Week 2, Ivujivik

October 13, 2023

Greetings all

Well, I have survived the transition--was a little bumpy with one child, but I think we are well on our way to working together. I must say the students here are really lovely, polite, and hard working. The school is working on respect. Everytime someone does something nice, that class gets a kind of sticker. Which ever class collects the most stickers within a 2 week time frame, gets a prize--like a pizza lunch. While my class was in gym, 3 secondary students showed up at the door and asked if they could help--I put them to work. They left, with their stickers--and no sooner had they gone when 3 more turned up!! I gave them more jobs, and they left with their stickers!! Quite different from the last 2 years.

At 3:45, we were all invited to the gym. The purpose was to celebrate the super admin leaders. The staff prepared beautiful snacks, and food, and they also had purchased to lovely tee shirts saying super admin, which we all signed. Now that is a first for me!! I had a great opportunity to rub shoulders with the Inuit staff, and they were all so sweet, and so tiny!!

My load is pretty good too--one spare each morning, and 2 spares every afternoon. I am teaching music to 8 grade threes, and guitar to 2 secondary kids--what a dream job--and they all want to be there. Already the grade 3's can follow beat and rhythm, and they all almost can sing in tune--we should be able to do great things.

Water is a huge issue here--the new water plant won't be ready until the spring. In the mean time, the water truck has to go to a lake to get water. Right now, the fresh water truck and the sewage truck are broken--so we are restricted to showers every other day, washing clothes once every two weeks, and only flushing brown--kind of an experience.

I have the phone installed, and most things are working. Still am not totally linked in at school to the school board for my attendance stuff--but they are working on it.

The good news is that I am able to walk every day, and am averaging about 11,000 steps, and I practice nearly every night at school for about 90 minutes--that is so joyful--

9 weeks until Christmas--the time flies by--Halloween, Remembrance Day, then Christmas--wow

Last week we had a lovely berry picking session--the area is so beautiful--you will notice that we had a guy on guard with the rifle as we were in the polar bear territory. No bears that day!!

finally got curtains for all the windows