I can’t believe we’ve already been here a week at Shad Valley Queen’s! I quickly lost track of time as we’ve done so much! We got a bit of time to relax this morning and I woke up to the sounds of cows mooing, birds chirping, a wind turbine (NOT windmill we learnt) blowing and our tents rustling. Not necessarily the typical sounds we’ve heard at Queen’s.

Last night we pitched our tents in a field in Wolfe Island to prepare for a night’s camping trip. It was a little more luxurious than the Duke of Edinburgh camping I was expecting and I was pleasantly surprised to return from the campfire to temperatures above zero. After a rushed attempt to take down our tent, which had to be repeated properly a second time, we raced to breakfast. Being the last ones awake this was a rushed process as we didn’t want to miss anything.

We started the morning with more leadership activities, including catching each other, providing a path for each other across sticks and creating a seat for those behind you (left) and we successfully completed the tasks given to us by our fabulous guide Walter!

After rec time and lunch we set off on a hayride around the island and stopped to see its wind turbines. They are huge!! Then we got back on the ferry to return to our home for the rest of the month.

We finally had some time to relax. Most of us enjoyed a much needed shower, and took the opportunity to catch up with the world at home. After supper we worked on our house projects and then had our first house social - Casino Night, including a huge game of Uno, poker and, to begin with, a little awkward dancing but finished with everyone singing and dancing to the YMCA.

Then we went upstairs for a game of our own creation of Pictionary meets charades before saying goodnight to the boys as they left for their own floor. Another exciting day at Shad Valley has ended but I know there’s tons more to come! Must go to bed as I’m keeping my fabulous French roommate awake.

Bonne nuit!

Philippa Gosine
Shad Valley Queen's
Hometown: St. John's, Newfoundland

Expected number of mosquito bites since arrival at Shad: 27
Actual number of mosquito bites since arrival at Shad: 2
Average hours of sleep per night: far too few
Required number of morning coffees: 15
Actual number of morning coffees: 0

Let me start off by saying that today in particular was another exhausting day at Shad Valley UBC. Like all other mornings, breakfast was between 7:30 and 8:30. All 52 of us trundled into "The Lounge", anxiously awaiting a new day of unknown activities.

We boarded the bus to Lynn Valley (our first official 'field trip' as an entire group) at 9:05am sharp. As one knows, a school bus filled to the brim with excited teenagers is rather... noisy, to say the least. A near hour-long bus ride later, the Shads spilled out of the bus to take in their new surroundings. We were astonished. We were surrounded by lush green forest that towered above our heads. For those of you who haven't been to Beautiful British Columbia, perhaps the simplest way to describe Lynn Valley is that it looks as if it came straight out of the Lord of the Rings films. For those of you who aren't fantasy buffs, here's a photo: (coming soon).

We intrepid Shads got our first taste of exactly how frigid a creek is in early July. We waded through a rushing stream, and although swimming was not planned into the itinerary, quite a few of us ended up getting soaked. Yours truly managed to evade the worst.

About two dozen of us went hiking in the afternoon after lunch. (One learns to appreciate meals in a completely new way when one is away from home). The larger group (myself included) took the long route, which delved into the forest and spanned close to 14 km. The return trip took almost 4 hours! Needless to say we were exhausted on the bus ride home... but still as rowdy.

Not to forget our friends south of the border, the evening was finished off with cake and a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner by Dr. Martin Adamson (our Program Director) on guitar and vocals and Steve McCarthy (our Program Manager) on vocals. All in all, it was such a busy day that I will wake up at 6:30 am tomorrow, anxious to experience another day at Shad. And somehow managing to get through the entire day without coffee.

Deanna Choi
Shad Valley UBC
Hometown: Kingston, Ontario

En Francais!

Pour chaque journée que nous dormons au campus, nous, les Shads, devons nous réveiller pour être prêt(e)s pour le déjeuner. Alors, aujourd’hui, nous sommes tous réveillés et prêt pour aller déjeuner. Au menu : des œufs avec des petites patates carrées et du bacon, des céréales ou du yogourt.

Puisque nous n’irons pas retourner aux résidences, nous avons déjà apporté tous ce que nous aurons besoin. Ensuite, nous sommes allés dans une salle pour faire une activité enrichissante. Voici l’activité : il y a deux pays : le Canada et le Mali. Chaque équipe doit essayer de survivre avec les ressources dont ils disposent et doivent ainsi acheter du luxe pour essayer d’être le plus riche. L’équipe ayant le plus de luxe gagne la partie.

Après l’activité, nous discutons de ce que nous avons vu et appris durant l’activité. Et puis, nous sommes allés faire du camping à St-Aimé-des-Lacs. Arrivés sur les lieux, chacun d’entre nous a une tâche à faire : préparer la nourriture pour ensuite cuisiner le souper, monter les toiles protectrices pour ne pas se faire mouiller par la pluie, mettre en place les tentes et apporter des tables pour s’asseoir.

Et vient le temps pour souper : du cousse-cousse avec des saucisses et du poulet (pour les végétariens, une combinaison de légumes et de fruits). Comme dessert, des bananes cuites au feu avec des pépites de chocolats et des biscuits à l’intérieur. Puis, nous nous sommes rassemblés autour du feu pour parler de nos peurs à Shad, ce que Shad représente pour nous. Il y a eu des émotions fortes dans cette discussion. C’est alors pourquoi nous nous sommes donnés des hugs après.

Finalement, nous nous sommes couchés.

Mathieu Dassylva St-Pierre
Shad Valley Université Laval
Hometown: Edmundston, New Brunswick

Got together with the Events committee and we put together all of our movie suggestions. We had like 25 in total but we narrowed it down to four. We decided to tell the rest of the Shads at Assembly what the movie choices were and to take a vote. Tonight we're going to tell them about the rest of our plans: popcorn (complete with the old-fashioned cart thingy) and sleeping bags (everyone's going to bring their sleeping bags and pillows down to the Cameron Room and we'll lie down and watch the movie like that).

Then we finished up our seminar on conflict from a few days before, and a guest speaker (Jenny Beckler) came in to talk to us about Project Management. I knew some of what she was saying because of my dad's work and teaching. She also talked to us about critical thinking and gave us some tips for working on our house projects.

A guest speaker, Robin Muller, came in and talked to us about different materials, fabrics, and fibres. People were asking her a lot of questions because we've all been working on how to develop our products with natural fibres. Out in the hall she had 2 tables full of different fabrics (including one that had copper in it so you could scrunch up the piece of fabric and it would stay like that - very cool!) and materials (wool, cotton, alpaca, silk (amazing. so soft), etc.).

We had ShadSpeak then. We learned about Henry VIII from Christine, Mack's love of snowboarding, Wendy's playing of the pipa (Chinese instrument) and love of digital animation, Intekhab's track and field experience in Hershey, PA, and Tait's love of music (he had a really cool presentation; he played his band's music off YouTube while speaking and in the end threw out demo copies of their cd into the audience!).

We moved on to House time. The ten of us and Kathleen, our PA, crammed into our House office and presented our research. We discussed our 3 problems and decided to do feminine hygiene products! The boys in our group are pretty brave to be delving into this territory. You can tell they're smart though; they know that this is our best idea and has a good market. I think we're going to be focusing on reducing waste because so many billions of products are in landfills and such each year; we also want to make our product as eco-friendly as possible too. As Shad says about us, "We take the best - and make them better!" and that's what I guess we'll be doing with our idea. Today we're going to meet from noon to 12:30 and 5-6:30 because our 2-page Idea Proposal is due on Sunday.

Snack was leftover Canada Day cake. Avi and I got to bed BEFORE midnight for the first time since we arrived in Halifax, so we were pretty pleased with that. We're back in the DalPlex for rec, and I think I'm going to do Cathy's yoga session :) Tonight we have a Special Event that we're supposed to be in comfortable clothes to move around in, and I'm thinking it might be highland dancing because it was hinted at on the first day.

Danielle Biss
Shad Valley Dalhousie
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario

Canada Day!

O Canada!

I never knew that I could have so much energy while running on so little sleep. This is the beauty of being a part of Shad Valley Waterloo. It’s been officially three and a half days since my Shad friends and I arrived at Waterloo. Everyday is filled with brand new activities, and not a minute of our Shad lives is being wasted.

As we all know, today is Canada Day. I woke up at 7:30 am (running a little late) and attempted to plaster a cheerful little maple leaf tattoo on my cheek. Today is also a very special day for another reason: the beginning of our design project. This year’s theme is “Looking to Nature and Natural Fibres.” After being split up into 6 groups, my new group members and I started sharing our findings and began brainstorming crazy, wild, but possible ideas. Some of the creative ideas simply blew my mind. It was quite clear that we would be seeing some outstanding projects in the near future.

This afternoon was slightly different from any of our other days. For the first time in my life, I tried Kung-Fu! It’s actually a lot harder than it looks; nevertheless, we had a blast and were able to pickup a couple of useful defense and attacking moves.

After supper, THE Luigi Ferrara, director of the school of design at George Brown College, came in to talk to us and to give us a few helpful pointers on getting started with our design projects. It was a great honour to learn from such a talented designer.

At last, the day came to an end with everyone gathered outside to admire the fireworks. Although this day has ended, the most memorable month of our lives has only begun!

Yours truly,
Diana Sun
Shad Valley Waterloo
Hometown: Fredericton, New Brunswick

18:30, 30 June 2009
Quite a day at Shad so far. It's dinnertime now as I write this, and already I'm tired. It was hard to remember to write this entry. . . I'm already starting to lose track of the days.

The morning started out early, with my alarm going off at six forty-five. It was relatively easy to get up since I knew that I was going to learn something interesting today: the theme for our all-important project we'd be working on for the rest of the camp. Since I'm not sure if other campuses have had the theme revealed yet, I won't say what it is; I will say, though, that it generated a lot of discussion in my house group and quite a few interesting (or crazy) ideas. Not at all bad for our first half-hour meeting, I think.

21:47, 30 June 2009
To continue with our day. . . we had our first and very excellent guest speaker, a botanist from the university. Got to learn about plant fibres -- some people find that interesting, including (from what I observed) most of the Shads -- and it got nicely hands-on after that, when we got to look at cross-sections of plants under microscopes, and mess around with razor blades and dyes (always fun, of course). After that, we got a tree tour of part of campus -- saw some beautiful trees. I'm trying to remember some names: temperate rubber, red cedar, yellow cedar, wingnut, some pines, and of course the famous upside-down tree. I wish I had gotten a picture.

Some recreational time followed that. A fairly intense game of ball hockey in the middle of the gym, with volleyball and basketball on either side. Aside from some balls whizzing around where they shouldn't be, it was a great time -- people got to show off a bit and get moving around, have some fun. Dinner break after that was very welcome, with lots of conversations about the games and otherwise. . . I think our table got into the topic of stem cell research.

Shad Speaks after supper! Our first session, with speeches about. . . well, stem cell research; as well as a trip to Kenya, horseback riding, Dr. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, Wikipedia (mine!), inspiration and dance, female pirates, and wilderness survival. It's not an exaggeration to say that I heard some of the best speeches by students I've ever heard. Great to hear such a variety. I wasn't even a tiny bit bored. And I'm really looking forward to hearing the other forty-five. . . as I type now, I'm hearing a discussion on someone's upcoming speech on Communism. Looking forward to that. . . .

I think snack starts now, so I'll wander down and see. Busy day. Canada Day tomorrow! I'm hoping for fireworks.

Gillian Manley
Shad Valley UBC
Hometown: Truro, Nova Scotia

Hurray! The second day has come! It was quite intense trying to learn everyone's name yesterday. A new day has come and hopefully, I will get to learn more names and soon, I will know them all!

I woke up at 7:05 and took a shower. We left our residence and ate breakfast at the cafeteria. Afterwards, we came back to the residence and played several games to ''break the ice''. I suggested a game of ultimate rock-paper-scissors. It got really intense and everyone was yelling and cheering!

After the games, we went to a class about the design process in engineering. We took a break to eat lunch in class. The class was five hours long, and most of us did not expect to be in a class the second day at Shad Valley. Following the class, we went to the cafeteria to eat dinner.

Then came the P.A.'s Shad Tile presentations. It was really fun to learn about them. Scott's presentation was the best because he took 10 minutes to talk about his blanket... that he found last minute... that he never actually cherished in his childhood. He wanted to show us that he's spontaneous and he never plans things out, he goes with the flow.

For the rest of the night, we made a party for Emily, another fellow Shad. The party was great, but I did not stay up long, because it was getting late. Sure, 11:30 is not that late, but I know that MANY adventures are to come and every bit of sleep will help me enjoy this fantastic 4 week trip that will help me open my horizons and live on my own!

Denis Cormier
Shad Valley Université Laval
Hometown: Lutes Mountain, New Brunswick