

This is a silly picture of me I just included for fun...it was taken during one of our games night. I was playing Dutch Blitz which is, as many of you know, one of my favourite card games! If you look closely you can see that we're playing on a stack of telephone books because there were no more available tables to sit at and for some reason our lounge has an abundant amount of telephone books sitting against the wall...so we decided to put them to use!

Ode to moms.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers that are reading this! Thank you for pouring out yourself and making sacrifices to invest in the people we are today. Your hard work and love are extremely appreciated! As I reflectively look at family photos nearby I am proud to be my mother's daughter; to have inherited many physical characteristics such as her smile and eyes, as well as many of her amiable qualities, sense of humour and story telling to name a few. I love you Mom(aka. Marmy)!

Happy Mother's Day to all!

The Hunt for Work.

Well, I guess somehow my father's hunting genes didn't get passed down to me...unfortunately I am not nearly as good at it as he is! Job hunting is slow and steady. Who knew looking for work was a job in itself? I committed to trying to find a job in my field up until the end of yesterday (wednesday) and now I'm branching out to other opportunities. I've applied for a few positions that I would be really really happy if I got any of them : Program Coordinator at a youth day camp (St. George's YouthNet...google it if you like...their mission statement is really wonderful...really hoping to get a call back from them!); Early Childhood Educator assitant at Happy Hollow School (it's sounds cheerful, right out of Bambi!), as well, I have an interview today at 3:30 at Scotia Personnel, which is an agency that places you with childcare jobs (sounds like a good deal to me!...we'll see how it goes.)
I'll continue to keep y'all posted...God's slowly provided us all with jobs which is very exciting. Today I'm working on revising my resume to make it more retail oriented to prepare for the event in which I will need to start applying to other opportunities.
Thank you everyone for your prayers concerning this issue, I'm confident God will prove to be faithful.
(the picture included is of students job hunting and working on resumes at the university library)