My first day in Canada started with a good jog. As soon as I noticed a ray of light getting into the trailer, I dressed up and went to a water spring close by. I run a little bit less than 3km back and forth. Starting the day in a healthy way is great, especially if it is not easy. I call it “voluntary hardship”. I stole this sentence from a Youtube video talking about a philosopher from ancient Rome (I guess it was talking about Marco Aurelio, but I am not sure).
I did a little bit of breathing exercises, which I skipped a lot even after I promised my vocal coach that I would do that everyday. My ears were hurting from the pressure and the cold combined, so I just lied down on a big rock and watched at the sky. The night before I took a book called “Doing Nothing” from the available books at the camp. Since Milan is so hectic, I was trying to get rid of the stress and the need of being always onto something without really enjoying the moment. So I stayed there for a bit until I went to take a shower.
I tried to start writing down my blog today from day 1, but I ended up talking again with Jim and Fran about vegan facts. It is always nice to learn new things and I honestly am happy to know more things now. In the end, I could not even do anything before breakfast.
For the first time in my life I had oatmeal. They just put lots of stuff in it, from fruit to different kind of powders that help with the flavor or with the nutriments you need. I told Jim that I prefer crunchy stuff, so he joked about it with Alyssa but I admit that I did not understand much. I even learned that I do not know much about cereal grains because Jim, Alyssa and Laila would ask me about the Italian names of different cereal grains and I would not even know them.
Jim asked me to do the dishes and I learned a new way to invite someone to do something. Basically he said “Do you want to jump on the dishes?” I am improving my conversational skills since I have been here. They say so many things that have strange meanings if you translate them word by word though they actually mean something else. Whatever, Alyssa taught me how to do dishes in the “camp style”. So you basically fill a little tub with some water to rinse everything by dipping things in the tub. Then you change the water and add the soap to clean them. It took me so much because I was not used to clean in that way and I was so focused on not having any bubbles left on my plates which was impossible. Alyssa then told me that they do not care about bubbles, so I got a little faster.
I brushed my teeth together with Jim and Asher and they showed me how they spit in the fields when they are done. I was like “Oh, for real? I have so much to spit” but Jim said it was okay. As soon as I did that though, Jim laughed and said that I really had a lot to spit. We joked about it stating that I was like a lama, but Asher did not know that animal.
I spent the rest of the morning with Jim at the new cabin we are building. It was just the second time that I had to use the driller and I already got a little bit better. We nailed and drilled the different parts of the floor’s frame and I worked so much faster. Jim even praised me and I was a little bit proud of myself. One of the reasons was because I felt I would suck with the tools; another was that I was watching something being built with my hands. I managed not to cut or hurt myself, even if the day before I cut myself with the measuring tape and it hurt so much. So strange how little cuts can hurt you so bad. Even stranger is the fact that I handled planks, hammers and drillers without hurting myself and then I ended up cutting myself with the measuring tape. Life, what a strange series of events.
When lunch time arrived, I could finally take my pants off. It was so hot in them I was sweating my life out of my legs. After I changed we had toasts and of course tortillas. A vegan toast is again filled with lots of vegetables and then we put on a cream I do not know the name yet.
After lunch we went altogether to the beach and the people asked me to bring the guitar. We sat close to a bench on the grass and I can remember the ants killing me. I was like “well, I can handle that” but they started biting me and so I followed everyone’s suggestion to put a towel on the ground before sitting on it. It helped a little bit.
Jim took out the ukulele and Asher grabbed the Bluetooth speaker and a cellphone to play with us. He has this little program that lets you play in tune already, so you can even just play randomly and you will still be in tune. I grabbed my guitar and we started playing and singing together. We sang “Let it be” because Fran and Larry are big Beatles fan. They were so happy, but since no one knew the entire lyrics, we moved on to other songs. Jim told me the chords progression and we jammed together.
It was not a bright and warm day, but we jumped in the water anyway. Asher is so spontaneously curious, so when we played he asked me to teach him the way I was splashing him with the water in between the palms of my hands. Getting in the water seemed so hard at the beginning because it was windy and cold outside, so I was not in the best mood to dive. But as soon as I got in the water, I realized that it was better there than outside of it. I did not stay that much because I wanted to finish the cabin, so me and Jim left the others earlier.
We worked on two things at the cabin. First we installed the isolation foam under the room’s floor. We needed so many little pieces that I ended up finishing the ones Jim gave me. Since he was not at the cabin at that moment, I measured and cut the wood myself with the electric saw. Jim did not want me to use it because it was a little bit rusty and was afraid I could harm myself badly. Luckily I did not hurt myself and got all the isolation foam done before he returned. We put the floor over it and went on to screw the deck’s floor. We used only brown screws to match the planks color and I got so much better that I could stand proud even in front of my dad now. We did so much screwing that we had the floor finished before dinner. It was really cool and gave me a sense of accomplishment.
For dinner, Alyssa baked some naan with the Polish guy. We had two types: one was white, fluffy and with garlic while the other one was brownish because it was whole wheat (or integral). We had some curry with it and I loved it because I came to love Indian style food. It is a little bit spicy but my throat is doing better. I guess I will buy a pollution mask once I get back to take care of my vocal chords.
After dinner it started raining so me, Laila and Fran just went in the office. I tried to write the journal starting from day 1 and I thought I would not remember anything. However, I just started to recall the memories as I was writing things. I spent the night writing and talking to Laila and it was kind of cool that we could make noise because Fran is deaf without her hearing plug.
This time the trip to the trailer was okay and I slept like a baby.
Godyl Go! 