It's been a lovely long weekend up North. We had four days off in total, and spent our time working on our lessons, socializing with the teachers, and checking out the land. Yesterday, we went on a 15km hike with some teachers, which was so cool! Even though we've been here over 3 weeks, it was our first time really out in the tundra. We hiked through mud, snow, and grass all the way to the top of a hill where we could look out along Hudson straight. It was so beautiful! On our way back, we left the hills to walk on the ice instead, and returned to Salluit via the still-frozen bay.
In the next few days, we are hoping to meet Kaudjuak, the grandmother of a Secondary 4 student named Paul. Kaudjuak speaks no English, but we're hoping she will show us her throat singing, which is an Inuit art form. It would be such a great opportunity to meet her!
Our lessons have been going well. The most frustrating thing for us is the lack of participation on the part of the students. We're trying to be as creative as possible with the lessons that we plan, making them interesting, visual, and interactive so we don't lose the attention of the kids. For the juniors we even made a board game to reinforce our bullying and anger management lessons. With the older kids when we taught about anger, stress, and grief, they especially liked making stress balls out of balloons and corn starch (although it got kind of messy!). Another fun lesson is goal setting and leadership, where we have students set goals for the coming week, month and year. We kept their papers, and we hope that next year's QHOers will give them back so the students can see if their goals were met.
Last week, we were invited to join the high school volleyball practice. It was so fun! The kids were MUCH better than us (well, much better than me), practicing their jump serves, blocks, and spikes. It was so cool for us to see the students out of the classroom - they were so much more lively! We were impressed with not only their skill but their great team spirit and leadership; they were constantly encouraging each other and us, giving high fives and clapping.
On Wednesday, we will start our final (!) unit at Ikusik. We're teaching about substance abuse, covering things like drugs, alcohol, and smoking. Even though there is no official place to buy alcohol here, it is very prominent, along with a variety of drugs and cigarettes.
Next weekend we are also planning a dance for the secondary kids on Saturday. We're going to organize it and have some of the older students help as it is going to be a fundraiser for the graduating class. Other than that we're also looking forward to an International Cuisine Night tomorrow for Girl's Night, possibly assisting with some further volleyball tryouts this week and working on some new routines for our aerobics classes with the Walking Club!
That's all the news from Nunavik!
xoxo,
H & N
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