Trans Canada Expedition - Day 5

July 18^th, 2013 – Day 5

Location: Manitoba

Today, was a day of extreme progress, efficiency in terms of disassembling tents, packing tents, breakfast, hygiene, washing up, and loading up was surprising to everyone. From day 1, 2 and a half hour to day 3, 1 hour sharp. The day started out with a lot of hope, everyone woke up happy, well rested, and ready to go. Students got onto the vehicle, sat down and began to socialize, as the happy crowd sped across Ontario it began to rain. Trying their best to keep the crowd enthusiastic, the 2ICs opened up their comedic side, as the Team Captains assigned jobs to various students.  With the sky raining cats and dogs, Billy ( the leading vehicle) stopped at a nearby gas station and bought a few roasted chickens, bread, and fruits, a treat for the team’s  hard work and enthusiasm, we followed on a relatively long ride then stopped for lunch at a picnic site just after the time zone change. We gained an hour! Along the way, several ice breakers took place, people began to open up and connect with each other. Lectures of experience, and organization carried on. Laughter within vehicles began to increase, as student changed their impression that Trans Canada was simply a long car ride.  We finally crossed the border between Manitoba, and Ontario! Finally, some sense of achievement. Briefly before arrival, we made our final pit stop, and found a book entitled “The bible Stories of Matthew”, humoring our treasured member, Matthew.  Tonight, we are staying at a Motel named” “allowing everyone to have a better rest, and frankly a reward for reaching Manitoba and passing our first province. After a delicious and homey dinner of Mac and Cheese, students head to their rooms for rest and comfort. With a big new day ahead of all of us, we’re here to say goodnight, sleep tight, and don’t let the mosquitos bite! 

Tiffany

Arrival at Manitoba! I feel such a sense of achievement, finally getting out of Ontario! People might say spending hours and hours on the same vehicle is a complete waste of time, but I beg to differ. This experience of Trans Canada is a test of physical strength, ability to stay awake, financial budgeting, forward planning, and all round planning. If one of the 6 team captains and 2ICs screw up, everyone goes downhill, so every move is thought of precisely, everything is done with reason.  For example, today we woke up with extreme determination and efficiency to finish wash up, clean up and load up, all in one hour. Quite frankly, it was a sense of achievement for the students, a relief for senior leaderships.  Like I said for the past few days, challenges and issues come up every moment, every second. But when a challenge comes ahead, it doesn’t mean impossibility, it simply means you have to work harder; when a monster comes in front of you, you have to face it with bravery, or thou you shall become your own enemy ; trust yourself, speak the truth and do no wrong,  trust your initiative, speak what’s truthful even if it means your life. Experience and Monitcle (Billy) has taught me such, as I carry full determination to successfully take my hopeful team mates with my to the Artic! Back to what happened along the road trip, we stopped at a picnic site for a brief washroom break, and our youngest member (Quince) found a book in the toilet when relieving himself, entitled” The bible stories of Matthew”  humoring my fellow “colleague” Matthew (team bravo 2IC), bringing once again the joke of the day. At least that’s some fuel of laughter that’s going to last longer!

Marco

Looooooong ride today. Bought 2 packs of chips, it was really tasty. We were about to go to Walmart today, but we did not go because the other groups did not answer if they want to go or not but whatever, I’ve got my chips. Now I am also in the Sprinter and FINALLY we are going to live in the motel today. We are also going to Monitoba (a new province), not Ontario (another province) anymore. I hope it would be nore fun tomorrow and I also hope that we can go to the Arctic circle faster.

Crystal

Waking up after a calm night, everyone got packed and helped take down all the tents. Everything was loaded onto the Sprinters in an efficient amount of time. We rare through the rain for long hours, made a couple of pit stops and bought some extra food for lunch. An achievement we were proud of making today was crossing the border between Ontario and Manitoba. The time zones have also changed, it is an hour earlier than back at home now. I’ve never been to Manitoba before to I can’t wait to explore it ^^!

Mickey

Today everything is good, the weather is nice! I think I can miss my person. I want to tell with them: “I am good! Everything is good. I will be come back soon, see you later in HK!” Tonight we will live on metel, maybe will be better that yesterday? Today is one the most happies in Canada. We will go to Hanley tomorrow. It sound there have beautiful thing, what thing? I don’t know, Hello! Canada and, I miss the NCPA friends. This is my first in NCPA. Hope I will try my best to studying in NCPA, right? Watermelons?

Owen

This morning when we were waking up, it was very cold and the temperature has decreased to 15C. But… I just got a wind-proof jacket! I was freezing!

After breakfast, my hands were deeply co ered by red spots cause by insect bites. I got there on the same finger. It hurts!

At about 11:00am, we went to a shop to buy something such as snacks and drinks. While we were all done, I saw Billy pushing a shopping car which was full of stuffs. Wait a minute… I saw roasted chicken!

While I was sitting in the vehicle, I heard a good new. We are going to a motel now! Yeah!

Quince

Today is our first day to sleep in an motel. We are heading there now. Today’s lunch is the best meal for this camp. It was turkey apple, ham and bread. We had crackers and OREOS for breakfast. I don’t know how clean is the motel, but let me tell you; the motel SHOULD be clean. Today, we drove from thunder bay to Winnipeg. Result!!!

Kendra

Today we are finally reaching a new province. Manitoba, we are here! This morning was a very foggy and rainy morning. We stopped by a gas station and finally for once we got to buy stuff from the store. Then, we drove for a long time and stopped for lunch. We had roasted chicken, bread and ham. Great combination! Then, we drove and drove and stopped at another gas station. Then we drove and right now we are heading to Manitoba and we get to live in a motel tonight! That’s it for now.

Grace

Yesterday, we had spaghetti for dinner. Since we didn’t have enough. Billy bought pizza for us. We slept at about 10, and I woke up at the middle of the night because ot became really cold. We wake up at 6:30 and leave at 8. we travelled more then 800 km and we are going to sleep in a motel.

Jennifer

 I have come to the conclusion today that I ma not fully able to enjoy myself, if at all. I am constantly second-guessing myself retreating into myself because I’m always worrying about caring for my team, being tough on my team, dealing with my own prior feelings of inadequacy, and wondering when I can feel like I’ve done enough, if not exceptionally well. In short the student repot sums up my anxieties. Am I pushing myself enough? Am I doing this right? Should I step in? I need to let them deal with things themselves-teaches them independence and self-sufficiency. But I always find out later that I didn’t do things right. All I’m good for is an example of what not to do.

Billy has no time for those who are not the best, and I am hesitant to approach him with questions because I am afraid that I should already know what to do and It will reflect on me in my student report badly on me in my student report, and updates because I am redundant and others have already told him much the same things which will also reflect horribly on me. This is self-reflection, but my reflections on myself are rarely positive due to my low self-esteem. I’m not on Billy’s vehicle, so he doesn’t have much time to evaluate me, and when he can see me, it’s often at times like these when I’m rushing to finish my blog to lessen the workload on the bloggers, and it seems as if I am trying to avoid work when I really want is to work to prove myself and to distract myself from my thoughts,

No on is there and no one cares about the small acts of kindness that I ‘ve kept in mind as a dealer of hope. Being tough on Quince, supportive of Kendra, helping Grace with English, feeding Howard his medicine, encouraging Edwin Cheung, coaxing Justin out of his shell, bringing those people on the fringe into the conversation during meals, taking over co-driving when Justin was tired, aiding and paying attention to Edwin Chan while he’s driving, giving Quince my sweater when he was cold on the sprinter even after putting his jackets on, making sure Matt gets his rest as well. Passing on little bits of information that Billy has taught us over the years. These things go unnoticed and I end this blog feeling a bit down.

Matthew

Sadly, still on our third day on the road, we still haven’t crossed the border into Manitoba. But since I am writing this blog a bit early I believe we will cross it today. Today everyone woke up to a good mood but not to good weather. We packed up very quickly and efficiently today, mostly because there wasn’t anyone without jobs or “idling”. Our destination today was from “Rainbow Falls” provincial park to somewhere near Winnipeg, Manitoba. So far we have been driving for about ten hours, with pit stops in between. I hope we reach our “ home for the day” before it gets dark.

Justin

Today we had the longest driving by far in our trip. From thunder bay to Winnipeg, 900 kilometers. Also marking the first milestone, leaving Ontario and set foot in Manitoba. A 900 kilometers drive is not as torturing as it seems. Firstly I took a long good nap on the car and admire the beautiful landscape of Ontario. At the end of the day, we are staying at a motel, a luxury after the two days of camping in the wilderness.

Howard

It seems that my condition has improved today as I do not feel as sick as yesterday. No vomiting or collapsing, I’m in top condition.

Today we left Rainbow falls and are heading to Winnipeg where we’ll stay the night which means that we’ll finally cross the Ontario border. After working up and swiftly packing up, you wouldn’t believe that we were the same as the sluggish and insufficient amateurs from yesterday, other then that nothing significant happened today so that’s all.

Jason Wang

Progress, we as a team, a until, as a family away from home are making tremendous amounts of it. As a leader on this expedition, I can see the skills, teamwork, and task learning the students improve greatly as we progress further on to this trip.

At around 0620, everyone was up and began packing, loading the sprinters and taking down the tents, faster then ever before due to the improve abilities of teamwork and communication along with the students memorizing our routes by the time the clock hit 0816 we were on the move from Rainbow falls and heading towards Manitoba.

Being one of the leaders on this trip, I find great pride in our improvement in the aspects of teamwork, rush learning, attention to detail and initiative and how both the students and other leaders along with the students continue to develop these skills. Even though there are still few hiccups in our communication, I have high hopes for this group.

Jason Wong

we woke up at 6:30am. and packed up our luggage and loaded it on the sprinters. me and most of the other guys in the big root tent, so we took down that tent, for breakfast we had crackers and oreo cookies since we aren’t cooking breakfast and ran out of buns, we went to gas for our pitstop then Billy went to stoped for Safeways to get lunch for later. Later we lunch, then For lunch we had ham sandwich, and bbq chicken breast meat. After lunch when we went back to the sprinters I was co-driver until the last washroom break. as I write this blog we are still in Ontario but our destination is a motel outside of Winnipeg.

Mike

Supposedlly, we, which included the leaderships, wanted to wake up at 1 am in the morning to see the Northern Lights. However, instead of waking up, I just passed out. When I did wake up, I wasn’t too disappointed cause the lights were faint. When we arrived at our gas stop we played a game on the sprinter, which had one of us pretend to be someone else, while everyone had to guess who it was. Although some say this game is bad as it might insult people, this game can teach you to pay attention to detail in your group, and it also teaches you how to think fast which are both useful leadership skills.

So some info on today; first, we went to a different time zone and gained an hour. Secondly, we have left Ontario and will mot likely be close to Winnipeg in a motel. Thirdly, my neck is “stuck” because of bad pillow placement. (I think it was to high)

Alan

Today when we woke up we had oreos and crackers for breakfast. After that we started driving to destination Winnipeg today. I didn’t sleep as much as usual mabey because I got bored sleeping on the car.

Kathy

Today is the fifth day in monticle. The temperature went down. It rains in the morning. We still spent a long time on the car. But we weren’t felt boring. Some of us were sleeping, others were talking or playing a game. We also listen to the music from radio. We wont camping today, instead we will live in the motel this night we can wash our clothes and sleep with less mosquitoes today. we had lunch at rainbowfalls besides the rainbow lake.

Lemuel

Woke up at around 6 this morning and packed up all our belongings and tents. We moved out of rainbow falls campsite an hour and a half later and moved west hoping to cross the border to Manitoba. As expected, almost all of Charlie team fell asleep once they got on the vehicle. Interestingly enough Charlie team became more talkative then usual where we pretty much had dead silence. Along the way we crossed the time zone so we are now officially on hour behind, tonight, the teams decided to stay in a motel. I have no issues with campsites, but having no mosquitoes is probably the greatest new right now.

Mireille

Yeah! Yesterday night there aren’t many more mosquitoes as much as in the other camp. Moreover today its only raining from 11am-2pm so I got a good rest in Rainbow falls. For breakfast I ate oreo and cracker’s. we only drank water. Indeed it is the best beverage of the world. Then or lunch we ate chicken and bread. Yesterday night Billy gave me something to put on my bulge’s hands/eyes and face. My eyes and face are better but no my hand., I think tonight we’re going to sleep in a Motel.

Ryan Hoang

Today is the third day of our travels. The day started with the usual of everyone packing and me instructing the disassembly of the tents. We then got on the vehicle and drove to Winnipeg with a few stops to eat, washroom and for gas. When we finally reached the motel we got into our rooms and started cleaning the vehicle. Me being the only one left without a job was told to take a shower early. However the shower situation was actually much worse then in the campsites with the water having a disgusting amount of rust on it. I resorted to scrubbing down myself hoping that tomorrow that we go to a campsite so I can have normal showers again. We then ate a basic dinner and we are getting ready for bed.

In reflection of my feelings for today I still feel cheated out of my position as leadership. Billy himself told me that I was leadership and in a very important role but when the camp actually started only gave me the position as one of the members which severely disappoints me. Billy says that I must learn to be a good follower first before he would give me a position as one of the leadership. But I personally still believe that 3 years of being a follower seems to be sufficient experience as a follower to became one of the leadership. I am growing impatient of my constant need to have to wait and it has severely put me into a depression. I have only found 2 options. One that the 3 years meant nothing and that it makes me think was a complete waste of time and money. Or 2 Billy still thinks that I need more training which also severely annoys me since many of the other leadership has been given far less training. Other then that I guess I would have to bare with this hatred and sadness until I can get my answer.

Calvin

Since the camp started, I have wondered what my job is during this trans-canada trip. It was pretty interesting for me because I have never driven so much before. This scenery was excellent. I have been staring at trees for the past 3 days. I hope that the rest of the trip would be as interesting as the Alpha Group. Driving isn’t as tiring as I thought.

Roman

Today was another intense day! Everything went well until … at around 6:30pm! Alpha car had only 40 min of gas left and there is not a single gas station in sight on highway 17! But we found a shell gas station. We are now in Manitoba tomorrow after P.T we head toward Regina & Saskatchewan!

Edwin Cheung

Today, we woke up at rainfall provincial park. Me and the HQ team work to get tene down. We ate OREO and Premium cookie for breakfast. We finish pack up at off at about 08:00 am. We have a long drive about km before Winnipeg. We stop a motel call riverside motel. In between, we had a stop. Billy lee us buy snack. He tell us to no make a mess in the Sprinter. It take us sometime to leave Ontario. It take us 2 half days to complete. We past Ontario at 6:00 p.m. We all scream and yell. But the information centre is close so. We head off. Our goal is to reach before Winnipeg to stay in. Hopefully we will reach to Yukon. We all arrive in riverside motel at 8:05 p.m.  We had mushroom chicken with Macharorany food. I was delious. Tomorrow we are head to the West.

Michael Fung

Finally, Manitoba…

At first I am thinking that it might be alright to have 12 days going up and 13 days going back. But, as long as we are expecting some sight-seeing being done around the Arctic Circle and Banff and so on during our journey back to the HQ, we should have rushed the journey for a bit more at this moment. Well, just a small piece of information to explain why we were having breakfast in Southern Ontario, lunch during Northern Ontario, and dinner finally in Manitoba, Riverside Motel.

Last day was Edwin Chan’s birthday, so Billy just brought him 5 boxes of pizzas for everybody as a form of celebration. Well, strictly speaking Billy has just beautifully demonstrated himself on how to be a good leader, or a good dealer of hope. Morale is definitely lifted, and the dissembling of the tents in the next morning was just brilliantly efficient. Yet, the unfortunate part is that we leaderships basically also planned for having some treats for our peers once we have reached Winnipeg or somewhere in Manitoba. Anyways, we did learn from Billy about how to deal good with morale – instead of consecutive days of early morning calls (e.g. 0500 or earlier) and intensive driving, we will be doing it alternatively. Hope all of them will go smooth…

Last but not least, the dinner tonight was a bit chaotic when being compared with the lunch. The reason behind is the difference between the co-ordinator or the master-in-charge – lunch done by Billy with the co-ordinating cooking team and dinner done by the team of cooks themselves. Just look at how determined Billy sliced his 5 roasted chickens (he just brought them and bread a supermarket)… and how we messed up a bit with treating with the portions and slicing the celery (well, it is still very hard to force everyone to get the celeries… I just got extra lots of celeries from my peers… just to prevent from wasting food). Still, the cooks still did not manage to accurately measure the portions for everybody – this time still a bit too much. Fortunately, the whole rundown is flawlessly smooth. I hope the morale and the efficiency will be increasing as we are heading nearer and nearer to our destinations. Add oil!

Edwin Chan

When Trans-Canada started the first day a duck nearly got ran out and it was still fine afterwards. On the second day while I was driving when I looked up into the sky I see a cloud chicken wing. The third day I drove all the way from rainbow falls to a little pass Manitoba border to Riverside motel.