No Hatin' on Mondays Here

Not that I want to be excessive posting 2 blogs within less than 24 hours of each other, but I just have to share my Monday. I feel pretty blessed to say that this is the life I get to lead for he next 6 months (sho vraymehynt behyn-behyn beyhnheureuse...sorry, I just cannot get over the French here). Or  at least something along these lines, as kayaking probably sucks on a frozen lake...

I can basically sum it up in a couple of videos.

So, we started with this:

Then there was the afternoon:

And finished off with a bit of puppy love:

Mondays really don't get you down here...

For the honor and glory.

Les aventures dans la terre de la fortune et la jeunesse

In fact, I have not necessarily met too many young people here at Lac Charland, nor does dog mushing leave you particularly rich, but Stan and I DO have neighbors with the last names La Jeunesse (the young) and La Fortune (the rich)!

So I made it! I arrived in Quebec on Thursday, and just like when I flew through France last year on my way to Benin, my brain overdosed a bit on all of the signs written and conversations being spoken in French. I knew I was in the right country when I looked at the TVs around the airport and they were all playing hockey (I am being serious, not making a stereotypical joke) instead of the typical droning of CNN in US airports.

Well, my little bubble of Canadian happiness lasted all the way through the long customs line until I got to an agent and was sent to secondary questioning in the immigration room. That is when things got dicey. It went something like this:

Agent: What are you doing in Canada?

Me: Staying with a friend for the winter.

Agent: How old is your friend?

Me: Uh…..60 something?

Agent: How long have you known your friend?

Me: A year or so…

Agent: Have you met him in person?

Me: Well. No. But we skype!

That’s about the time that he took my cellphone and proceeded to read everything-every text, every email, every stupid little sticky note that I make to remember book titles and funny thoughts-while I sat in the waiting room, thinking about what sort of body language says “I-am-not-doing-anything-wrong-so-I-am-not-nervous-but-in-fact-you-are-starting-to-make-me-anxious-but-at-least-in-Canada-you-blatantly-read-people’s-emails-instead-of-sneakily-doing-it-like-my-country-does”. That took a lot of thought, so the HALF HOUR that he spent reading really flew by…Then he threatened to call my mom and dad (would they have loved that or what!?), went through my bags, and then decided that I was actually too boring of a person to detain any longer, so he let me go. Poor guy probably went home and told his wife about the 20-year old girl who ran away from home to live with an old guy she met on the internet. Super.

Anyway, Stan introduced me very quickly to musher life after we drove two hours to his chalet and finally went to sleep at midnight…5 hours later in fact. At dawn, I donned (ha, see how I did that?) my first pair of long underwear and headed out with Stan to harness the first 10 dogs for our A-team (lest you get the wrong idea, I also put on other clothes). Well, if you want to see mass hysteria, come to a dog kennel right before they are about to run, at watering time, at feeding time…ok, basically if you want to see mass hysteria, just come to a dog kennel period. Every day all 28 dogs must be watered in the morning and fed at night…and it isn’t like a zoo where you just turn on the hose and throw some meat in a cage, we are taking care of athletes. Everything is measured, monitored, and repeated the same way each day. It can take awhile, and could probably get mundane if you didn’t feel so damn accomplished once all the tasks are done for the day.

Oh, and if the easiest way to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit (something I am doing now given I have left one of the five countries in the world that use Fahrenheit) is multiply it by two and add 32, the best way to figure out the amount of poop you pick up at a dog kennel, take 28 and multiply it by however darn many times they feel like. I am going to come back a poop expert though, because poop is a big time indicator of health in a dog, so you never just pick up the poop, you give it a good once over. In six months, if you ever need someone to spend some quality time with your crap, I’m your gal. But only if it pertains to your health…I don’t look at poop just for fun.

However, one of my favorite stories of the first two days of musher life is a poop story. After the first run, Stan and I were getting the dogs out of the harnesses and back in their spots in the kennel, when Blue-the biggest dog in the kennel-who was still harnessed on the line, decided to take a crap right there. We thanked him for his contribution to the process of putting dogs back, and kept working on the other dogs. A few minutes later,  Stan asked me “Do you know where Blue goes?” and I, not even trying to be cheeky said, “Well, I guess wherever he stands.”

Of course, Stan meant where he goes in the kennel, not where he goes crap.

Well, it is a pretty fast learning curve here at Miortuk, because in that first day, I learned both.

It's puppy time! Meet Yoda and Darth!

My camera died, but you can get a little taste of kennel crazy!

Today I went for a run through fall. It blew my mind. 

For the honor and glory.

Mr. Jesus, Mr. Bill, and Mr. Krakauer walk into a blog

Last time I left the country, I timed the weather nearly perfectly. Don’t get me wrong, I love Arizona summer….there is nothing like getting into your car in the middle of June and doing a fish-out-of-water gasping face because the sun has burned the oxygen out of your vehicle…nothing like going to stores just to use their air conditioning annnd not being ashamed at all to say those exact words to the cashier when you leave without buying anything.  I sound like I am kidding, but I actually love these things and they make you appreciate even the slightest degree change below triple digits. That said….

SOMETIMES IT IS JUST FREAKING HOT!

But when I got up the other day and let the dog out at 3:57 in the morning and it was 60 degrees, my thinned out summer blood froze a little bit.

Super. Because we are about T minus 8 hours from a plane lifting off to deposit me in a place where winter is real.

Whiiiich leads us toooooo: TRAVEL FEARS RELOADED, a delightfully Canadian version of a very similar post from my Hungary/Romania/Benin travels. If you missed it, I basically tell you about things that make me want to crap my pants and you get to laugh about it. Isn’t that nice?

Thing one: That thin ass blood of mine. I am really bad at cold. During Arizona “winter,” my fingers are ALWAYS cold. Actually, my physical body temperature averages between 97.0 and 97.4 degrees (I know this because I give blood, not because I sit around taking my temperature). So I am not just a big whiner when it is cold, I am literally colder than a human body should be! I am going to play with sled dogs though, so this fear will rapidly have to be overcome. Last year, this weather fear manifested itself in the form of traveling to a place where it rains all the time when you don’t really like water (why do I do this to myself?), but after a few torrential rain storms in Ouidah which turned the roads into rivers, and then impassable puddles, water and I were in a good place. In fact, I came home and started swimming regularly! So hey, maybe if I am worried about cold and snow and blizzards and frost bite and frozen corneas and toes that fall off in Quebec, I will just overcome and do something crazy like run the Iditarod…;P

Thing two: If you have been with me since last year, this one will seem pretty repetitive, but my family is really cool and I am going to miss them a lot. My mom told when I came home from Benin that I could never leave for 8 weeks straight again….apparently I was confused and thought she meant that I had to go LONGER than that when I took the 6 MONTH position at Miortuk Kennels… Oops, I am a terrible daughter. The Kings are going pretty global for the next sixth months with my older sister Arielle in New Zealand, me in Canada, and my mom, dad, and two little sisters in the states, going wherever they please. There will certainly be rough days for all of us, but at least no one will have to communicate from an internet café slash blood bank for mosquitos, where mosquitos come to enjoy a nice drink in exchange for malaria, yellow fever, and West Nile. Nope, Arielle may have to run from the sheep in New Zealand (or the stupid, fat hobbitses!), but we will all putting Google Hangout to good use for sure! We will have to see if Jasper, my Australian Shepherd, will want to see me when we video chat, or if he will eat the computer out of rage because I left him…poor guy, he is already a little crazy, hopefully my absence doesn’t throw him over the edge!

So, all in all, I don’t really have a lot of fears, I mostly just have concerns about specific themes. These themes tend to either be weather related orrrr good ol’ fashioned separation anxiety.

But even though my trepidations are so tangible I can sort them into nice little 

themed files, I am truly not as worried I was the first time I left the country. I am not preaching, but I am far to dumb to build my own life, so I told Jesus to play-doh me into whatever He wanted or needed. Holy hands molding play-doh hearts…it really does make everything easier.

 I do however feel like my shitty thin blood is boiling under my skin though, ready for adventure, ready for an uncertain future. Krakauer summed up the feeling  best really in Into the Wild:

Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

So here is to tomorrow’s different sun, and whatever is to come. Hopefully Jesus doesn’t turn me into Mr. Bill, although Mr. Bill Goes Mushing might make a great digital short someday…=P 

Seriously though, look at how amazing my family is too. After looking at these pictures, you are going to have seperation anxiety from them too, and you haven't even probably met them!

So about a month ago, I was at Joann's Fabric and Craft store with my mom and sistres and had an inappropriate for my age fit over how cute this fabric was. Well, my mamma bought it for me and now when it is blizzarding, I will have this adorable adult-sized baby blanky that she made just for me. 

Someday, I will spend a whole blog explaining my family's obsession with raccoons. Another time. This however, is a bunch of raccoon flipbooks put together by my sister Olivia. They really only scratche the surface of the obsession. 

(If you really want to know now, it may have started somwhere inbetween this video and this one. Cats should really take a backseat to raccoons when it comes to the best Youtube videos)

Meet Felicia. She is one of my little sisters. Obviously CS Lewis never met her...

And then there is this. The scrapbook of silliness from my sisters was already the best thing ever, and then I turned to this page, where I found my family in paper, ready to give me a hug whenever I need it during the next 6 months!

 Or strangle me, whichever seems more appropriate at any given moment =D

For the honor and glory.