red9

Okay!
Let’s try and commit this to virtual paper before I forget half of what happened.

I finished up my work weeks in between exams and DonsO on Friday and headed home. I mostly remember that it was really strange knowing that I was the only person staying in my building, and one of I think 2 or 3 in the entire residence. Saturday morning I woke up fairly early, it was raining, and headed to the mall to get some last minute things and some additions which I needed for my costume (yes a costume, I’ll get to it later). The rest of the day until 4pm I actually just kinda relaxed and took it easy, all the 2 or 3 hours that were actually left until GO time. I packed up a bunch of clothes and my pillow and some other living necessities and began my trek to our temporary residence, closer to where we’d be doing our training. The weather cooperated completely and by the time I made it to the SLC there was not a dry spot anywhere on me, that includes the two t-shirts I was wearing, my shorts, my bag and just about everything in it! I love weather, at least the rain was warm, so it wasn’t too too bad.

Running up to my room I bumped into Nate and a bunch of others; Nate was one of the people I took my First Aid training course with so they stopped and waited for me to throw my wet belongings into my room, throw on the soon to become all too familiar black Don t-shirt and we ran off to begin our activities. The introduction was fairly typical, a bunch of people talked, including the director of housing. I don’t really remember too much from this event, other then there was a lot of us, 117 in total I think.

Dinner!

Ok, so the food for the entire week was catered by the cafeteria in the residence where we were staying. I don’t think I’ve eaten so much in the last year over that week, it was crazy, but since the days were from 7 to 12 or later for the most part it really felt like you needed every bit you could get your hands on. Of course after this huge dinner, it was time for variety night, which was a bunch of events that were arranged by the returning Dons to just allow all of us to meet each other and give us something to do. I ended up playing ultimate frisby for at least 2 hours, I’ve never played it before, I’m really bad at throwing fribies ( I actually was shown just 4 days ago, from present time, how to do it properly ). I thought for a bit that this might be a really exhausting start to what I knew would be a busy week, but meh. By the way, my roommate for the week was Graham. He’s a returning Don and an awesome person to know. Did I mention his short list of talents includes playing several sports, playing guitar, singing, knowing a bunch of music, and loving Family Guy?

Sunday.

Every day began with a group of Dons coming up with some activity to either bring us together, teach us something or just make some kind of positive event. This first D.E.E.D ( Dons Enthusiastically Encouraging Dons ) consisted of a circle and turning left and then around and giving the person in front of you a back rub. Yeah, I could stand events like this most mornings XD

We had a guest speaker who talked about diversity and inclusivity. It’s sometimes an awkward subject and it’s hard to describe why this session was not only educational, but provoking and interesting, I guess you just had to be there. The presenter was from University of Guelph and he had a really interesting tattoo design in which he had Greek letters scattered on his arms, I’m not sure if they formed a message. It was an awesome presentation and it capped off with a poem which was first introduced line by line and it started off with a line which kind of paraphrased said “If you took this backwards”, and the poem was mostly negative, I assumed the first line implied to just think of everything in reverse. I was sort of thinking in the right direction, but not quite to scale, as we got scolded for sort of clapping at the end he showed us the real meaning, reading the poem from the end to the beginning, ending up with an entirely different meaning. Unfortunately we didn’t get a copy, now I have to try and find it. It was that awesome, we stood while applauding.

The Sunday Drum circle.

In the evening, after dinner, we headed over to a different building for some kind of surprise. The event of the night would be a musical evening involving a “band” and some instruments which mostly focused on shakers, bells and drums. The leading lady of this, what could be best described as “a traveling musical group”, was absolutely crazy. She was soooo energetic and sometimes odd that once again it’s hard to entirely convey it unless you were there. I started off on the shakers, then switched with Michelle for her drum and then she got the bells too, it was hilarious and awesome. We managed to form a bunch of different musical beats and songs by either playing as a whole or breaking down into sections and then learning individual beats. Our queues were short stories, for example two were “I like peanut butter, I like peanut butter, I like jelly, BAM!” and “Fishheads, fisheads something something fishheads, I eat fish”. Our favourite moment was definitely when the leading lady would say “freestyle” Did I mention towards the end a belly dancer showed up and some Dons were caught in promiscuous pictures.

Monday.

Some more training, role plays, training, I feel like a sponge that just absorbs what’s around and information. I’m once again reminded of just how bad I am with names and it really annoys me that my name is odd enough that most everyone remembers it after hearing it even once.

Free Time! Finally, it’s only been 2 and a half days and yet we were all so waiting for this already. Some people just fell asleep, some went shopping to finish up their costumes, I ended up running back to my room to pick up an email address I needed and then spent the rest of the time playing soccer. So much for that whole I should conserve some energy idea, 2 hours later.

We had a presentation from a bunch of on campus services, like police, fire safety and resnet. The last one was rather amusing to me.

Masterpiece Theatre.

Remember that costume I mentioned earlier? Yes? Great!
We all donned our alter personalities which consisted of various celebrities and proceeded to showcase for pictures and prepare for another action packed evening. It’s quite a sight to see 117 people in costumes of all kinds from Tom Cruise in Top Gun, to Britney Spears and Madonna and this and that. Raymond and crew opened up not only with some commentary, but also with an absolutely hilarious rap performance to open up the activities. Next we were issued a couple of pieces of paper with various scenarios, some props, a theme song, and an hour to put together a 10 minute long production. We got a really strange mix, and it would be boring to describe it, but by the time Masterpiece Theatre was over we were all laughing, sometimes maybe crying from laughter and generally it was amazing. Our skit had parts in it, delivered by Steph and Vicki on which you couldn’t help but just crack up and laugh. It was probably R rated for some parts of it, but hey, we’re all adults here

Tuesday.

More educational material, more D.E.E.D and more food, so much food, this is ludicrous.
An absolutely necessary part of every DonsO is Bud’s Farm. What is this you may ask? Well, Bud Walker is about the 3rd person in charge of this University in terms of position. Every orientation he takes all the Dons out to his farm, which I guess is about 20 minutes away and treats them to dinner, bonfire, games (more on this in a sec) and an open bar. Yep, that’s right an open bar, seems kind of odd considering how we’re the responsible ones and bla bla bla, so don’t be [i]that[/i] Don
The game, mentioned earlier, consisted of us breaking down into teams and having to run a fairly easy gauntlet, with our fearless leader in the middle knocking off flying water balloons. What water balloons? Oh the ones every other team was throwing at us while we were running this gauntlet and at the same time completing two rotations. We took a couple of hits, dished out way more, and using my powers of time travel and future observation (haha) I can tell you we actually got enough points to be #1. Jamal, our captain, who played Borat for Masterpiece Theatre would certainly say “I like”.

Wednesday.

Team photos — I hate being in photos
Some people are so photogenic it’s crazy, they just look good.
Anyway.

We had a session on crisis situations. We roleplayed the more common ones and then moved onto the more serious ones. When I was going over them with Trish you can’t help but be serious because all of them were taken from actual incidents that happened in residence. In a way I really hope nothing like what the serious cases talked about happens on my floor, in my residence, or in residence period, but it helps a bit to talk about it and know that it can happen, so you don’t just freak out.

Super Services Lunch — more educational hand outs, free stuff, food, free stuff, more free stuff, way more free stuff. Just in case you didn’t get enough, even more free stuff. A backdoor access card to the Bomber, which I guess could be counted as free stuff.

Lego Warrior.
Break up into groups, have a model Lego warrior sitting in a room where only one person from a team at a time can see it with nothing to jot notes down. Give the teams an hour to plan and plot. Have the build it, but as of this moment you just can’t actually talk to anyone. Oh, yeah, that’s just too bad. Did I mention pieces mysteriously go missing from the issued amount and no one can seem to make a complete replica? Fear not, Team Wilmot is sooooo Hot prevails as we complete our model in possibly record time and then go on to pawn it off to the second UW Place team giving them a nice 2nd place finish. UWP represents =D But that’s not really the point, no one breaks the rules, no one gets upset, we all finish, and in the end we’re ecstatic.

Free evening! I spend most of it working on door tags and other misc Don things. I think I did more, but I just can’t remember.

Thursday.

It’s odd that the closer I get to now, the less and less I actually remember from the events. We move into our permament residences for the next 4 months. We meet the staff, we do stuff, I have no hot water, a lot of people don’t have hot water. I, uhm, can’t remember anything else, that’s kinda bad.

Friday.

A tug of war to start the day! Or maybe that was Thursday, but I forget. The new Dons take on the returners, the returners take a hard won battle 2-1 and we absolutely demolish the RLC team

Single and Sexy is an educational play which I believe started the year before I came to University or somewhere around there, it’s still going strong and we went to see it again. I love theatre — maybe I love it because I worked in the theatre setting, or maybe just because. But the point is, I still love this play. It’s smart, it’s witty, it’s educational and sometimes oh so serious. At some parts you laugh, at some parts you marvel, some parts make you sort of want to look away, but yet they do happen. I’m glad every new student coming to this University gets to see this play — it deserves it, they deserve it.

Saturday.
Panic, panic, panic, Aaaaaaah!

Sunday.
Will be the subject of another continuation post. That’s all I’ve got in me for tonight.

Bye!