Northern Adventures

 Here are a few more pictures from our staff day out on the land. And the Northern Lights on Saturday night (April 24)

 I was out at recess with the Kindergarten to grade 2's.  This is Spring in Whale Cove.        The older students headed out on the Land to Ice Fish.  I have a new understanding of what is warm and what is cold.  We don't wear goggles unless riding on a machine and we don't always put our hoods up.  I wear my Mukluks instead of my Baffin boots and my lighter weight ski pants. It will be May next week!  The sun rose at 5:16 this morning and will not set until 8:59.  After that it is still light for quite awhile.  The morning sun is VERY bright. many of us look like raccoons because of our glasses/googles tans!

 Some Pictures from our week: Starting with our Land Trip Camp!   We were out on a frozen fresh water lake about an hour and 45 minutes ride from the school.  There were about 20 of us on the trip and we ate fresh soup and bannock. Ian and I both got wind and sun burned! Strange how -20 feels warm now!              It was such a busy week!  We had our first grad for the year!  Shaelyn got teary eyed when we gave her the Macbook air that is donated by Connected North for each of our grads!  We received more donations from two small parishes in Nova Scotia.  The hand knitted toques that Kevin and Lennox are wearing were knitted by a 94 year old member of one congregation. The highschool boys set up the tent to make sure we had all of the parts.  That should give you a sense of our camp size on our trip.  Difficult to tell with all th...

 So here is the Inuglak staff in our Math Month t-shirts! We are only missing two people for This shot. They are a lovely group!  Notice Ian has a different shirt on. He wore his the day before and that is what gave me the idea! The students thought us all dressed alike was a little creepy. The weather continues to be around -20 with the wind chill but it feels warm to us! We walked around yesterday and saw this group of students out in the road. You can see that although Spring is here, there is still lots of snow!

 So Friday Night started with a blizzard that we walked through to get to a potluck and then walked home to find a large snow drift in front of the house.   https://youtube.com/shorts/nf1 V7r_s9NM https://youtube.com/shorts/TFs oYR58iXI , Saturday was a Blizzard and we went for a short walk. Sunday was better and I went into work for a few hours.  Monday, today, is beautiful. We heard that there were community events happening so we headed out for a walk and discovered the kids on the sliding hill having an Easter Egg Hunt.  This was at the very end when the eggs were done.  Whale Cove Spring doesn't look like a Southern Spring. But it really did feel warm.  We took off our mitts and no hood for me. It was only -13 and we were too hot in our parkas! We headed out onto the ice, where they were setting up for races with the snowmobiles. One of the Elders was there in her traditional outfit to see the events and she was quite happy to have her picture tak...

Recent events have inspired me recently to think about adaptability and acclimatisation. It was just three months and five days ago that we left Sam in charge of our Guelph home to begin this adventure. Since our arrival in Whale Cove we have watched the sun rise every day (sometimes - but not often - obscured by clouds) and each day we have witnessed a noticeable increase in the hours of daylight. There will soon come a day when this will no longer be possible (well yes, possible, but not really desirable) because the sun will be rising before our 6:15 alarm clock call. And shortly after that, sunset will occur after we have retired to bed in the evening. Even now, we still have bright, late-afternoon sunlight as we sit down to dinner. Yet even though we are enjoying long summer-like days of light, today we are treated to a winter blizzard, with winds gusting to 66 km/h and a wind-chill feeling of -35 degrees, a large snow drift blocking the road in front of our house, and visibility ...

So the call came from the Heath Centre that we needed to fly out to have Ian's wrist looked at.  All the travel was arranged and we hitched a ride to the airport with the local RCMP.  Great guy! You can see that we are quickly aclimatizing as Ian isn't even wearing his hat to go to the airport building from the car.  At the airport, it was great to know about 1/2 the people.  Pretty easy to get to know people in a 450 individual Hamlet.  Some of them were quite anxious.  We were asked if we were leaving.  Southern educators have literally left in the dark of night before.  Just packed up and left.  We reassured them.  The plane is in the next picture. The plane seats 22 people and was about 1/2 full due to COVID.  The flight to Rankin Inlet is only about 15 minutes.  Then we needed to go directly to the Health Centre there for the typical  hospital hurry up and wait scenerio.   They did another x-ray and discover...