Week 24 - Goodbye Winter

A funny thing happened the other day.  I was going through my profile pictures on facebook and I found one that I had of an Environment Canada weather report.  This was in early December and I was showing that it was cold here, which I guess it was since the average temperature was -16C while everyone back home was getting temperatures of 5C.  It was just ironic seeing it since the first couple weeks of January had an average temperature of -28C and a windchill of -45C.  The truly funny part is actually the fact that right now it is only -12C outside and I'm sitting here thinking that Spring has arrived.  It's funny how your perceptions change.

This was an odd sort of week.  As it ended up, we had a 4 day weekend of a sort.  Friday was a PED day so we had no class, but still went to school to get stuff done.  Monday was a snowday, the first one of the year!  Sadly no one told me so I went to school anyway, which was fine since I was able to get some extra work done.  The snow and wind were pretty high, but fully equipped I had no trouble getting to school.  All I have to say is I'm very glad I have a balaclava and snowboard goggles!

It's actually kind of interesting the way the daylight has been changing.  It is getting lighter out for longer, but not in the way that I'm used to.  In December, during the solstice, it didn't get light out until about 8 or 8:30am and the sun would set around 2:30 or 3pm.  Now the sun rises around 6:40am and sets around 4:30.  I did a little calculation that showed me we gain 2min of daylight each day.  I guess one minute is in the morning and 1 minute is in the evening.  I've been told that once June gets here, it is light out until 11pm and it just gets dusky until the sun rises again around 5.

So this week we had glorious weather.  Friday was -10C and sunny.  It was a beautiful day and the kids were completely unfocused.  This was fine though since we had saved up a reward day and they wanted to go for a walk.  So we did go for a walk, up the side of the mountain..haha.  One of the great things about the geography of this area is that there are a lot of great places to go for a walk.  Mind you, I almost died as we were walking up the side, but I got to the top just a little bit after my students.  Nothing like a physical challenge to confirm that you are old.  We hung around at the top and took some pictures and collected some rocks for the tumbler.

As we made our way down the mountain the edge was very smooth, steep and snow covered.  As a result of all these facts we decided that the best course of action would be to slide down the side! lol.  That was a lot of fun, although I think I hit a rather thick section of powder and got completely covered with snow in the front.  All in all, Friday was a great day!

Last but not least, This week Ashley and I booked our trip over Spring Break.  We are going to be going to Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas from April 8-12.  The hotel was very cheap and we are both extremely excited to finally get away on our first real vacation! Only 7 more weeks to go!!

Week 23 - Me and my Kindle

So not much really happened this week.  Well...last week.  I picked up a pair of mitts for Elaine's husbands birthday.  He is apparently one of those gentlemen that are fairly difficult to shop for, but really enjoys home made crafts.  I am happy to help out a friend in need, and also the sales will help out the community.  I went to the municipal office to see what they had in stock and all I have to say is holy crap! Everyone was scrounging for mitts before Christmas and there was nothing! I go now and there's mitts coming out the butt.  There were some truly interesting ones as well.  Too bad they weren't there when I was shopping otherwise I would have gotten them instead.

These were the ones that she decided on.  Quite nice I must add.

For a good part of last week I was actually quite ill.  I'm uncertain exactly what it was, but I was sick from Tuesday to Thursday.  Of course I did try and brave out school on both Tuesday and Thursday.  Being sick put a bit of a damper on my attempts to mail these mitts to Elaine, but it did give me a chance to do some reading on my Kindle.  The thing I love about Kindles is the large amount of free books! I downloaded a bunch of them over Christmas and I'm just getting around to reading them all now.  So far I finished two books: The Wizard of Time by GL Breedon.  It was a fun little book.  Something I would put under teen fantasy.  Not literature by any means, but it was fairly entertaining.

The second book I finished off was The Time Machine by H.G Wells.  This was an interesting sort of book with an introduction style that is unlike the authors that I have read so far.  He does a good job of describing his surrounding and the story is pretty good.

My problems with the book like in a couple of areas.  First is that the story itself is fairly boring for the first 40% of the book.  Not much really happens, other than the main character hanging out eating fruit.  I will admit though that the latter parts of the book do have some excitement, but nothing that compares to modern fantasy.  My second problem is his projections based on his understanding of Biology and Evolution.  The dichotomous evolution that occurs in this novel and the subsequent characteristics of the species don't correspond to evolutionarily stable strategies.  I guess it can be excused though since at his time evolution was still a very new concept.

I am now reading the Island of Dr.Moreau by H.G. Wells.  Now I'm starting to get a feeling for his style as he tends to begin his stories in a similar fashion.

Week 22 - Consolidation Time

Well, I missed a significant amount of time for blogging for two reasons.
1. It was so busy over Christmas that I hardly had a chance to sit still much less make a post
2. My computer died a week after I came back to George River so that made things a little difficult.

But now I have a new computer ( A Sony Vaio E-Series, 6 gigs of RAM and a 2.4GHZ dual core processor :D)

I was originally going to put of some posts of what I did over Christmas since I was pretty busy and all over the place, but seeing as how it is February 5, I'm just going to scrap that and move on!

So what have I been up to since I returned?
Not much, everyone got back into the same routine as before we all left.  There were a couple of brutally cold weeks where the average temperature was around -30C and the windchill was -40 to -45.  There was one awesome snowstorm one weekend where I could barely see across the road.  Here's a picture I took of a statue that we have by the entrance of the school after the storm.

This weekend was actually the most busy one so far.  Friday night we decided to have a belated Chinese New Year celebration dinner.  We had Ants Crawling up the Hill, Vegetarian Spring Rolls, Tofu and Vegetables wrapped in rice paper, BBQ Pork, Egg Foo Young, Fried Rice, Steamed Rice and Soup.  We also had some Aloe Vera Juice, Jasmine Tea and Tikuanyin.  All in all it was a good time.  Too bad I couldn't get my hands on a duck!

Saturday was also an interesting day.  I finally got to go dog sledding for the first time!  Mark, my principal, has a dog sled team and he was taking them out of a training run to their tent out in the woods.  It's about a 18-20Km run so I thought I would tag along.  It was a pretty nice day outside (Sunny and around -20) so I thought I would be good with my normal gear.  I was wrong about that one.  Snow boarding gloves do nothing for warmth out here and normal hiking boots suck too.  I went most of the way on a skidoo and by the end I could barely feel my toes or my fingers.
One of the cool things about being out here is that you actually hang out with your students.  On this ride, one of my students was driving the Skidoo.  Fortunately we didn't die or crash which is always a plus!

Now the sledding part was pretty interesting.  Mark let me go at it alone for a little bit since it was a straight path and it was very difficult for the dogs to get lost.  Before we go out they actually make trails in the snow with snowmobiles so that the dogs have something to follow, although sometimes they remember the trail from last year and follow that instead of the new one.  You have to fight with them sometimes to actually get them to listen, but for the most part they are pretty co-operative.  The hard part was also watching Mark go up a hill.  When that happens you actually have to get off of the sled and run with it so that its easier on the dogs.  Overall they don't run as fast as I had thought.  They definitely go faster than I could jog, but they only run around 10-12Km/h.  I can imagine that it would take people quite some time to get anywhere back in the day.  Here's the view I got from the front of the sled.

Next week promises to be a normal week, although the administration will be gone for meetings.  Too bad, it's never the same without them.  In 9 weeks Ashley and I are going to go on a vacation to Cuba! That will be fun, now we just have to keep an eye out for deals!

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!