Introducing the Sal Pals!
Hello/Bonjour!! from *almost* Salluit, Québec.Our names are Emma Mortimore and Abby Christi, and we are SO glad you have joined us on this initiative. Even though you might just be reading a spectactular blog, you will get to learn about the community with us, and live through our peer teaching experiences as well.You might be asking yourself, “Where is Salluit?” Well, we’ve provided a handy map for your reference. As you might know, this is Canada:
...and Québec is the province in orange. Not the yellow-orange one though, that’s Ontario.Moving along, Salluit’s the community in the yellow province below- the northernmost point you can see on this map:
It might be slightly blurry...so we recommend also checking out Google maps to get a good look at where Salluit is.Cool! So now that we’ve established where we’ll be for the next five and a half weeks, we can go over what we’ll be doing. In Salluit, our main goal as Peer Educators will be to teach 2-3 health related lessons per week in both Pigiurvik Elementary school and Ikusik High school, as well as the Boys Rehabilitation Center. Outside of the classroom, we look forward to collaborating with Youth Fusion as much as possible for their after-school programs and events. Youth Fusion is an organization focused on experiential learning based in universities in Québec and in Toronto, Ontario. The types of after-school programs we would run greatly depend on the students interest and community events in Salluit. We will keep you, dear reader, updated on the lessons and activities as the weeks go by. Do you remember when we told you that we were *almost* in Salluit, Québec? Ah, you might have been wondering what exactly we meant by that. Since you know we love maps , here’s a map of Ontario. We tried to find a nice Wikipedia image but it went all ‘404 page not found’, so we’ll have to settle for this instead:
The little dot where Kingston is? That’s the one and only ABBY CHRISTI. The adorable #2 in a circle you see? That’s the incredibly epic EMMA MORTIMORE. It should be noted that the little dot is currently hurtling towards the #2 at an undefined yet unbelievably fast speed, given that AC is currently on a VIA rail train to Montreal- so the distance between AC and EM might not always be to scale.Anyway, the dynamic duo expect to unite in Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport tomorrow morning at exactly 9:29:00 am, to fly to Puvirnituq, Québec. From there, we fly to Salluit- and hope to arrive around 5:45 pm. And y’all know where Salluit is, thanks to our beautiful maps.Now that the who+what+where and when are settled, let’s get down to business.The past seven months have been filled with great learning experiences, lots of personal growth and tons of amazing people. We would like to thank everyone who has made this initiative possible- from our donors, family and friends, the whole QHO executive team and our beautiful program directors (@Georgia, Lily and John- we love you!), to our fellow wolfpack fam (@Carly, JJ, Krista, Emma, Jonah and Nadia- #lit) and all the QHO PEs who are headed to their initiatives. Thank you for both your emotional and financial support, your time, energy, enthusiasm and never-ending belief in us. We will strive to work hard on initiative, learn all that we can and never forget to uphold QHO’s priorities: youth, education and health. Now here’s a quote before we leave you for today: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” (Marcel Proust)APA style citations for the maps shown can be provided upon request. Might take about 6 weeks to get back to you though :)Sincerely,The Sal Pals *mic drop*