Welcome to Nunavik!
We made it to Salluit!We got in Friday night and were excited to meet the principal of Ikusik, Bernard, at the airport. He drove us (the short five minute drive) to our wonderful hostess Monique’s house where we spent the evening getting settled in.
Our weekend was full of meeting new people, hiking, napping and adjusting to the Salluit lifestyle. On Saturday we hiked up the big hill right behind Monique’s house and had a great time slipping and sliding all over the place. Emmaline even resorted to sitting on her haunches and sliding down the steep slope in order to get down the hill! On Sunday we were feeling even more ambitious so we hiked the big mountain on the other side of town. We hiked to the monumental cross and Inuksuk at the top and even built our own Inuksuk along the way. The rest of the weekend was spent exploring the town (including the town’s two stores CoOp and Northern) and checking out the cool resources we have here.
After a nice relaxing weekend, we were ready to get started on Monday. We went to school and found the QHO resource box and met our superhero, Katherine. Katherine is who initially contacted QHO 6 years ago, and is the reason we are in Salluit today. She gave us a low-down about the school, the teachers and what we can expect for the coming weeks. Thank goodness for her!
On Monday, we had a quick staff meeting with the teachers after school to introduce ourselves and explain what we will be doing at Ikusik. We will post a schedule every week with the lessons we are offering that week and time slots for the teachers to sign up to have us in their class! This week we are offering lessons on Nutrition and Physical Activity.Monday night we were feeling so good after our first day that we even managed to make it to the town’s awesome fitness center. Another hike that night also gave Erinn a taste of the beautiful Northern Lights!
Tuesday we hit the ground running. We were excited but also nervous when we got to school first thing in the morning and saw that we had 5 classes to teach that day! After finishing our planning, we went from class to class and gave our lesson on Nutrition. They ran smoothly and we learned more and more from the kids as the day went on. After another full day of teaching yesterday, we are excited and optimistic about teaching here for the next 5 weeks!Keep following our blog to hear about our adventures here in Salluit with some very awesome kids!Erinn & Emmalineᐃᕐᐃᓐᓐ & ᐃᒪᓕᓐ