Tukisivit?

Ullaakkut! (Good Morning!)

Our first week of classes has come to an end. Teaching has gone well this week! This week was Physical Health week. Started with Donna's grade 8 class, teaching about diabetes, which went surprisingly well since the material was quite dense. Moved on to Don's rambunctious grade 9 class, where we taught hygiene. The boys are quite energetic but we are learning to work with them. Also this week we taught, fitness & nutrition lessons. The kids enjoy any sort of competition and are great athletes!

Two days after school this week, we have supervised the gym for the girls. We played basketball, floor hockey, volleyball, and an intense game of knights, horses, & cavaliers. Most of the girls pleaded to keep playing all night, but we sent them home for dinner at 5.

We have been working with the language barrier in Pond, so learning as many Inuktitut words as possible is really helping us - such as Tukisivit, "do you understand?". We are also learning the kids names, although there are so many to remember!

Ping pong is a highly popular sport around here, played monday to thursday's at the C-Hall. They allowed us to play but we were mostly out first round as they play round table style and are very quick.

We have had the privilege of some home cooking by Alice. She is a great cook, yet our attempt at making cookies for everyone did not measure up (a few burned cookies in the bunch). We brought our extra cookies to the school for the teachers, who seemed willing to try our scorched oatmeal-chocolate cookies.

Sarah's friend from Queen's, Julia, lived in Pond Inlet as a child and gave her a bunch of pictures and slides to bring up to the Library Archives. We brought them into the school to show the teachers and everyone giggled about them as they recognized almost everyone in the pictures.

Next week is Substance Abuse and we are hoping to use resources from the Health Centre such as cancerous lungs for our smoking lesson.

We feel like grandma's as we are still coping with the 24-hr sunlight and are usually tired by 10:30-11:00 at night! Spring is usually the clearest time of the year, but it has still been quite snowy and foggy.

First weekend in Pond Inlet starts tomorrow. Excited to explore more.
XOXO Glacier Girls.

PS. the birds (ravens) tied up at the houses are actually dead. They are used to keep away scavengers in the garbage. Also it is too cold for anything to rust up here. WILD!