Ikki!! (Cold!)

Here we are sitting on Ellie’s leopard print couch back in Kingston, feel quite icky ourselves. Our final week in Pond Inlet flew by, filled with graduation and other year end wrap ups, so as for our last blog we will give you a run down of everything that happened!

We taught leadership and communication to the Grade 7, 8, and 9s, playing loads of games and jeopardy! Monday we did a question and answer class on Sexual Health and wrapped up our CTS course, we will miss those guys! Tuesday was Grade 6 graduations, which coincided with Emma’s convocation! It was a really nice ceremony, a couple kids we knew made speeches and it made our day to see their eyes light up when they spotted us in the audience. Then we went over to Nasivvik for basketball practice but it was cancelled since the gym was being set up for graduation. The principal’s wife and wicked awesome basketball coach invited us over for the year end girls basketball team pizza party! We baked cookies, ate 5 pounds of carrots, ate pizza, ate 5 pounds of cookies, then played cards and Apples to Apples (board game)! Emma dominated cards, rivaling in competitive nature only to the most sassy, win-or-nothing girl on the team! Ellie didn’t understand the game even by the end.

Grade 6's throwing up their hats!

Wednesday was our last day teaching so we baked cookies and played ‘Summer Jeopardy’ upon request, which was a mixture of fun random things with some actual health material. Ellie’s highlight of the trip (totally smiling when writing this), for 500 points the question was, ‘Why can’t someone with diabetes control the amount of sugar in their blood?’ Three classes into the day, they only managed to figure it out with lots of hints and coaxing but then in our fourth class, one of the most rambunctious Grade 7 boys instantly yelled out “Because their have no key! INSULIN!!” It was incredible.

That afternoon we attended the award ceremony, then we helped set up for the grad dinner that evening. We attempted to make ourselves look presentable for this event but it wasn’t too successful as the principal’s wife insisted that the next day we borrow her clothes for the actual grad ceremony! HAHA! But in all seriousness, the grad dinner was delicious and moving. Its amazing how much more meaningful graduation is in this community.

Blowing bubbles with Janine!

Rainbow char thank you card

Thursday morning we wrote up our thank-you cards and did some wrapping up work, then in the afternoon we went around and visited all the classes, delivering cards and gifts to teachers and hanging out with the kids on their last afternoon of school. We had our final drawing club, which turned into an hour of hardcore Inuktitut lessons, which we are proud to say we got a lot out of! That evening we went to graduation, and felt honored and so lucky to be in a place where there is so much love and pride.

Friday! Our last day in Pond was sunny and filled with warm fuzzies (to contrast the not so warm weather!). We played an awesome game of girls vs boys basketball and totally got creamed but we scored some baskets and it was loads of fun. We spent some time at home with the family, playing bubbles with Janine and going on an ATV tour of the town with Alex! Alice made us a delicious last supper of caribou and cake! We then went down to ‘Jim Coax’s’ the infamous candy store, where we met up with many of the kids we taught. We ended up walking around and playing hide and go seek until 2 am, at which point we pulled ourselves away after many hugs and Nagligivagis ( I love you) and went inside. The next morning we were driven to the airport by Ely on the ATV and to our great surprise there was a large group of kids who had stayed up all night waiting for us to say goodbye again. We reluctantly boarded the plane, Kauputau Pond Inlet, Nagligivagi!