“You eat turgid! You eat ham!”

We love Nasivvik!

The above title is what happens when you tell some grade 6’s at walking club what your teaching partner is scared of.  Yes, Emma is scared of the word turgid, and the kids thought it was something edible. Luckily our first night of walking club included many other hilarious and wonderful chats with the 7 kids who joined us! Funny how you pick them up as you go. Monday was a hard day of teaching as we dove into some of the more serious stuff – it’s substance abuse week! We learned quickly these are hard lessons to get across, and you have to word things very carefully but it was clear a lot of the kids were listening and we had loads of great questions from them. Our hearts jumped a little when the principal asked us to see him in his office after school (we thought we were in trouble!) but he just had a student there who wanted to ask us if we would supervise hip-hop tonight as the teacher who regularly does it is out on the land trip. Of course we said yes!! Today will be a day of not only teaching alcohol but embracing our fitter selves, much to Ellie’s chagrin, with girls basketball practice after school and hip-hoppin’ all night long!

Last Thursday we ended the week with our exercise lesson, which was great fun – even the older kids were into our jumping jacks! After school we had our first drawing club meeting which had a surprisingly high turn out, almost all boys too! There were lots of Arctic scenes, apples and animals flying around the room. Ellie’s master art skills came in handy, the kids all think she’s the best – although a lot of the pictures were still “To Emma, From ______”. We found out loads about their taste in music, which was surprisingly G-rated, even though they didn’t have much to work with on Ellie’s iTunes. Justin Bieber, Shakira, and the Black Eyed Peas were the order of the day. Highlight of the night was when one Grade 7 girl smeared peanut butter on her mountains…. multi-media, rock on! 

The weekend was nice here, starting with Friday off school! After a failed attempted at getting into the public library, and no poutine being served at the Co-op (Friday the 13th was against us) we planned some lessons and went for a hike. Dinner was at Tessa’s place with her nephew as well who is a 2nd year student at Queen’s and was here visiting and doing some work with the radio station. We’re hoping to get a broadcast out ourselves!  Afterwards we hiked down the infamous “candy shop” which is a ply-wood contraption where a 77-year old Hungarian man named Jim Coax sells candy through a window after everything else closes. We saw lots of our students down there as it was certainly the place to be on a Friday night! Saturday and Sunday consisted of lesson planning, which included making our huge body picture to use this week, affectionately named Freddy by one of the grade 9 classes. We also helped at girls basketball on Sunday night and they totally showed us up. It was Emma’s first team sport practice ever! Way to go! We also found the garbage dump on Sunday. At last!!! The view is indeed as beautiful as Sarah and Em said it would be. Will definitely make that a regular trekking destination.

Garbage galore + amazing view!

The 'candy store'

We can’t believe we have been here for two weeks already, the sun feels warmer and the roads are melting, but we are soaking up every minute and miss you all very much! In other news, exactly one month today Ellie is getting laser eye surgery! 

Kaputau (phonetically speaking) –see you later!

Turgid & Ham.