Our Last Sunset and Our First Lesson

Hello, and welcome back to our blog! Today is officially our second Monday in Pond Inlet, NU, and let us tell you- this past week has been full of firsts!We started our week the same way all good things start- with a walk. We made it to a lookout, with the mountains in front of us and the community behind us, and it was amazing to see all of Pond Inlet from a different perspective. Our walk also brought us to the Health Centre where we met the local community health representative and were brought to a storage closet full and full of amazing health resources, like handouts and posters and DVDs, that we are so grateful for.Another first for us was our first lesson! We taught our first lesson in Ulaajuk Elementary School, which was a nutrition lesson with the Grade 4s where we talked all about healthy and unhealthy foods, eating breakfast every morning, and trying our best to drink lots of water instead of pop. We were so excited to see that the class loved stickers as much as we do and we cannot wait to see the class next week with even more stickers and more games to play with the beachball!We also attended our first Music Club on Thursday evening, which is held in the Nasivvik library and open to all the youth in the community! There were board games, playing cards, supplies to paint with, and of course, enough guitars, ukuleles, and banjos for everyone. We played (and lost) our very first game of crockinole, and Addie impressed all the students with how well she knew every 21 Pilots song ever recorded. Hailey was just happy that a few of the girls wanted to take her paintings home with them and is hoping that next week the students don’t forget to call Addie Mrs. Claus again (the resemblance is uncanny we’re telling you)!We were very lucky to have a teaching schedule made for us in Nasivvik High School before our arrival (thank you so much to the school administration you are all helping more than you know), and Friday morning was when we began the schedule that will soon become routine to us. There are two classes for Grades 7 to 9, and we met one class from all three grades in just one morning! It is so amazing to see how well all the students remember QHO from the year before. And trust us, if Human Knot was a competition (blindfolded or not) we have the World Champions in Pond Inlet.A few other firsts that happened this week was our first (and maybe our only as the ice begins to melt) walk to the iceberg, in which the size deceived us as we underestimated how far away it was, as well as our first grocery haul from the Co-op (even though we must admit we are still living on the Costco bagels and peanut butter we brought with us). Another amazing first that happened was our first hot chocolate from the most Northern Tim Hortons in the world! In a week full of firsts, we did however see our final sunset. Even if the sun had never really set since we have been here, there was a brief dusk period from around 11:30pm to 2:30am, but as of this past Friday it is officially the light season with 24 hours of sunlight! Pond Inlet you continue to amaze us.With love from the North,Hailey C and Addie B