One pink prostate and two proud parents!

Ellie chillin' with some homies (in matching coats)

Last week ended with our best moment in Pond yet (that is until yesterday) when we took our leadership course kids on a field trip the health center. We met with Apphia, the community health rep and looked around the resource room showing them all the great info that is available to them. Then Apphia gave a small talk about what she does which turned into a motivating speech about how change in the community has to come from the youth, that it has to be people like them (our students) talking and looking out for the little ones. The youth are the ones who really know what is going on in the community and what the issues are. Ellie and Emma were just onlookers, it was really cool to see how captivated the kids were with what Apphia was saying and how genuinely interested they were about meeting with her after we go to help her spread healthy messages! It made our week! 
The weekend consisted of the usual yet again, bannock comas, lesson planning extraordinaire, playing soccer with kids into the wee hours, and long walks on the beach. Everything is melting so quickly, lots of brown and Emma loves taking photos of muddy streams of water, much to Ellie’s dismay and mockery. Friday night was also a blast… a Bieber blast! That’s right we did end up showing the JB movie at the school. Highlights included a grade 6 boy saying “I didn’t used to like Justin Bieber but now I can’t stop watching!” That made Ellie ecstatic!

Amazing leadership kids!

Our leadership kids teaching, Emma on pigs lungs

Monday was one for the books as we took our leadership kids down to Ulaajuk, the elementary school, where 6 of them taught 3 classes about smoking. And they rocked it! You must understand what a huge feat this is because many of them are so shy they care barely get up and speak in front of the class for 30 seconds. It was a little touch and go as we were running late, a few of our key speakers didn’t show up for class, and scripts were missing in action. Emma helped out by only bringing the healthy pigs lung from the health center so had to run back between lessons to get the cancerous one. However, the kids were great and obviously were equally as proud of themselves as we were of them! They really supported each other and answered the kids questions so well – maybe a few will be inspired to become teachers themselves! It would be great if we had time to do this with more kids or other lessons, maybe something to keep in mind for next year! We ended the day by feeding them brownies, what better way to say “well done” than with chocolatey gooey goodness with M&M’s on top. Well deserved.

Today we taught what felt like our most solid lesson yet – puberty! The kids were quiet as mice, much to our surprise. They are all definitely getting packs of gum at the end of the week for being so mature about it! Ellie’s art skills came in handy for our fabulous diagrams and the health rep Apphia sat back and let us do our thing. After talking about everything from periods and how babies are made, to erections and ejacualtions we got quite the chuckle out of the fact that at the end of one class the kids innocently requested to play their favourite game – squirt! Looking forward to contraceptives and STI’s tomorrow. Unfortunately there was a funeral in town this afternoon so school was cancelled, as is hip hop tonight. 

And the egg travels down the fallopian tube...

We miss you all!
Love and snowflakes,
Barf.