Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I just find it strange.
Who would have thought that I would have a busier life up here in the middle of nowhere than I did back home? It's true. It's been a couple weeks since the teachers have gotten together on the weekends, but I've still found myself busy doing other things. Last week we had a boarder stay over for four days. His name was Francis. We got really lucky, he was wonderful. He was originally only supposed to stay for two days, but things didn't turn out that way. He was here to meet the cargo ship, but he came Wednesday afternoon and the ship didn't show up until Friday. He was happy to have Thursday off, he said it's been awhile since he had nothing to do. We got home at noon that day and he had made us lunch. And not just sandwiches or something, but a roast pork that he had brought with him and potatoes and carrots done in an onion soup type sauce. It was great. Alison and him became fast friends. I got home the first night he was here and they were playing Super Mario on the wii. She also got to practice her French, they would speak in French quite often and he would ask her for help with English words he didn't know.
Last week the caribou also showed up. We'd heard that they were here for the first time on Thursday. They were out by the airport, which is a little too far to walk (though there are others that run it on an almost daily basis). One of the other teachers took me and my class out to see them but we only managed to see two of them really far away. I was pretty disappointed. I thought they were gone but then on Sunday morning Francis went out to get booked on his flight out of town and he was them just outside of town. He came back to the house just after 9 am and told us that they were there. Jodie (one of the teachers downstairs), Nick and I went for a walk and managed to get some fairly good pictures of them. They were still a bit out in the tundra, away from the road, but it was nice.
As I've said already the cargo ship finally made it here last Friday. People were sooooo excited. There were new vehicles coming up on the ship, groceries, chocolate, clothing... anything that was needed immediately, that couldn't come by plane, or was too costly to ship by plane.
There was also a youth retreat at the school this past weekend. Religion is a big part of life for many of the people up here, this was a religion retreat, with dancing, singing and worship. Students and others came from communities around Nunavik to participate. This week I saw some of my own students with t-shirts and sweaters that they had signed by their new friends. We hadn't realized but the retreat went all the way until the end of the school day on Monday.
On Tuesday the water truck broke. Because Tasiujaq is built in an area that is all permafrost all of the buildings have water tanks that need to be filled multiple times a week so that we have water. This includes the school. We had to close the school at 2:45 on Tuesday because we were out of water and the truck couldn't come fill us up. They also didn't have the part to fix the truck so school was closed yesterday (Wednesday). Thankfully we didn't run out of water here at the house, and the part was flown in yesterday at noon so the truck was all fixed by last night.
Tomorrow we are having Halloween at school. It should be fun. We're going to have a regular morning and then in the afternoon all the secondary students will be doing stuff together and all the primary will be doing something together. My class is part of secondary. We are going to offer candy apple making, cookie making and movies. It should be fun. I just wish I had some kind of costume to wear.
The community is having Halloween on Saturday night. The kids go around to houses starting at about 5, then at 8 everyone goes to the school gym and there is a costume contest. Alison is going to be a half angel half devil. She's happy about it. She picked her costume off a website and we had it shipped here from Calgary.
Next week we have another boarder staying with us. She's coming into town for workshops. She will be staying from Monday to Friday. Hopefully we are as lucky with her as we were with Francis.
Nick has been working at the school pretty much full time. It's good. We're planing on going to Cuba over the Easter break! I'm so excited!
Well I guess that's it. I'll try to post a little more frequently from now on.
