First Nations Traditional Cree Sweat

Photo of a sweat lodge I found on the internet.


Today CJ was nice enough to take me, Robin and Max to a traditional Cree sweat. One of the First Nations Profs. Ross and his wife had the sweat lodge at their house, a little bit outside PG in beautiful surroundings in a BC provincial park.

A sweat is a spiritual ceremony where you pray for your own and others health.

We didn't not the do's and dont's, but thankfully Ross was very good at explaining the different parts of the ceremony.

In Cree culture tobacco is seen upon as a sacred, thus before we even got in the lodge Ross took some time to prepare the pipe, which was to be smoked before the sweat began.
When everything was ready we entered the lodge, women on one side and men on one side and the pipe was sent around to everyone. CJ had been carrying red-glowing stones in to the lodge, which Ross put in a pit in the middle.

After the pipe was smoked, the entrance was covered up and it was made sure that no light got in. Ross then sang the song to welcome the grandmothers and grandfathers into the lodge while pouring water on the hot stones. Quite an experience sitting in pitch black, sweating and listening to the songs with the good smell of herbs - one almost got the feeling that you were sitting there all by yourself. We did four rounds of sweating and we were singing two songs in each round.

After the sweat it was arranged for a feast, we had really good food and sat in Ross' and his wife's house just chatting for a while. Quite an amazing experience.

More about sweat lodges can be found here: http://www.dancingtoeaglespiritsociety.org/swlodge.php

Sunday dinner and more.

Time for a new post in my blog, been quite some time since last time. What is new since last blog is that Brad is desperate to get me interested in hockey, on Saturday we watched the Canucks play the Maple Leafs - a big classic in Canada, although it was close in the end-minutes the Canucks were able to secure a 3 -1 victory. Brad a BIG Canucks fan was of course very happy with the result and we were set for the next event of the evening. Robin and Brad made a bet for the UFC fight between Machida and Shogun, the loser had two weeks of dishes in front of them. The game looked to be going Brad's way and he was cheering for a double victory for the evening, after the last round things took an interesting turn when the referees judged a victory for Robin's fighter. This match must have been rigged, because I have never seen a guy get beaten for five straight rounds and still win. Of course Robin was more than happy for the outcome, so Brad has two weeks of dishes in front of him - he's a good sport though.

Other than that we were at the quiz once again last Sunday, after some pitchers the Swede's got quite big mouthed and told the rest of us that if the DJ played ABBA they would dance on the bar. Minutes later the song that was on ended and like a charm he put on an ABBA song, the entire bar had a good laugh as Emma was making her moves on top of the bar. There are pictures, but I haven't got access to them unfortunately.

This weekend contained for the most part of food, we made dinner together on both Saturday and Sunday. Quite a good finish for the week.


Too many cooks and too little space, no problem!


The boys enjoying their Sunday dinner. On the left the Pantry chef, on the right the Fry chef and in the middle the Manager of the kitchen sink. The Chef de Cuisine taking the picture.

There is no such thing as a free lunch...

But there is such a thing as a free dinner :) Saturday evening Emma, Kayla and Lisa visited us. Lisa was bragging about her poker skills so we decided to play poker. In the pot was a dinner for the next day. Of course this was not really a gamble and I took it down.


: Lisa and Kayla in action.

The girls made a really good dinner and surprises us with a dessert afterwards. Thanks! :)

Robin and I were quite happy not having to cook, although it was a win - win situation for the chefs, having dinner with us whether they won or not :P

Long time since last blog.

Haven't been able to blog for some time, that it has been quite busy is almost an understatement. Last weekend I went with the outdoors club to Jasper, pretty awesome trip. Jasper is a really nice little town, and they had a pretty decent gear store... Somehow I managed to get out of it empty handed. The crags we visited was like day and night; Juno which was razor sharp limestone with a lot of smeary moves and small handholds and Lost Boys which is steep \ overhanging pulling on jugs. Was quite happy with the climbing as I got more practice with overhangs and roofs. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of climbing photos as I somehow managed to leave my camera in camp.




This week I have been focusing on studying and me and Robin managed to play squash three times as well. I can tell that we're getting close to the mid-terms with a lot of assignments being handed out. Got my first assignment back today, quite happy with that; A+ :)

Robin moved in with us this week so now we are four people living in the suite. Other than that I'm looking forward for next weekend to arrive as I have one assignment due to tuesday, mid-term wednesday and another assignment on thursdag.

Some of us planning to go to Vancouver for a weekend in October. There is a U2 concert Oct. 28 which would be quite fun to watch, other than that the hockey season is just starting so to watch a match with the Canucks would be awesome as well.....

Andreas

Pulled over by the police

Illustration Photo.



Yesterday I went with Morten and Robin to watch Inglorious Basterds, what an incredible movie. After the movie it turned out that there was no more buses this late in the evening, well not a problem. Robin saw that the liquor store was open, so we decided to resupply.

We called for a taxi and waited happily outside the liquor store for it. After driving for a minute we noticed the police car with all the lights on and we had to pull over. Four armoured policemen then came to the car and asked if everything was ok. It turned out that there had been reports that three men were walking around town with masks, someone said anything about being in the wrong place at the wrong time? They had been putting two plus two together and got six! Well none of us had ID papers so we had to spend the night in the can....

Just kidding, the police were actually really polite and friendly, they quickly found out that they weren't looking for us and let the taxi driver take us home. Man, I generally don't like being stopped by the police in Norway, but in a foreign country definately not. Luckily it went ok this time :)

Cheers

Shopping spree

Some of the Scandinavians decided to make dinner Saturday evening, we ended up making steak which was good. It did however make me aware that I have absolutely no kitchen utilities here. I guess it limits what kind of food I can make with a spoon, fork, knife, small glass and a tiny plate.

So today Robin from Sweden lured me downtown, there was sale at Value Village, with 50% off on everything in the store. I ended up buying 8 big plates, 4 knifes and forks, a glass and a roasting pan - which cost me around 10 bucks, not too bad. Because I ended up saving so much on the kitchen utilites I decided that I had to get an Arc'teryx fleece and pants as well :)

Extremesports in Canada

Yesterday I had my first lectures, quite a busy day. First I had to get up early in order to register for my classes and then me and Max took the bus to Pine Mall, the biggest indoor mall in PG, there I got a Canadian sim-card and some running shoes. We also tried out tacobell for dinner, not really a memorable experience. The biggest surprise was that we took a stop by the tobacconist and they actually sell some kind of snus i Canada, it is however really expensive almost 16 bucks more or less the same price as in Norway. I guess I just have to give up snus eventually if we are not able to get fresh supplies from overseas.

My first lecture was in Financial Management II and it was from 6 pm to 9 pm! The biggest difference here compared to Norway is that the classes are really small. I guess that we were approx. 20 people in the class. It was nice to see some familiar faces in class, some Canadians that we ran into at the student pub earlier that day inbetween classes. The way to go with studies here is to be prepared for class as they are not lectures per se, more discussions where the lecturer guides us through the material. Part of the marks are also based on participation in class!

We were invited to some Canadians for a BBQ after the lectures, so we had to run to the residence, drop off the bags and take the bus downtown. The party started a lot earlier in the evening, so it was dying when we got there. It seemed kind of strange, but when we entered the parking lot they had parked a car there and everyone had to kick the car parked there. Afterwards the extremesports started, listening to country music for 3-4 hours straight. But all in all we met and got to know a lot of friendly people :)

Camp fire at Shane Lake

Max and Synne having a good time.











Morten from my school in Norway also an exchange student at UNBC.













My room mate Kevin.











Most of the international students went to a small lake in the forest yesterday where we made a camp fire and got to know each other better.

When we started to head back to the campus it was really dark outside and with paths going in all directions it was kinda hard to find our way back. Synne got a bit worried that we were lost, but thanks to my brilliant orientation skills we made it back without getting eaten up by bears.

Endelig kommet fram \ Finally arrived.

Det var ei ganske så lang reise for å komme seg til Prince George. Reiste via Oslo - Reykjavik - Toronto - Vancouver - Prince George. Flyet til Reykjavik var stappa med norske fotballsupportere som håpet på seier mot Island, gikk dessverre dårlig der.

Kom til Prince George tidlig på formiddagen lørdag, tok en shuttle bus med noen andre studenter fra UNBC så fikk vite litt om hva som fantes i byen. Etter å ha fått nøkler og flyttet inn var det bare å komme seg ned på skolen for å skaffe studentkort. Bor på studentboliger i Prince George, sammen med Kevin og Bradley fra Canada. I hver etasje har de ansatt studenter som RA's som ser etter at husreglene blir fulgt. De hadde innkaldt til obligatorisk husmøte og gikk gjennom regler og ting og tang. Mye virket helt vannvittig for meg ihvertfall, man skulle jo tro det var innlysende at man ikke løser ut brannalarmen midt på natta eller slår hull i veggene så jeg måtte bare flire litt av hele greia. RA'sene understreket dog flere ganger at det kostet en hel masse penger for universitetet hvis brannvesenet måtte rykke ut. Skulle tro det var sunn fornuft å ta vare på ting, men to timer etter møtet så var det en moroklump som hadde tømt et brannslokningsapparat i gangen her. Var med Kevin som jeg bor sammen med en tur i byen og når vi kom tilbake sto det ikke mindre enn to stigebiler fra brannvesenet og ambulanser utenfor studentboligene.

___

It was quite a journey to get to Prince George. I went via Oslo - Reykjavik - Toronto - Vancouver - PG. The plane to Iceland was pretty much stuffed with norwegian soccerfans going to cheer Norway on, it seems now that it didn't help much. I arrived in PG quite early on Saturday and took a shuttle bus brought me to school, there were some UNBC students onboard the shuttle so I got to know a bit about the city. The day was quite hectic, after some friendly people helped me move in I had to hurry down to school in order to get my student ID. I live at the residence on campus with Bradley and Kevin which are from Canada. Over here they employ students to work as RA's on every floor in the residence buildings which makes sure that the house rules are beeing followed. We had to go to a mandatory floor meeting where they told us about house rules and stuff. Most of it seemed pretty ridiculous for me at least, it seems logical that you aren't supposed to trigger the fire alarm in the middle of the night for fun or punch holes in the wall, so I had a little laugh about it. They did however emphasize that it cost the University money every time the fire dept. had to get up here. Everyone basically agreed on that and me and Kevin went downtown to do some shopping. Two hours later we came back... and there it was: two fire trucks and an ambulance, with all the people standing outside. Some guy thought it was a good idea to empty the fire instinguisher in the hallway. Yesterday we were told that he had been kicked out of the residence, good job after only living there one day.

Forberedelser \ Preparations

Bare noen dager til jeg setter nesen mot Canada. Begynner å bli spent over hva som venter.
Heldigvis fikk jeg passet tilbake fra den Canadiske ambassaden i London, var bekymret for at det ikke skulle komme tilbake i tide.

Nå gjenstår det noen travle dager med å få pakke, jobbe litt og forhåpentligvis blir det tid til å hilse på i Bodø å sjekke trøkket der før man drar.

Just a couple of days until I'm travelling to Canada. Starting to get really excited of what to except over there. Was really happy when I came back from holidays in Italy when I discovered that my passport had returned from the Canadian embassy in London, have to admit that I was a bit anxious that it wouldn't make it in time.

There will be some busy days to prepare everything for my departure. Today I managed to gather most of the documents I think will be useful. Still need to find out what to take with me, do some accounting and hopefully there will be time to make a stop in Bodø and see what's going on there.

Andreas