Week Five = DONE

Dear most diligent blog followers,As sad as it is to say, Friday was our last day teaching in the classrooms of Ikusik High School, Pigiruvik Elementary School and the Boys Rehabilitation Centre. It has been a very very busy, fulfilling, exciting, tiring and LIT four weeks of teaching. Our flight leaves on Wednesday morning so not to worry, we will still be booping in and out of classrooms to play games and say our goodbyes on Monday and Tuesday!! (Just to clarify - we've been here for five weeks but only taught for four full weeks! Needed to walk before we could run).On that note, Friday was also our LAST run club meeting! It was really rainy and cold out so we decided to have an open gym instead of a run. It was a great success! Emma got owned at basketball and Abby learned that she has a left handed shot in hockey! WHAT A DAY. After our time in the gym, we all ate snacks and talked about what we were doing over the summer. It was great getting to chat with the students outside of the classroom and to get a taste of what their lives are like outside of school.This week, our lessons focused on nutrition for the younger grades and team building and leadership for the older grades. Although nutrition is a very pertinent topic, due to our limited time here, we felt like the older high school students would benefit more from doing some leadership activities and learning about ways to get more involved in their community.Some highlights from this week include:

• making homemade bannock with the boys at the youth centre
• getting a million and one ADORABLE class pictures with the classes we have been teaching
• when to the gym, found out it was closed so walked around Salluit for a few hours
  • saw every single one of the students we taught
• celebrated our co-workers birthday with CUPCAKES
• lead a cooking class with the boys from the rehabilitation centre
• taught our first sexual health lesson with the boys at the rehabilitation centre
• took 13 hour naps
• learned a new game called " LA BOULETTE" with the teachers
• were taught a few Inuit games!! (SO fun! (and SO hard), ask us when we get home!!!!)
• Emma crushed 3 kg of peanut butter and is buying more today
• Abby has lost all feeling in her knees after playing floor sock hockey at the youth centre
• Continued reading at the youth centre
• Thursday morning breakfast club!!
• made two batches of cupcakes, one batch of muffins, three batches of bannock, 12 smoothies, 36 protein bites and one cinnamon bun apple pie!!!!! #health
• desperately trying to forget the fact that we are leaving Wednesday morning

Fabulous Funny story of the week: As mentioned above, we have been reading with students of Ikusik and Pigiruvik after school at the youth centre. One of the books that we read is called "Bananas Sometimes" and is all about comparing bananas to other objects. For example, one page might say, "Bananas sometimes look like hands" or "bananas sometimes look like spiders"... you get the gist. SO this week in class we have been teaching nutrition. We start the lesson by handing out cards with various foods on them, in various food groups and ask the class to sort the food into the groups. As we were doing this activity in one of our last classes of the week, one of our students blurts out, "Bananas sometimes look like telephones!!!". Out of nowhere. Didn't even have the card that said "banana" on it. But we LOST IT. That was a line from the "Bananas Sometimes" book and caught us so off guard that we had no choice but to giggle. Nobody else in the class understood but it was so funny and so cute and really made it that much harder for us to say good bye to this wonderful place.Classy Classroom story of the week: One of our favourite moments in the classroom this week was during our leadership and team building lesson with a grade nine class that has *finally* warmed up to us (cue first blog post when they were too cool to participate). ANYWAY, we lead them through some typical leadership games like the "minefield" grid maze activity, partner drawing and ended with burn bracelets. We also discussed what a leader was and what being a leader meant to them. It wasn't one particular moment during this lesson that really wowed us, it was the entire thing. The students were genuinely interested in what we had to say and worked hard as a team to figure out the puzzles we set out for them. It was really great to see the students have so much potential as leaders and was also cool to see the progress they have made as a class since we first taught them. We ended our lesson by talking about ways that they could get involved in their community as leaders; like coach a sports team, volunteer at the youth centre or work at the day care or at the summer camps. They were all participating and really attentive to what we had to say. Leadership is such an important skill and we were super excited to get the chance to present it to them!!!This weekend is our last one in Salluit and we are hoping to get a few more hikes under our belt before our departure on Wednesday. Although we can guarantee that both of us will be scrambling to pack our things very very late on Tuesday night, we cannot guarantee however, that tears won't be shed during the packing frenzy.BUT DONT WORRY. A very deep, heartfelt (and a little bit sappy), blog post will be coming your way on our last day here. BE READY. It will be good. It will be beautiful. And it will leave your heart very, very full.Until then, with all our love,Abby & Emma