Week 4 - A Celebration of Education.

So week 4 was our celebration of education.  It was an event that we planned for Annie Popert, the new Director General of the Kativik School Board.  It was a great event! We had the Kindergarten kids get   I hup on stage to sing a song, some of the older students went up and gave us a demonstration of drum dancing and throat singing, we introduced our new School Mascot and had a Skype conversation with a former student who is in Montreal finishing off his last credits of high-school.  I particularly enjoyed the Skype call.  He told the students that their education is extremely important and they should not give up.  When they come down to Montreal it will be difficult since they will be homesick and want to leave.  He told them to just stick in there and they can achieve incredible things.  I was glad that he told them all this.  It is what we have all been telling them all year, but it is different when it comes from a fellow student! I hope that this will give the graduating class the extra drive they need to cross the finish line!

Not exactly the best picture.  My camera had a herd time compensating for the low light, but you get the idea.  That's Nancy on the stage as MC.  She's really good at that sort of thing and it's amazing how she can switch between English, French and Inuktitut with ease.  A lot of parents came in which was great! and many of them said that they have a good time.

The rest of the week was pretty calm and we just went about business as usual.  On Tuesday we introduced our new school logo.  Everyone had a t-shirt with the logo on it so we all wore them.  The logo was designed by one of the students and then recreated by professionals.  The students won a prize for his ingenuity. The green splash is the northern lights.  The sled is the students traveling off into the future being pulled/supported by parents, community and the school.

 I did however do an Inventory of our Chemical closet in the Science Lab and have several concerns.  Primarily was the fact that the old Science Ped. Councellor went through the closet and said that anything in there is safe to go down the drain.  Upon finishing my inventory I know that this is wrong unless we are comfortable with killing everyone in the town and blowing up the school.  Since those two are not options, my next step is to identify the hazards of all the materials and have a booklet within the closet so that no one accidentally does something dangerous.  There are some chemicals in there that have to be used in the fumehood since just breathing in the fumes or dust can be hazardous to your health.

Aside from that Gillian Heather and I had a very nice dinner on Friday night.  We had pasta with a white sauce, spinach salad and garlic bread.  I love having these dinners every week, it lets us all unwind and have some great food!  Everyone enjoyed the fact that I pretty much took the loaf of bread out of the oven and then ran across the street with it.  Nothing like a fresh loaf!  After dinner we started watching Breaking Bad.  This is an awesome show!  I'm definitely going to get it when I come home in December.  I like how the show is very serious, but just the the way the main character is and the things that happen you have to laugh sometimes.

On Saturday morning I awoke to find that the ground had a nice little carpet of snow.  I personally thought that it was too early for snow since it is only October 1, but this is apparently normal for this time of the year.  At least it makes me think about Christmas!

In the afternoon Heather Gillian Joetta and I went for a walk down to the water.  It was kind of nice since the water was actually in this time! Usually it just looks like a big pile of mud. In this picture you can see some people decided to go out for a canoe ride.

We stopped off at the co-op on the way back and I had a look at some of the items for sale.  There are some very interesting carvings, but some of the excellent ones are also quite expensive.  I saw one that I liked, but it was around $200.  How expensive things are makes sense though given how much supplies cost here.  I walked past the gas station and saw that fuel is $1.55/L.  I'm so glad I don't have a car out here!

A little bit after getting back Gillian took me on an ATV tour of the outer reaches of the town.  It was awesome! There are a lot of good scenic places to see once you get out of town.  I unfortunately forgot my camera, but Gillian had hers so I can post when she sends me the pictures.  All in all it was a good week.  Next week one of my classes writes their first test.  I'm hoping they all do very well!