Had one of the worst nights ever tonight. Not because I slept bad, but because around 2am in the morning I got so scared I could not sleep without all of the lights on and one eye open. There was something right outside my trailer. I could hear the steps and it made me really susceptible to every sound and thing I could see in the dark. At first I thought it was Verena, because we spent the night together watching the stars and talking. She would joke from time to time to scare me in the night, but her cabin is so far that I would have to really annoy her to make her do that.
At one point I just fell asleep because I was too tired to stay awake. I was like “well, if I have to die tonight, there is nothing I can do to change that”. Obviously it was not a seriously dangerous situation, because in a calm and silent place even the smallest animal can make a loud noise. You would be surprised by that.
However, when I woke up in the morning, I found some poop on the bush and all the tall grass pushed down together with a small tree. You could say whatever you want, but there was an animal for sure just outside my trailer yesterday night.
I spent the morning in my trailer, trying to do breathing exercises because it was raining so hard. All day the water just kept pouring down non-stop if you want to know. When it started to rain a little bit less I grabbed my old and trusty Decathlon jacket and went out. I really love that jacket because I had it with me every journey I made since my European wanderlust back in the days. I do not even remember how many years ago it was, but it was before university. So that is quite a long time.
For the first time, we had cereals for breakfast and we were projected to have lots of free time due to the pouring rain. But Magnetawan has a community centre where people can go and stay dry while playing sports or reading in the library. We used the basketball court to do some yoga and meditation.
It was raining so hard, so maybe the sound of the rain would have helped me to focus, but I decided to play with the kids instead. It is incredible how Asher just never whines. He is such a bright youngster. Moreover, he always tries and puts all of his effort in the things he does.
One thing that amazed me was that I could do so many keep ups without losing control of the ball. I have never been good at football (or soccer, whatever you call it), but maybe the thought of being good made me better. We had a little basketball competition playing “king of the court”. Whoever scored would stay, the other team would change with the people waiting. We were divided in three teams and my team won the first match-up. When we were playing the second, Jim had one on me with a double fake while dribbling. We were lucky he did not score, but since I wanted to get back at him, I intercepted a pass on defense and went to score alone. I showed off a little bit too much and lost control of the ball while doing what we call “terzo tempo” in Italian. I am sorry I do not know the name in English. When I had to lift the ball to the basket, I used too much power and ended up sending the ball outside. Everyone was like “Godyl! You ended the game!” because the ball was so soaked that we could not play anymore.
We went back and it was still raining. It was supposed to rain all day long, but somehow we had the activities going on. Jim and Alyssa made some soy milk and soy yogurt so I ended up having a little bit of free time. I could have written this but I got lazy and played with Reina and Asher.
Before dinner we did not have much to do, so I finally worked on my music. I fixed some parts of “Pajama Party” and when Jim came in the activity building, we started writing a new song together. We came up with something really cool, though I need to work on it. The goal is to finish the first chorus at least before I leave so that we can film a video while we sing it. We finished the first verse before the Whole Food Buddha Bowl dinner.
After supper I could have gone to Burk’s Falls to play in a drop-in flag football competition, but Mic the Vegan had a speech planned for the night, so I stayed. I mean, he is a professional youtuber with more than 300.000 subscribers on Youtube. Listening to him and just being with such an accomplished person can give you so much fuel to go after your own goals.
I will be honest by saying that I was a little bit sleepy during the video. It was about a meeting for the dietary recommendations for the US. There were people saying very stupid things and many people talking about the beneficial effects of their plant-based diets. I think that in the future we will move towards a vegan diet or a more sustainable one, but at the moment it is just too hard and expensive to fully go vegan with the support of the people and the system.
I asked Mike about it. Why do people keep doing certain things when they know it is bad for them? Why can people go to official meetings without data, researches and studies to support what they say? It is so sad that the answer is always “money”. The few powerful people can not be that absorbed with money to the point that they can not see that there will be no future for them too if they keep managing things like they do now. But whatever, I am just a small piece of this big world so I can only do so much. Though I think I will still have meat and other things vegan do not have when will go back to my everyday life. Maybe I will just cut some stuff and reduce other, but I will watch out my in-take of antioxidants for sure and follow other tips like preparing the meals on Sunday or eat frozen blueberries.
We spent the rest of the evening talking with Mo but eventually went to bed because there was no internet after the storm. The router is still broken and it will probably take so much time to get it fixed that I will be elsewhere when the wifi will be active again. That means no karaoke, no movies and no communication with the rest of the world. I will keep this journal and post everything when I will have the wifi back.
Godyl Go! 