Weeks 14 & 15 - The Countdown is on!

So here I am.  Three days from now I'll be arriving in Montreal, the halfway point on my journey back home for the holidays.  Before we get to that though let's see what's been going on for the last two weeks!

This is a random picture of the mail pickup truck.  I thought it was interesting to see the little modification to the tires so that there is a little bit more traction.  There is a massive amount of ice on the roads right now so this is probably a very good idea.

Last Saturday was our school Christmas party at Omerone's house.  It was an interesting evening.  The food was pretty good (Omerine and Raymond are an older french couple and definitely know how to cook!).  I'm glad that some of the younger people were there so that I had some people to talk to.  It gets a little awkward for me sometimes when I'm surrounded by older people and little children.  At one point though someone busted out their accordion and people started singing Christmas carols. This was my cue to hit the dusty trail...  Anyway, I had been warned that there would be massive amounts of food so I decided that I would make some Ciabatta as an accompaniment to the main course.  Everyone seemed to enjoy them and Omerine was quite happy to have the extras.

I think they turned out reasonably well considering I haven't made these in over 2 years.  Although they weren't as airy as I wanted.  Next time I'll have to let them rise more.

One of the interesting additions to our school was a new ornament designed by the art teacher called the Northern Lights.

It's a fairly interesting construct made from pieces of green and purple glass wired together.  It's quite nice when the light illuminates the glass.

Over the last couple weekends (last weekend and this weekend) I have been working on making Christmas cookies for all the students.  I thought it would be nice to have the teachers come down on the last day of class and get some for all their students.  I made them some sugar cookies, belgium cookies and mexican wedding cakes.  I think in total there was around 200-250 made.  This week Nancy came in and lent me a hand!  It was nice having her there since decorating the sugar cookies on my own generally becomes very tedious and makes me question my 'good ideas.'

Here is the Maestro in the middle of decorating some cookies.  She brought some of the kids in too and they have fun decorating too. :)

Finally, here are some of the interesting things I have bought while I've been here.  Some of these are made from soap stone, others are made from bone or some other type of stone.  It seems a little strange to me that no one carves things out of wood, but it kinda makes sense though since there aren't that many trees around here, and the ones we have are soft wood.

Anyway, this is it! The next time I post I will most likely be sitting in Delhi with a nice mug of hot chocolate and a cookie!

Weeks 12 & 13 - It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Well, just like most of my favorite television shows, I decided to take last week off of posting.  Unlike the mass media, my inactivity was not due to the American Thanksgiving weekend, but rather the complete lack of anything of note happening!  Over the period of two weeks though, I actually did some stuff that was interesting.

On a personal note, I am quite happy that Movember is over since now I am able to shave off my ridiculous looking mustache. Although as my mom would point out, all I need is a sombrero, a poncho and a sash of bullets and I'll be ready for an old school Mexican standoff.

But allow me to back things up a bit.  November 26th was Heather's birthday.  We had a small gathering at Gillians house and made pizza for dinner.  Nancy also brought over the stuff to make Sushi and I made a tray of Eclairs.  Fortunately eclairs are very easy to make and really aren't too time consuming. 

 Everyone had a good time and a few people had a little too much to drink.  I hadn't thought that they had drank too much more than me, but they were in pretty rough shape the next day and I was fine (I actually went to school and did some work).  The highlight was definitely when Gillian spit her drink across the room.  I was watching her as she did it and I really wasn't sure what was going on.  Apparently she heard someone say something funny and she couldn't help it.  I also learned that some of my fellows have interesting talents.

Recently I have been going to the gym trying to get into better shape.  I usually go around 3-4 times a week although some times it is hard since it's so bloody cold outside.  Last Wednesday when I came home I looked up and noticed that the Northern lights were out.  It was pretty neat! I got a picture of it, but sadly I didn't have any sort of tripod and it was exceedingly cold outside making it hard to sit still and take the picture.

When I go home for Christmas I'll grab one of my SD cards for my other camera.  I bought an 8gig SD card from amazon for $15 but apparently my camera is too old to recognize the chip and I haven't been able to use it!  On a positive note though, it's only a little bit over two weeks until I jump on a plane and come home!! It's all very exciting.  I have seen a few people around here hanging Christmas lights on their houses as well.

This is one of the houses across the street from me.  It's nice to see everyone getting into the holiday spirit!  I'm thinking next week I will get started on my Christmas cookie workshop.  I discovered that on December 20th it is a day when classes have activities or Christmas parties so I thought it would be fun if we had cookies available that we could take around to all the kids!  Since there's around 200 students I think I'm going to have to get started early! I think 2 weeks should do it no problem though since I will have some helpers as well!  That fact is probably a good thing since decorating can get tedious and makes me want to shoot myself sometimes..haha

Week 11 - I Don't have the Powaaa!

This week was a pretty average week, aside from one major difference.  The Village shut down power to the school and our apartments from 8:30 - 10:30 on both Wednesday and Friday.  As a result, there were no classes until after lunch.  This was a little bit weird to me since I ended up missing 8 periods.  It was kind of nice though since my Wednesday and Friday classes are both usually very busy.

Last Friday I started tumbling some rocks using the schools Lortone Big Rock 3lb Tumbler.  Over September I collected a bunch of rocks on my walks and decided that it might be nice to smooth them out and make them shiny!  I finished the first round using the course grit this Friday and it was amazing how smooth they already are.  I started the medium grit and I have high hopes for the final result.  I think I may even order one off of amazon.  They usually run around $160 on amazon, but it seems like it would be a worthy investment.


Another interesting thing that we did in the lab was to try out our new static electricity generator.  Heather was using it for her physical science class, but I thought my sec.5 Science class could probably learn something from this experience as well.  Here's a picture of one student using the ball.

I also used the static ball.  We used a chair to elevate ourselves off of the ground as recommended in the guide.  Unfortunately standing too close to the metal parts of the chair tended to cause static shocks that started to feel fairly uncomfortable.  I'm not sure why but I ended up getting shocked 5 times more than everyone else!


Early in the week it was actually a little exciting.  The weather started to warm up and reached around +2C.  This was great since it was warm and sunny, and also caused a lot of the snow to melt!  Unfortunately, after this it cooled down to -6C and all of the water generated from melting snow solidified into ice.  This started to make by walk to school a little more interesting, but it would soon be followed by the following:

This storm dropped about 3-4 inches of snow in a very short period of time. It sucked having a bunch of snow back, but at least I didn't have to worry about falling on my face crossing the road anymore!  I should mention that this picture was taken around 2:45pm.  It's a little bit depressing, but it starts to get dark around 3 and is usually completely dark by 3:30-3:45.


On another plus side I got my second grocery order from Marche Daoust, and all I have to say is this place rocks! Aside from the fact that I asked for 12" tortillas and got 8" ones, everything else was spot on.  Also, unlike IGA online their produce and meat are FRESH.  In addition, as a result of the Northern Healthy Eating Program, my $185 bill ended up costing me $82.  Which is great considering I bought all kinds of meat, vegetables, fruit and meat.  My grocery bills are in fact cheaper here than they are in the South!  I'm just afraid of the fact that I will definitely run out of food cargo well before the end of the year.


Since this month is Movember I have decided to grow a mustache in honor of prostate cancer awareness.  I cheated a little bit though and grew a goatee with it.   

It feels weird having this again.  I can't wait to shave, my face is itchy!!


On a last note, only 4 more weeks until I go and get a Big Mac :)

Week 10 - A Long Weekend...

This was a bit of a boring week in that nothing terribly interesting happened.  Friday was Remembrance Day/James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement anniversary.  As a result Friday was a holiday and it was only a 4 day week at school.

On Friday I went in to school to try and get some work done.  I had been coming down with a cold on Tuesday night so I didn't stay for too long on Friday since I was still pretty tired.  There was a bit of a storm on Friday morning and Heather was worried that her Circus guest may not be able to get on the plane for Montreal.  The storm dissipated for a while though and everyone got out no problem!  Although I did find it quite humorous that the weather network said it was 3C and partly cloudy and then when I looked out my window it was friggin' snowing!

Anyway, I ended up going for a walk on Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday it snowed too much and the dogs were hiding underneath the houses.  On Sunday though it was much nicer out and I was joined by this happy little fellow:

I made a few steaks for dinner this week and I saved the fat and grissel for him.  He seemed more than happy to have it! I figure that the dogs here have pretty low body fat and they can always use more, especially since Winter will soon be here in full force.

While I was out I came across a traditional tent.  Apparently people just set them up and leave them as they sometimes just go out and sleep in the tent on nice days.

Since I had so much time off I decided that I would do some baking as well :)  I still had a bunch of wild blueberries left from when I first went picking.

Here is one of two bags that I collected off of the slopes.  I decided that I would use them to make myself some danishes.

Finally, I figured I would give everyone a snow update.  It's been a little difficult to gauge exactly how much snow is on the ground since the winds blow it around so much.  The least amount is probably 4-6 inches and the deepest is about 8-10 inches.  I was a little tempted to build a snow dragon or something since we had all this wet snow, but I got too lazy and played Mass Effect 2 instead.  Here is what the country side looks like now.

This week should be busy since we all have to get ready for report cards.  Term 1 ends on November 23.  It should also be interesting since Mark and Nancy will be away for meetings next week.  Hopefully everything will run okay without them!

Week 9 - Snowed In!!

So this week started off with a Bang with our Halloween event at school and lil trick or treaters at night.  In the afternoon on Monday all classes were cancelled and the kids had a Jack O Lantern carving and Scarecrow making competition.  Since I don't have a homeroom I helped out with three of the classes that I usually see.  It was pretty fun and the kids had a pretty good time.  I lent one class my carving implement and let them go at it.  They did a great job and ended up winning the best pumpkin!

After that we went home and got ready for the little kids.  We figured it would be more effective to have Halloween as a group so then we could pool our resources.  I had a Zombie Costume, Heather was a mad scientist and Jeanne was a Smirf (too bad I didn't get a picture of that).  I still recall being mad as a kid when mom used to make me wear a coat over my costume.  Well....in George River EVERYONE was wearing a coat! (That's what happens when it's -8 outside and there's 6" of snow on the ground).

At about 8:00pm there was a gathering in the community centre for their Halloween event.  Basically a ton of people get dressed up and kinda hang out in a big circle.  The Centre community judges the best costumes and give away prizes.  First place was $800, Second was $600 and third was $400.  They also had a bunch of $100 and $200 prizes.

If you look closely there is someone near the middle wearing a blue bathing suit and bunny ears.  That was actually one of my students and he won second prize! It was a complete surprise to everyone since he's such a tough guy.  We all got a pretty good laugh out of it though. :)

Later on in the week I decided to give the gym another try (I had to wait a few days and heal from my first time).  It's been 2 months since I've done any weight lifting and it was a little rough getting back into it.  I think I'll be okay to restart my 3 day program in a couple of weeks.  It's nice that the gym is soo close to my house.  It's actually even close than the one that I went to in Burlington; I can walk there in 4 minutes.  The place is set up pretty good too! Although I do think that they tried to cram as much possible equipment into this room as possible!!

At school I got my Secondary 5 class (they are the ones in their last year of school) to design and execute an experiment on their own.  I was happy to see that they did a great job of it! They're finally starting to take a step towards independence!

Minimaali was very proud of her first experiment!

The last thing that I did last week was to go for a walk to the fire site.  This time I was joined by a new dog.  Not sure what his name was, but he was nice! I've decided that from now on instead of chucking my bread ends in the garbage I'm going to save them for my canine companions.  Better for them to eat it than for it to go to waste in the dump.

Anyway, it was another exciting week in George River, but the countdown is on!! Only 6 more weeks to go until I head South for Christmas break.  Also, the Christmas shopping has begun! Oh how I love the internet :D

Week 8 - Happy Halloween!

We started this week off with our Terry Fox event on Monday afternoon.  We canceled classes in the afternoon and used the time to show all the teacher challenges.  The school really pulled together to raise money and the total was way above our goal! We had donations of cash and also donations of items that people bid on or bought raffle tickets for.  Our goal this year was $1000, but what we actually made was:

Although I should say that this was the total at the assembly.  There were still a few things that were for sale that hasn't been totaled.  Its possible that we actually made $3000.  This totally beats last years total of $1600!

Some of the cool events that were included were: Gillian got a mullet, Mark got his leg waxed, Josh got his head shaved and Anne took some pies in the face! (students totally enjoy abusing their teachers..)

I love the creativity that some of these kids have :) Here's a poster that they made to remind everyone to donate so Gillian could get her mullet.

Here's a great action shot of Anne taking one to the face.  I love the expressions of joy on everyones face! I actually took a 5min video of her pies in the face, so I'll have to upload that to youtube asap.

After the challenges we all went on a 4Km walk around town.  It was nice, although it was a little bit cool.  On the plus side it didn't snow/rain and the winds were calm!

For the rest of the week there was a big focus on decorating for Halloween.  There were some great doors from the secondary classes.  Although as Josh would point out, his and my doors were the crappiest...which was soo true.
Here's some of my favorite doors!

This is Ali's door.  He's the new secondary french teacher that we had been missing.  I like how his kids used a picture of his head for the scarecrow!

This is Jeanne's door.  Another Secondary french teacher.  I like how she is pacman and is eating her students!

And finally, this is Heather's door.  if you're wondering what the mummy's are, they're toilet paper wrapped barbies! lol

It's been a pretty good week so far.  The kids I was having a lot of trouble with finally calmed down and are actually progressing quite well!

In my Secondary 4 class I have actually been able to maintain a 3 week advance on the material we need to cover.  Given that we are ahead I have been making them learn extra stuff that isn't in their curriculum....muhahaha! If only they knew they would be rather upset.  They are struggling a little bit with some of it since its a little bit harder than what they are used to.  I have come to the opinion though that this is a great way of running the program for the following reasons.  First, it will make them more knowledgeable.  For the kids that actually want to go to Montreal to go to College, they will need the extra skills to do well.  Second, having harder material requires them to become experts at the easier material (which they are actually graded on).  If I stopped at what they only needed to learn they would think it was too hard.  If I give them something much harder, they start  thinking the other stuff is easy!

I ended up talking to the Ped councellor about being ahead on the material.  She was surprised and wanted to know what I was doing that was working so well.  As I sit back and think about it, I don't think I'm actually doing anything special.  My room is layed back.  I want them to learn and will help them to do so.  They eat in class, talk to each other, help each other and we all talk.  It's not a matter of cracking the whip and making everyone follow a rigid schedule.  These kids come ready to learn and ready to succeed.  I believe that it is their attitude and the fact that they want to do well that had been allowing them to do so.  Not to say that they don't get off track and have lazy days, because that would be a lie.  It would also be a lie though to give the impression that I am also not the same way at times.  How can I get upset at them for being human and being themselves?

Week 7 - Food = Love

This week for me was all about the Terry Fox Challenge.  Our school has a goal to raise $1000 for the Terry Fox foundation.  At the beginning of the week we were sitting around $515 or something like that.  Not too bad, about half way there, but we only had the rest of the week to get it done!  During our fire gathering the week before, one of my students asked me if I could help their class organize a movie night.  I thought it would be fun so I agreed.  Besides, I had the added bonus that if we managed to raise at least $450 then Gillian would be getting her hair cut into a mullet for the challenge :)

Evidently I should have thought things through since planning the movie night actually requires a significant amount of work.  After school for Tuesday-Thursday I stayed after school to help make our goods for the canteen.  The kids were a fantastic help though and they were there after school with me everyday.  Not always the same ones, but there was always plenty of help to go around.

We even managed to get some free child labor.  Here's a picture of Nikita's little one giving her mom a helping hand!

I think we managed to make 100 and something bags of popcorn and around 150 cookies.  We ended up selling cookies, popcorn, yogurt tubes and juice boxes.  The main event was on Thursday night.  From 7-9 was Cars 2 for the Primary kids and 9-11 was Captain America for the Secondary kids.  It seems odd to me, but we actually managed to sell more movie tickets and food to the Primaries than to the Secondaries.  We set up everything in the Agora which actually worked out perfectly!

All in all the movie night was a great success! Fueled by the incentive to get Gillian her mullet our class managed to raise a whopping $695.  Given the additional donations our school is currently sitting past $1300!  Our goal was to beat last years amount.  Heather also organized a dance for Friday night, so I am excited to see how much money they were able to raise.

On Thursday I had a double period with one of my Science classes.  Since we just finished our unit on Chemical and Physical changes I thought I would take them to the kitchen for a more practical lesson.  We made pretzels and the kids had a short worksheet to complete that tested their ability to recognize what sort of changes were occurring at different stages in the process.  This worked out very well and the kids managed to correctly identify the type of change that was occurring.  From my experiences throughout the week I have noticed that the kids tend to work a lot better when food is involved.  The other thing I noticed is that you are able to build a much better rapport with the kids when they see you as something other than that guy who bugs them to do work all the time.  I had a great time working with the kids after school, I just wish I could get them to work that hard IN the classroom.

The last thing I did this week was make a Birthday Cake for Mark's birthday.  Nancy wanted to have a little get together for him and I asked her if she would like a cake.  For a change I didn't have to worry about nut allergies!!! She said that he really likes Maple and Walnuts so I made just a regular Genoese Sponge cake.  I candied some Walnuts and added some maple syrup to the resulting Walnut infused sugar syrup to make it a maple walnut sugar syrup.  This delicious liquid was then used to moisten the dry as dust cake.  Afterwards I made a Maple flavoured Italian buttercream.  Everyone enjoyed it and I was happy to make it! I enjoy being able to exercise my creativity and I wasn't rushed in doing it either.  To be honest it has actually been around 2 years since I've made this sponge recipe so I'm happy that it actually turned out properly (aside from the fact that I didn't like my pan with parchment and the cake stuck to the pan very severely).

Well, my piping and chocolate writing needs a little work...but overall I was satisfied with the end product.  Nancy swears I could make a killing off of selling my baked goods.  Too much work for me, but if someone else wants to try it I am more than happy to give them some lessons!