Thoughts on a week

 

Waiting for me one morning this week was Wesley. He was in early as he was helping his grandmother with the breakfast program.  I took this picture to send to Aaron as he is a big Yoda fan...Wesley wore the shirt every day for the remainder of the week. Think he liked that I told him my son would LOVE it.

Notice that Wesley isn't wearing shoes.  This is quite common.  All people entering the school remove their boots in the front entrance so that dirt, snow and gravel are not tracked through the school. I carry mine to my office where I put on my shoes, but it is not at all unusual to see teachers teaching in their stocking feet and I am told the former principal never wore his shoes! 

Some days when I am in the hall it really feels like it could be any school in Southern Ontario.  These were grade 2's who were using their rulers on chart paper learning measurement. But, if you see in the background the signs on the walls and the posters are all in Inuktitut. Most instruction at this level is in the local dialect and although the students for the most part are fluently bilingual with English, learning two very distinct symbolics for the reading and writing of the languages is a challenge for instruction and learning.

On Sunday afternoon I decided that I wanted to try to make Greek Pita bread.  A package costs over 8.00 at the COOP.  In the pictures you can see me rolling out the bread with a wine bottle as we did not think to bring a rolling pin.  Our neighbour gave us a bottle of wine as our liquor order hasn't come in yet.  This is a liquor restricted community....more on that in another post.  Anyway, the pitas turned out better than I expected and so we will be enjoying them for dinner!

We try to get out for a walk each weekend day. It was hovering around -40 this weekend so we were bundled up.  In the picture of Ian walking, you can see how long his shadow is.  That photo was taken at about 1:30 on Saturday.  It was beautiful and sunny but the sun just never gets that high up in the sky.  The other shot shows him holding a chunk of clear ice.  Folks take their snowmobiles out to a local lake and bring home the fresh water for drinking loaded on their sleds behind their machines.  Someone's sled had hit a rock and dumped some chunks, so we stopped to look.  Whale Cove has been on a water boil advisory for SIX years!