Nature Bound's AEE Blog

Hey guys! Its my turn…

First of all, we’re both having a great time in Montreal. Getting to go out and see the sights is absolutely incredible, and I for one feel so lucky to be here. Today was a little different than the last two days being that the conference finally started. Jonathan and I were both planning on working the conference workshops today, but found out that there was a really unique opportunity to go on a “traveling workshop” this afternoon. Sounds interesting enough without even telling you that it was with a company called “Trapezium”.

Yes…thats right. We got to spend all day flying around and being tossed around on a trapeze. As it turns out, Montreal is the birthplace of circus performances, including the art of trapeze. Cirque de Soleil was formed here and has now traveled all over the world. Our main instructor had been a performer for 7 years and had traveled all over the world focusing primarily in Mexico. The people were so nice at the outfitter, and the group of people that we went with was just top notch. Everyone tried the stunts on the trapeze, and most were successful. It was a great team building experience, and everyone was so supportive of each other.

On an even cooler note (for me at least) I met a girl from New Brunswick that is also a diver, as well as being a diving coach…just like me! When you deal with being in such a small sport, along with having to explain that ITS NOT JUST LIKE SWIMMING It was absolutely twilight zone that we met. So I ended up getting the opportunity to dive at CAMO International (which is a HUGE deal by the way). It was such an absolutely unique experience, that I can’t even explain it. I hadn’t been on a diving board in 3 1/2 years… Kinda like riding a bike… If you rode the bike for a little while and then it kicked you off and beat you to death. Haha…I’m definitely not looking forward to being sore in the morning!

Well…. Now that the conference has started, its not just going to be fun and games anymore. Still fun, but work starts bright and early in the morning. Jonathan and I are meeting a couple of people for breakfast around 8am, and then both of us will be helping out with workshops until around 5pm. They should be really entertaining though. I’m getting the opportunity to introduce Wes and Ken before their workshop “Leadership and Sailing: Using Sailing as a Means of Student Development”, so good luck in advance guys! We know you’ll be great!

So I’m saying goodnight for now, getting ready for a long day tomorrow.

Bonne nuit from Montreal!  ~Alex

So today was the day where we had to get as much done as we could possible get done today since the rest of the day we have things we have to do with the conference. So the first thing we had to do was wake up….and yeah…Alex and I woke up at what I would say we both would consider an early time for being ‘off’ of school. Haha…in the end we got out of the room at about 9:30 a.m (give or take and hour )

The first thing that we had to get done in the morning….FOOD!!! Alex and I went out relatively late last night for my birthday, but we were still starving!! We had heard good things about the ‘underground’ so we decided that we would try there for lunch. Yeah we definitely missed the typical ‘breakfast’ time. So we were on our first mission….find food. They had a ton of things in the underground, but I was craving one particular type of food. If any of you know me very then you can probably guess what that food was ….PIZZA!!!! And boy did we find some good pizza…though really expensive it was really good.

Now for those of you who are wondering what is the underground? Well, it is exactly how it sounds, it is an underground city. Literally it is a entirely other city underground…haven’t really done the research about it, but from what Wes says they built the all the things down there because of the harsh winter. Well I can tell you from today that it was freezing so I can see why they would want to do that. After we ate Alex had one request and that was to shop! So we went and looked through all the different stores that they had…didn’t really buy anything but it was nice to know that they are there.

Next stop after shopping was orientation for Service Crew. It was the basic run down of what Alex and I would be doing while we were on service crew. We found out what workshops we were going to be working with and going to….it really got the blood pumping to get ready for the actually conference to start. Alex and I are both working for 4 different workshops so we will be pretty busy. After we had orientation we went to registration where we got out name tags, packet of information about the conference, our meal tickets and if you notice in the picture out ‘first timer’ thing that we can put on our name badge…haha as they put it, “That way people can help you out since you probably will have questions.”

We then had to rush to the metro…the way time to get around the city. We bought a three day pass, like Wes suggested. We then had an interesting time trying to figure out what train to get on. Thank god Alex speaks a little bit of French because I would be completely lost if she didn’t. We finally got to where we wanted to go…wait for it…the Biodome. This was an amazing experience as they have a different setting for every continent. It was really interesting to see who they would literally change the climate that we were to say change the leaves or make it snow. After that I pleaded with Alex to go up to the observation station. This was an amazing experience as we were able to see all of Montreal and we were able to see how far we had actually come from the hotel.

Our last stop of the evening was dinner and going to the light show at the Basilica Note Dame de Montreal. So we bought the tickets at 5:45 p.m. and the show started at 6:30…thus we had to do something really quick and what is quicker than McDonald’s. Yeah I know we should be trying the food around here, but we really need something quick. So…sorry Wes for not eating only French food for the duration of the trip. We did make it to the show, which we were about 5 minutes early for and this was literally the best thing we have seen thus far. It was great being able to listen and learn about the history of how the church actually came to be. The picture below was taken on my iPhone so sorry if it isn’t really the best quality, but really no picture can describe how amazing it was.

The final thing that we did was to paint pumpkins. Alex and I did meet a few new people while we were down there. I painted 3 pumpkins and Alex painted 2….and if Alex and I are guessing correctly there was a Georgia pumpkin that we have a sneaky suspension was done by Wes. The picture below is a pumpkin version on myself.

So today was the ‘travel’ day for the 2 of us. We arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson at 6:50 a.m. for our 2 hour flight from Atlanta to Montreal. Our flight started off a bit rocky with it not leaving till 10 instead of 9:26 a.m….but all was well and we actually ended up getting to Montreal right on time. So I guess the pilot went really…really…really fast haha! One positive thing this morning was the fact that we didn’t have to pay to check our luggage…score one for booking way back in July!!

Once we got on the plane we realized that it was a ‘puddle jumper’….basically it was a really tiny plane that had 2 seats on each side of the plane and a really tiny aisle down the center. The plane ride itself was interesting as we had a ton of turbulence (which made Alex slightly nervous), but it really was a bumpy flight at certain times.

On the plane the guy in front of us was playing his music REALLY REALLY loud. Thing is he had his ear phones in….so not only could you hear the music from his computer, but the music from his earphones…my thoughts…he is going to be deaf in less than 6 months. Enjoy! Finally, about 30 minutes into the flight he was ask to turn down his ear phones and turn off his computer speakers…but did that stop him??….ummm nope. Oh well…

The one good thing about the music was that we did get a chance to talk to a few of the other people around us that were annoyed by the overpowering music. One person that we did talk to was a man who was sitting behind us who was actually a pilot who works for the same airline that we were flying. He was heading up to Montreal for one day so that he could ‘pick-up’ a new plane to fly home to Salt Lake City…he had some interesting insight for Alex through the turbulence.

Customs was really easy compared to South Africa. We then got into a taxi and made about a 30 minute drive to the hotel. Wes met us in the lobby and like most hotels our room wasn’t ready to go in so we had to find something to take up our time. It was about 1:30, so Wes showed Alex and I around a bit of what he and his friend did when he came up with earlier.  We all went to this restaurant called Rubens…basically a ton of food on one plate…and Wes was right in saying that the food was good here. After than we came back to the hotel and found our room was ready. YAY!!

Other than that…Alex and I became familiar with the hotel itself. They have an amazing pool and gym…we wanted to rest up as we were tired. We are working on a plan of action of what we want to do tomorrow…which if you didn’t know there are a ton of historic buildings to see and explore. After all that we are going to head to the gym and go out to celebrate my birthday. We can’t wait to go out tomorrow and see the amazing city…we have the whole day to explore tomorrow other than Service Crew orientation at 1 and then registration at 2. Woo Hoo….get excited for the next post!!! The pics below are a few from the hotel

Each year two Trip Leader from Nature Bound get to go to the Association for Experiential Education’s (AEE) International Conference.  For more information on AEE you can visit their site: www.aee.org. This year the conference is going to take place in Montreal. The 2 Trip Leaders that are going to the conference this year are Alex Robinson and Jonathan Knight.

I know that neither of us could be more excited to go to Montreal not only to go to the conference, but to experience the city that we are going to. We will be in Montreal for 5 days, October 27- November 1 and plan on using every minute that we have to go to workshops, explore the city and meet some amazing people.

The purpose of this blog is to keep those who were unable to attend the trip involved in the process as Alex and I go through it. So be sure to check up for updates.

~ Jonathan