First Post

Hello to who ever you may be.

This will be our first entry to this blog. In a few days, I, Ariane, and my friend Lake will embark on a long and wonderful journey. We are participants of the program known as Canada World Youth (Jeunesse Canada Monde, pour les francophones!) This program is an exchange program of sorts that allows young canadian adults to work in a canadian community that is different from their home and a chance to work in a developping country abroad. There are 2 phases, one is 3 months in Canada and the second is 3 months in another country that is selected for you by the organisation itself. Our exchange country is Nicaragua and our city in Canada is Prince Albert, which is the third largest city in Saskatchewan. In Nicaragua, we will be living in Somoto, which is very close to the Honduras border. We have what is called an inverted program, so we will be going abroad first, (just in time for hurricane season in Nicaragua!) then coming back to Canada for the second phase.

In our group we are 9 canadians from all over the country. I'm from Ottawa and Lake is from Toronto. As soon as we all found out what our exchange was going to be, the whole group quickly found eachother via Facebook on a group that one of the guys created. Lake and I met while I was in Toronto one weekend for work. We talk pretty frequently and we've decided to create this blog for anyone who cares to read it. We don't know how often we can e-mail or call home, so we'll just try to get as many blog posts as often as we can so that everyone back home can stay updated (especially our caring and supportive parents).

During our exchange we will be living with host families in Somoto with Nicaraguan counterparts. I believe Canada World Youth affectionately calls them "life partners". They are young adults from Nicaragua who will be coming with us to Prince Albert. They are NOT from Somoto. They also have to be in a different environnement than they are used to. We each get a counterpart who will most likely be of the same sex (for obvious reasons). We will be living with them for the whole 6 months. We won't get to meet them until we arrive in Nicaragua.

To participate in this exchange we had to raise $2 500. We were all encouraged to do fundraising. I raised quite a bit of money, but I also worked alot to just pay the rest off myself. We cannot however use funraising for our "spending money". We were encouraged to bring about $500.

Each group in every exchange is assigned a project theme. (we're not there for a vacation after all!) Our group has been assigned "Community Development", which is extremely vague. We're suppose to work on social and educational services in the community. They haven't told us much beyond that for now... We have a supervisor who works for Canada World Youth and we have a Nicaraguan Supervisor. Our canadian supervisor's name is Shayne and our nicaraguan supervisor's name is Ruth. The whole group is trying to learn Spanish... but it's looking like everyone is still very much a beginner. And I left my Spanish for Dummies in Ottawa!!!! AHH!

This Friday, the group will meet eachother for the first time in Toronto for our "orientation camp" with Shayne. As I said before, I have already met Lake and I have also met 2 others who are from different parts of Québec. Right now I am in Vancouver visiting my mom, so I won't be coming from Ottawa. On my flight to Toronto I will be meeting 2 others from my group on the plane. I'm pretty lucky I think. Lake on the other hand, will only really have to walk a few blocks away to get to our orientation camp! Lucky!!!

I guess I should talk a bit about myself.... well... I'm 19 and I'm from Ottawa (as I said before). I study in Theatre at University of Ottawa. My first language is french and I have always studied in french. I have an extreme addiction to expensive makeup and cosmetics.

As of September 3rd we will be in Nicaragua. I will do my best to post as many pictures on Facebook as possible.

I'm sorry this post is so long, they won't all be like this surely. I just wanted to give everyone the basic knowledge about this program. I'll let Lake talk a bit about himself and maybe elaborate on what I have said in another post.

If you are interested in signing up for Canada World Youth, check out their website. It's for young adults between 17 and 24 and the exchange countries vary between Ukraine, Indonesia, Brasil, South Africa, and sooooo many more! Here is their website if you're interested on learning more!

http://www.canadaworldyouth.org/en/Splash.aspx


Talk to you soon!

Ari