Super Second Week in Salluit!

 Hello from Northern Paradise! We finished off our first week of teaching on a great note by playing outside in the amazing weather we’ve been having! We tried to bake the teachers cranberry oatmeal cookies to say thank you for a great week, but unfortunately we burnt most of them!   We have been really lucky, it’s been clear blue skies most days. The teachers and students say we will probably have three more snowstorms before we leave, but that’s hard to imagine with this weather. The last half of our week we were teaching Physical Activity, and what better way to learn than getting outside and exercising!? We ended up learning from the kids though as they taught us their favourite games, the clear winner being a game called bomballaway (or atleast that’s what it sounds like… we still don’t know exactly what they were saying). It’s similar to tag and we had a blast playing it with the different classes of all ages.   After a great first week of teaching, the grade 5 French teacher Carol took us out on the land to celebrate! We went out with two other teachers fro Ikusik as well. We were very excited to be able to go on out on the land so early into our project. We went ski-dooing and hiking for 6 hours! The weather was great. We went out to a canyon, and hiked the mountains for a few hours. The views were incredible; the tundra seems to go on forever. It is also very peaceful and quite out on the land. Our Sunday, we were fortunate enough to go out on the land again! This time Carol took us out to Sugluk Island, which is a part of Nunavut! The island is on the opening of Hudson Bay, and the views were incredible. We hiked the island for a few hours, exploring the tundra and making inuksuit. It was great weekend and we were lucky to have such welcoming hosts! This past week we focused our lessons on Bullying and Conflict Resolution, Self-Esteem, and Healthy Relationships and Abuse. We asked the teachers and guidance counsellors which subjects would be appropriate for the different grades, and taught the classes accordingly. It was a busy week of teaching, but it went well. The topics can be difficult to approach at first, but they are important topics and we hope we were able to have a positive impact. We are getting to know the students much better already. On Thursday night we held out first Girls’ Night! We had about 20 students come out after school from different grades. We listened to music, painted nails, made Mothers’ Day cards and snacked on popcorn! The girls enjoyed making cards out of construction paper and other craft supplies we brought up. It was impressive to see the cards written in Inuktitut, French and English. It was a fun evening :)  Afterwards, we played a pick up game of soccer in the school gym with some teachers and locals.  On Friday morning we went up to the Rehab Centre for boys. It’s a centre for boys from across Nunavik. We taught about the dangers of smoking and alcohol abuse. The class was very well behaved and receptive to the teaching. We are looking forward to returning next week! On Saturday we helped fundraise for one of our students, Mary, to travel to Hawaii to run a race! One of the two grocery stores in Salluit, Northern, has an annual program to help send students abroad. The race is in support of diabetes research, and we helped fundraise for that by selling raffle tickets, handmade scarves, hot chocolate, slushies and coffee. Good luck Mary!Carol took us out four-wheeling on the land this weekend, as the snow is already beginning to melt! We rock climbed a hiked a few mountains, seeing more gorgeous views!   A great second week in Salluit! Thank you to all the teachers, especially our host Monique, and the community for being so welcoming to us!Erinn & Emmaline
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