Creepin' on Up

A while ago, my friend -- who, for the purposes of this blog entry, I'll call Kbrian (it's a silent K) -- remarked that he knew that, at the young age of 27, he was getting old, because he was pulling his pants up to his waist -- and he liked it. "YIKES," I thought, "Poor guy. But that 'aint gonna be me. No sir. No way, no how. I'd throw out all my belts and buy pants with a waist size of 42 before I let that happen."

Now I'm not here to report that my pants have reached waist-level. In the work environment, they rest comfortably at hip-level, and in the home environment, they rest even more comfortably at the below-the-hip-level.

I am here, however, to admit that the height at which my socks reside is creeping up. And now I understand how Kbrian's pants got that high, and more importantly, now I understand how he began to like it. You see, work is a formal environment. And every now and then, when I'm sitting down, I like to cross my legs (yes, men, it's ok to do that -- just be careful of your "belongings") or put one foot on the opposite knee. The bend at the knee causes the bottom of the pants to lift, thus revealing the lower calf. And this lower calf should be covered by a generously-proportioned long dress sock. It's not really ok to show bare leg at work.

So every morning when I'm getting dressed for work, I have to remind myself to pull up those socks. It feels pretty weird, mostly because it's always been something I associate with adults: adults being those "older generations" who've lost touch with what's hip and cool and normal. But the thing is that I get dressed for work five days a week and the near-knee-high sock-level has become habitual, even for non-working environments, when I would like to indulge my youthful ankle-level ways. I regularly get confused when I get dressed nowadays. Sometimes I can't figure out how high my socks are supposed to go, almost as if I was in that state in between dreaming and waking up where you're not sure what's real and what's not. So some days, I show up to work with my socks down, and other days I go out to the movies with my socks up. And here's where I think Kbrian went wrong. In this fragile state of disoriented fashion, you're tempted to just pick one and end the insanity of it all. And of course, you have to pick work over your personal life. So you reconcile yourself to its necessity and eventually find that you even like it. (This is not unlike the Stockholm Syndrome.)

And thus is how I imagine Kbrian, unbeknownst to him, found his pants that many more inches closer to his nipples. But for my part, I have decided to stubbornly resist the temptation to choose one sock-level for the sake of simplicity (or even sanity). And if I show up to work with one sock up and one sock down, or my pants tucked into my socks, or (God forbid) wool socks and Berkinstocks, so be it. Because I'm a man who will resist the urge to conform to the crazy ways in which our world works. I will not get old the way others have gotten old before me. My friends, I will forge a new way into my mid-to-late 20s, like the true maverick that I am. Kbrian and the countless others like him may have been lost, but, I promise you, their loss will not be in vain.

Just Call Me Robocop

June 7, 2008

I’ve just finished this blog entry, and thought I would warn you. In good English-student fashion, I proof read it, and realized something. It’s not that this article is gruesome, or tearful, Pulitzer-prize winning, nor particularly literary. It’s just long. So for those of you who would rather read the short version, look for paragraphs that begin with an asterisk (*).

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*Well my friends, I wish that my blog had not turned into an online catalogue of the injuries that I sustain in Europe, but so far, that’s what it’s come to be. Nevertheless, I write this to inform everyone of what has happened to me, and to hopefully keep people from worrying too much.

Today is the six-week anniversary of receiving my over-sized neck brace. Six weeks and two days ago, I was playing Capture the Flag at American Village with the campers. My team was doing poorly, and I was one of only a few of my teammates who remained free from the other team’s prison. In good Capture-the-Flag fashion, my imprisoned teammates had made one long line (the human-chain) reaching from the prison toward the border. I decided, after a lot of strategic contemplation, that the only way to free them was to coordinate an invasion with three to four other players. Each of us would cross the border at roughly the same point, but then scatter, running for different points along the human-chain. In this way, I hoped that the other team would run for the one spot where we crossed the border, leaving certain margins of their territory unoccupied. Then when we scattered, we wouldn’t be running toward them, but away from them, thus giving us relatively free passage to the human-chain. [Once someone reaches the human-chain, he or she has free passage back to his or her territory.]

For the most part, this strategy has little to do with my accident, but I thought it was quite smart, so I wanted to tell you about what prowess might have taken form. Any way, I crossed the border at the top of a hill, which I descended toward the human-chain. The hill was not that steep, but my 8-year-old opponents were strong-willed and determined. Thus, I ran quite quickly. At the bottom of the hill was a series bushes: just a few hurdles to mount. But alas, the other team didn’t swarm toward us as I had predicted. One of the campers just stood among the bushes, waiting for me to run into her. And run into her I did. I would have liked to just change my trajectory by a few degrees and avoid her altogether. After all, her strategy, waiting for your opponent to just run into you so that you can tag him or her, wasn’t the most stupendous. But I was running far too fast to alter my course without falling. Moreover, the bushes posed a serious obstacle to any course alteration. So, I was forced to give up a heroic rescue and just halt so that I didn’t (quite literally) kill this child. Although I stopped as hard and fast as I could, I still knocked her flat on her back. But thankfully, she was all right. I felt fine as well. And because I ran into her, I had been tagged, and therefore, I went to prison.

It wasn’t until about an hour later that my neck started to hurt. The muscles began to contract, forcing my neck into a sort-of-S shape. By that evening, it was quite painful and uncomfortable, and I figured that my sudden halt-by-collision had given me whiplash. I put some cream on it, friends massaged it, and I figured I would just tough it out. But by the end of the day, I couldn’t move my neck at all. After talking with some of the other counselors, I decided that I should go to the hospital to be checked out, even if it was just whiplash. Better safe than sorry.

So Magma drove me to the hospital. Nemo came along as well for support. The doctors ordered x-rays, which were inconclusive. Nevertheless, I had all my sensations, so the spinal cord itself couldn’t have been damaged.

*After consultation with another two doctors, they asked me to stay overnight so that they could do more detailed tests in the morning; an x-ray couldn’t rule out all possible injuries. So I had a CAT scan the next day, which revealed that I had suffered a fracture of the C4 vertebra. Moreover, I would need to wear a neck brace that would support my head and prevent my neck from moving for at least six weeks. This was terrible news, because, up until that moment, I still thought that I wasn’t seriously injured. And more than that, it meant that all my plans for work and travel in the next three months might not be possible.

*When the technician arrived in my room the next morning with my “neck brace,” I literally gasped. I had never seen anything like it! “Oh man, it looks like Robocop’s cyborg implants,” I thought. It’s been a struggle to wear it everyday (and night). Not just because it’s uncomfortable and so restrictive, but also because it’s just so weird looking.

*Since having received it, it’s been decorated many times, with graffiti and friends’ signatures, and it’s even been completely coated in spray paint twice. Why not go the extra mile and have some fun with this embarrassing contraption if I have to wear it for almost seven weeks? It makes an amazing skit costume, even if it isn’t technically a “costume” yet (since I can’t take it off). And I can imagine that one day it may make quite an amazing Silver Tornado costume.

On June 10 I will have another check-up with the doctors in Mâcon. If everything goes well, I will receive a new, smaller neck brace, which I will have to wear for one to two weeks. After that, I will be neck brace free! And soon after that, I will be back in Canada, where I will start my physiotherapy. I won’t be doing yoga for a while. Or going water-skiing with my cousins in Sweden this Midsummer. But I can sincerely say that I was very lucky and I am so thankful for my health, even if it will be a long recovery.

All Good Things

Written March 3, 2008

Whenever a camp session ends and I return to Paris, I go through a sort of shock and withdrawal. Especially if I’m not staying with friends in Paris, the shock can be quite hard. At camp, we I live in very close quarters, both with the campers and the counselors. I usually share a room with one or more counselors, and spend my entire day in collaboration with the rest of the counselors and the campers. All of that is intensely extroverted work; there just simply isn’t the time or the space to be by oneself. And that’s fine. In fact, this intensity is a huge part of what makes camp life so fantastic. It’s like a super-concentrated version of community and friendship with all its ups and downs.

Any way, I loved being at SEJ, and I miss the kids and my new friends who were also counselors. But tonight I’m sitting in a Laundromat, finally able to do my laundry, and getting ready to head off to Germany tomorrow to see some friends. So I think I will make a concerted effort to enjoy this time to myself.

There were so many highlights of this past week. Being at a ski resort in the middle of the Alps makes the number one spot. I haven’t skied in maybe 7 years, though that’s not really because I didn’t want to ski. It had more to do with lack of money and time than anything else. And I LOVE skiing. So it was so fantastic to be able to get back on skis again, let alone get back on skis in the Alps (with a perfect view of Mont Blanc, Switzerland, and Italy, nonetheless). The slopes take you everywhere. You find yourself on other mountains with completely different views than you originally saw. And you’re so high. You don’t see other mountains so much as other summits.

That being said, I actually had to spend 2.5 out of the 6 ski days on the sidelines. On the second day on the slopes, I was accidentally hit by another skier. He had to swerve out of the way of a little girl, and unfortunately ran into me instead. It was a total shock; I don’t really remember being hit. I had actually just been getting up from my own fall. What I do remember, however, is knowing that I was back on the ground and that someone had run into me hard. I had a small cut on my face, which everyone who had come to help thought might be quite serious. It was really only a small scratch. But I saw a lot of blood building up in the snow around me. I knew it couldn’t have come from my face, and I realized at the same time that my arm was hurting a bit. I took a look at it, and my sleeve was all torn-up. It was then that I saw the blood more-or-less pouring out of that sleeve. Luckily, a first aid attendant was there right away. Because of concern for blood loss, I had to be helicoptered into town, where they stopped the bleeding. The doctors concluded that no bones were broken, though the wound went right through to the bone on one side of the arm, and it’s the bone that has since created the most pain (which is not all that much). And thankfully, no ligaments were torn. But many of the veins in my arm had been severed, hence all the blood. Eleven stitches later, the wound was closed-up, and I went back to the chalet.

Although this was a serious accident, I want everyone to know that I’m OK! For the first day after the accident, I couldn’t really use my arm or hand, but I regained more and more strength each day. The wound is healing, and I even went skiing again 2.5 days later. I didn’t use the ski pole all that much, but I was fine. I even did moguls that day. And then the next day I conquered the ski slope that three days earlier I had flown away from in a helicopter.

Those Little Monsters

Last time I worked at American Village in France, I sustained several painful injuries. I would like to tell you about them.

The first injury occurred during the first summer session at the camp. You see, another counselor and I were at the tepee and campfire field, leading activities for about twenty campers who would enjoy a night of roasting marshmallows, listening to scary stories [in a foreign language that they can’t quite grasp – so not as scary as you might hope or imagine], and camping in the tepees. But this was a particularly rambunctious group; several of the boys attacked Poppins (my friend, colleague, and co-counselor). They were just having fun, and so was Poppins. But she was clearly losing the fight. So she called me in for backup. “Squash! Squammmkach,” she screamed, then mumbled, as her face hit the dirt and more and more campers joined the teenage war cry. As the dashing, chivalrous, warrior-like gay man that I am, I came running to her rescue. I pulled those monstrous (and ever-fun loving) teenagers off her one at a time, while fighting off their reinforcements with any other ligament or flailing limb I had free.

But wouldn’t ya know it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Freddie Mercury running straight for me. Now Freddie Mercury is one thirteen-year-old that you don’t want running after you with a crazed look in his eyes. Besides being annoyingly strong for his age, he has the energy of a hyena and the reasonless determination of a dog trying to catch its own tail [Hmmm… is that rude? Well he is atrociously hyperactive!]. When he jumped on me, I handled the jolt well enough, though I had to abandon any hope of freeing Poppins from her remaining interlocutors. I could handle him: but just barely. So it was bad news when I saw even more of the boys running for me. What fun for them! As soon as the next boy jumped on me, I fell like a ton of bricks. Now Freddie had been clinging onto me with his legs wrapped around my waist (he was also trying to knock me over), so his head was at the same level as my head. And thus, Freddie’s head hit my head (quite hard), and my head hit Freddie’s head (quite hard) -- as we both tumbled to the ground. But all that wouldn’t have been quite so bad, if Freddie’s head had not collided with my head at my eyebrow ring.

And so I bled, and lost some eyebrow tissue. And eventually, as my eyebrow stubbornly refused to fully heal, I lost the ring as well: injury number one.

OK, wait a minute. Hmmm, I can’t actually remember most of the other injuries that I sustained throughout the middle of the summer. Maybe that’s a good thing. I made a list of all my injuries at the end of camp season last year (just for posterity’s sake), but I can’t find it now. So I’ll just skip onto the last and worst injury of AmVil ’07.

Coincidentally or not, this injury occurred at the campfire and tepees as well. Actually I think a campfire gets the ‘lil ones a little excited. So not so much of a coincidence after all. This injury involves no physical contact whatsoever with any of the campers. Rather, it involves one of the camper’s smoldering projectile marshmallows. I’m not quite sure why Jack had to flail his stick with a still-flaming marshmallow in the air (and with such vigour, nonetheless); before we started the campfire, us counselors had acted out an amusing, yet informative skit that demonstrated the dangers of such actions. We even offered alternative methods for cooling a marshmallow, like blowing on it. And in fact, we even intervened the first time we caught Jack waving his burning stick in the air. Nevertheless, he persisted, and this time the burning outer skin of his marshmallow shot right off his stick and right onto my unsuspecting leg. I believe I actually screamed at the moment of contact. What a hot, gooey, searing mess. Unlike other burning projectiles, a melting marshmallow can’t be easily removed from its landing site. A burning cigarette, on the other hand, could be flung off my leg with relative ease and swiftness. At any rate, I actually had to wait until the marshmallow cooled before I could remove all of it. And I have a bright purple scar that will remind me of those flaming moments for years to come.

So I finally reach the point of this blog entry. Given these injury-making precedents, and the sure knowledge of like-injuries at future AmVil experiences, why do I return to American Village again this year with such excitement? Well there are several reasons. First, and perhaps most obviously, it’s in France. Hallelujah! La belle France. It’s also simply an amazing opportunity to meet new and amazing friends who come from all over the world; last year I worked with counselors from Canada, the US, France, England, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobego, and the Czech Republic; and I met other AmVil counselors from Russia and beyond. And we all come to AmVil for similar reasons, which for the most part means that we all come to AmVil with similar personalities and interests. When I was at BAFA training last year in Mimizan, we all became instant friends (and then there were dog fights and various dramatic situations of course… but overall it was terrific).

But above and beyond (though in conjunction with) all these reasons, are the kids, who for the most part are fun, interesting, and often simply hilarious. We struggle to get to know each other, slowly learning more as they develop their English speaking skills and find ways of expressing what they might not have been able to say a day earlier. And all of this happens in class and during the usually fun, though extraordinarily exhausting activities we have for the rest of the day. “Going away to teach English” can be such a cliché nowadays, that it might not seem all that special or rewarding. But all the teaching, program coordination, and so on that constitutes my job description at AmVil is really all about the creativity in which I can meet and interact with these kids, and it’s the kids that ultimately make this job unbelievable.

So, in fact, the kids aren’t really all that maniacal after all. (Well, OK, they are. But they make up for it in other ways.) Though they won’t go to bed, can’t pronounce “snack” (it’s NOT pronounced “snake,” darn it), and launch flaming marshmallows at my leg, these trials and tribulations hardly monopolize the magnanimous spirit of AmVil.

A Slice of Sept. - Dec.

**I just finished writing the following as an email, but because I don't have all the email addresses of everyone I would have liked to send it to, I've posted it here as well. Happy holidays!**

Dear friends,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I hope that these holidays have brought you peace and joy and that the coming new year will be filled with good health and lots of laughter. I usually send cards by the post to my friends every Christmas, but this year I wasn't able to do so; but with this email I can at least update you on my life recently.

As most of you know, I spent an incredible five months in France after graduating from UVic in April. I could tell you so much about my adventures in that fine country, but I'm afraid that this email would run a bit long; I've written about my trip on my (somewhat-infrequently-updated, but nevertheless très-cool) blog: the gulf between the arms. I returned back to Canada at the end of September just in time for my friends April and Jamie's wedding. I had the great privilege of helping plan and then hosting their wedding reception, which went very well! At that point, I wasn't sure if I was going to be staying in Canada or returning to France (in a hurry), because I was waiting for confirmation on a job-offer as an English teacher's assistant in France. In the end, I didn't get that job, so I had to decide what I was going to do with myself!

I applied to several career-related job possibilities in Victoria, but eventually decided that because I wanted to return to France sooner rather than later, I couldn't commit to long-term work. So I quickly put together a new application for work with my former employer in France, American Village. American Villages, English-immersion camps for kids aged 8-17, operate from March to August every year. I asked that I could begin work at AmVil at the beginning of their program in March so that I could work at their winter ski camps in the Alps! And I'm very happy to say that they gladly accepted my application!

So I will be returning to France at the end of February, following a brief visit with a friend or two in London. I'll also be visiting friends in Germany during a break between camp sessions, and I am beginning to make contact with family in Sweden, whom I hope to visit during another break between camp sessions in March! My contract with American Village will take me until the beginning of June, after which I'll do some more traveling, possibly work for a month or two with another organization in France, and then return to Victoria.

I'm also applying again for a position as a Teacher's Assistant in French high schools. If I'm hired and I accept the offer, I'll be working in France from October 2008 - April 2009. I was just thinking as I wrote that that those dates seem so far away. But I guess if 2008 began today, they're not so far away after all!

But France is not my entire life! I've loved being back in Victoria for the last few months. Being here has given me the opportunity to see the many people here that I love and missed while I was in France. I was very graciously rehired by the Resource Centre for Students with a Disability at UVic for the exam period in December. I worked there for several years while I was doing my undergrad degree, and I was so happy to reconnect with that ridiculously amazing group of people. Since then, I've begun working at Pure Vanilla Coffee Shop and Bakery. I'll be working there mostly full time until I leave for France in February.

And I've also continued to work on a research paper that I originally wrote for a seminar course last year, but which I have really wanted to continue work on in order to publish it. The topic is a bit of a mouthful; it examines the discourse of Canadian contributions to the debate over the right to self-determination for indigenous peoples in international law, and I look specifically at the now-abandoned UN Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And I've also begun work on a paper on the relevance of natural law in modern moral theology. I don't know if I'll have the paper on indigenous rights done by the time that I leave for France again, but I plan on having the paper on natural law finished by the end of this month.

I've also decided that for now, I'm not going to pursue an Master of Divinity degree. I was really, really hoping to enroll in the fantastic M. Div. program at Notre Dame University in the US, but I've decided that, at least at the present, I'm not called to ministry in that sense. Instead, I'm beginning to put together an application for the Cultural, Social, and Political Thought grad program at UVic. It's a very unique program in Canada that allows students to earn an MA in one of four disciplines (I would probably pursue English) while concentrating on studies in Critical Theory. I plan on going on to grad school, whatever the program may be, in Sept. 2009.

And what would life be without yoga? Yes, I'm happily taking classes again. And I've decided to start doing capoeira this week! Capoeira is a form of Brazilian martial arts based on dance movements. I've wanted to take capoeira for years, but it's not been until now that I've had the time and money. And I'm still trying to pursue some acting in my spare time. And reading. Lots of reading!

I think this email is getting quite long, so I think I will end it here. I'm thinking of making updating my blog more regularly a new year's resolution. We'll see. I change my mind about anything and everything like clockwork (like any good philosopher does), so that may not pan out!

I wish you all the very best and am thinking of you all.
With love,
Stefan