Less than a month until Christmas!

So this week was a LONG one! I was home sick on Monday, like many of you, and then the rest of the week was a tough one. The students and staff are getting ready for a break and are all fairly tired. At least there was lots of snow which warranted quite a few evening skidoo rides to help myself relax and get fresh air. On Wednesday, or Thursday, I brought April over to Claude's garage to pick up her and Trevor's new skidoo. It is the exact same model as mine, so I am a bit biased when I say that they have a pretty cool machine! Above you'll see a shot at the gas station of April gassing her baby up for the first time.



On Saturday, Mark and Nancy went out for a few hours to Tasialuk. Mark had wanted to take his dog team for a run with the new qamoutik (sled) that he finished building a couple weeks ago. Nancy was excited to go fishing, probably her most favourite winter activity. The lake (Tasialuk) is about 15 minutes from town through the trees to the East, it is a VERY shallow lake and has lots of tiny speckled trout in it. Many people love to jig them out at this time of year since it is rather difficult to go any farther away from town since the land doesn't have enough snow yet.

I met up with them a few hours after they had been out. I brought Krystal and April and Trev followed me on their new machine. The trail was rather bumpy and there are still lots of rocks showing, but it was manageable. It was fun for them to get a taste of what the weekend are like up here. Teachers tend to spend a lot of time doing day trips or weekend campouts almost every weekend. Saturdays are usually spent relaxing by a fire and sitting about drinking hot chocolate and tea beside a lake. It's a great way to chill out on weekends and helps you forget all of the crazy stress of the week.



It was fun to see Mark's dogs. He ran them all the way back to town after they spent time on the lake. It's hard to believe that he only really began breeding/having huskies for about a year. The project is really going well and it seems more and more people in town are becoming interested in dogsledding again.

To see more pictures or download the originals click on my picasa web folder below:

November Skidoo Rides

Back to work tomorrow with my very busy day. NO breaks from 8:40 until 3:30... (Except obviously recess and lunch, lol!) Have a wonderful week!!!

My Newly Discovered Superstar of Music

His name is simply Matt Nathanson, and all I can say is WOW! I accidently ran into one of his songs on iTunes and after checking out a few more songs I promptly downloaded his entire "At the Point" Live album. This album in particular is simply an acoustic guitar and him singing and I can hardly get enough of it. He is very talented on the guitar as well, I play a bit and some of the riffs he plays made me stop and repeat it to see how he could manage to put that many strums in a beat!

I guess he has a bit of similarity to a John Mayer or some of Bryan Adams stuff, but he has his own personality shining brilliantly out of the songs. I recommend that you check him out. Below is a link and on it you can check out some of his older stuff and listen to clips using quicktime. Unfortunately his live album isn't one of the choices but his most recent album does have a few acoustic track demos.

http://www.expectedmiracles.com/clips.php

Week 5 of Term 2...

So, I promised a picture of my Hallowe'en costume. The picture to the left is of Krystal and myself. She was some sort of special operative Army chick and I was a caribbean woman, compliments of Frenchy's Boutique. I had a basket of fruit balanced on my head(with the aid of a shoelace tied around my head), everyone seemed to like the originality of the costume and it took them a few minutes to recognize me. It was fun!

Had a VERY slow paced weekend, hung out at April's on Friday night until 1 or 2, de-stressing after a LONG week at school! Saturday, I went on a skidoo ride to the co-op with Nancy's and the kids. Nancy made a new parka for Imaapik who is the biggest fan of Spiderman ever. It is such a cute parka and matching nassak (hat) both in the spiderman style. After one of the stops during our ride, Imi was playing on a pile of snow and when we told him to get on the honda or be left behind he decided to play a little game of refusing and holding on the back of the honda. I had my camera and took a few pictures, loved his playful little smile in this shot to the right.

Unfortunately on Sunday, I was coming down with a cold so I didn't do anything but rest and drink tea all day. I slept most of the day and then this morning I was still very stuffed up so I spent the day home recovering. I heard that the students were very, very hyper today so I think it was a good call on my behalf. There is nothing worse than being sick and having a headache and then havign to face a class of crazy students that are whiny and tired! Hahaha!

Hope you all had a nice weekend!

Friday Eve!

Teachers be warned it is officially Friday EVE!!! One of our favourite days of the week, it's like Christmas Eve the culmination of anticipation and excitment, it really does end up being more exciting than Christmas day where the surprises are all revealed and there is no more anticipation for another 365 days. On Friday, we are usually so exhausted from the week that adrenaline dies out by the end of the day and an evening full of vegetation in front of the boob tube is the most activity one can muster.

I seem to be coming down with another cold. Weird! Since (knock on wood) I am usually as healthy as an ox. Maybe it is my new house, or maybe it is because I am socializing with more people this year than last, where I tended to focus my time with only 1 or 2 people. Don't know what it is, but have a very stuffy nose and barfed my breakfast up before heading off to school... (I felt better by 9:30 so I went in to school only missing one period, and feeling good enough to teach)

Had fun with my students today, I don't know if I say it very often but I really love my class. They understand me, they know when I am serious and stern and when they need to fix a problem behaviour, but equally, they know that I am fair and I will not hold a grudge, so a few minutes after the rebuke, I can work with them and have both of us in smiles and enjoying the interaction.

Last period, we were scheduled to have a class picture taken. The Gym teacher, Pascal, is also a pretty awesome photographer, so he is doing all of the pictures this year. We were supposed to go to the gym at 3:15 to get the picture done, so that left only a half an hour for our math class at the end of the day. We have been reviewing exponents so I decided we'd grab a pair of dice and they would work in teams and practice solving the exponents. Black die was to represent the base number and blue die to show the exponent. It was fun, most of my students are VERY kinesthetic, so they loved the little bit extra movement in the activity. I made their partner roll the dice and then they would fill out the base number and exponent on a chart, and then solve it using scrap paper for calculations. The funny part was how the dice were these 12 sided ones and this one guy kept getting easy ones while his partner was getting ones like 8 to the power of 12, a rather long calculation for a piece of paper and pencil. At least I know they got some good practice in and were having a good time in the process!

Hmmm... so Friday tomorrow, and I heard the buzz that they might have to shut down power all over town from 1-4 tomorrow afternoon. They are supposedly replacing some major power lines and need to shut down the power so they won't hurt themselves, so I guess it is allowed, LOL!

Internet Finally Fixed Up!

**This picture was taken during my first year, but shows what the beach looks like around now!**

I have missed you all! Our local internet connection has had some major difficulties the last week, so much so that I was lucky to get a connection for 2 minutes each day since my last post. I managed to get on for a few minutes on the weekend to check your posts but the connection was so unstable, and it made me realize how much I depend on it for entertainment, weather, etc.

Well, you would also think that having not written anything in over a week, I would have lots to say but I guess after a week you realize that some of the things you might have talked about suddenly doesn't seem important enough to even mention this long after! Work has been good, I like my class, but just wish the "over 17" students that I have would have sudden inspiration to take responsibility for themselves so they won't get suspended for the year. We have had some real abusers of school the past few years but most of them seem to have really turned around a lot this year, but unfortunately, we've decided to be very tough on them- three strikes and you're out- behaviour/attendence contract. There are two who are now on step two!!! It makes me sad but like I have told them, it doesn't matter how much I like them and want them to be in our class, it does depend on their choices and effort.

Hmmm... and last Friday we had a holiday from school, not so much as "Remembrance Day" since it really isn't a popular holiday in Quebec, but as "JBNQA Day". A day to celebrate and remember the signing of the James Bay Northern Quebec Agreement in the 70's, when the Inuit in Nunavik (northern Quebec) received certain rights from the Fed. and Prov. governments concerning the land and decision making. All I know is that the holiday is well placed in the year to provide a nice break from the grind of school. Since the weather had dropped lots of snow, I spent a lot of time driving around and taking some of the new teachers (April and Krystal) out on my skidoo.

On Saturday, I had a nice raclette supper at Anne's place, followed by a little get-together at Nancy and Mark's place. I was unfortunately very exhausted so I didn't stay up very long. Sunday was very relaxing I don't think I did much... of course, drove around through the trees on the East end of town, but most of the day was spent relaxing, watching movies, and relaxing.

This week we had another weird occurence, this morning, school had to be cancelled because there was no power from 9-12 anywhere in town. I enjoy days like that as I spend most of it with others helping them out and planning school activities, like our Anti-Bullying Week initiative. I didn't even go to my class until after lunch!

I was also really happy to receive my new digital camera tonight at 4 pm. I played around a little bit with it, but it is dark by 4 now so it is very hard to get a good idea of the camera until I play with it in the daylight. See below a night shot- except I haven't figured out the night setting hence the blur...

Skidoos are a zooming....

Winter time is here! YEAH! I seem to be the only one in my circle who is excited and eager for the snow to stay on the ground. Unlike the rest of you, when snow falls here, we do not get burdened with shovelling, but our vehicles, namely skidoos just love it. The more packed and heavy the snow is, the better. On Saturday and Sunday, we had an incredible amount of snow on the ground, and it seemed to keep falling rather steady until Monday. There was a little more today, but the wind had blown away some of the fluffy, light, unpacked flakes from the weekend.

People with older skidoos have been using them since that day, and ever day, I am more and more eager to take mine off the wooden platform where it has rested all summer. I keep resisting the temptation and telling myself that if the snow is still here on holiday Friday, I will break her out then. It has been hard to wait, but I keep saying, remember the ski rods!!!

Getting a skidoo was my best investment during my first year up north. I bought a second hand machine from a teacher who had left the year before at a good price, and then two summers ago, I bought a 5 month old machine from some place near Montreal and had it sent up via sealift. Last year was my first winter with my new baby, my 2005 Bombardier Expedition Sport 550 fan-cooled. See the picture below. She is SOOOOO comfortable to ride, and I cannot imagine going back to any old style machine now. I love the elevated sitting position even though it was tricky to get used to it last year. I felt like it was so tippy compared to my old machine, which had a much lower center of gravity. Now that I am used to it, I LOVE it!!! And is the reason why it is so hard to wait to take her out for the first frolic of the season!

Routine or the Unexpected...

So, I was sitting here on Sunday morning in my favourite blue comfy chair, checking my email, seeing who's online to chat with, and deciding what to blog about. And I realized that I really have a routine life. I don't do many things that are unpredictable and spontaneous anymore. I mean, I guess there are somethings I do that are not planned or that just come up, but they are never things that are very un-ordinary- like the spontaneous badminton game on a Wednesday evening with cops, or unplanned supper over at Nancy and Mark's Friday evening. Those things sometimes happen, so they can't really be considered spontaneous.

I know some people crave normalcy and routine instead of the turmoil they live in, but for me, I am not sure whether I do not prefer a little more uncertainty. I don't consider myself to be a big risk taker, but I also think I do take risks rather easily, because it sometimes creates exciting memories... But what have I done lately out of the ordinary? Work, cook, clean, eat, sleep, chat online and repeat... I feel like I need some Cajun seasoning, something spicy, exciting and unpredictable to get the adrenaline rushing and the brain ticking more.

And I also was thinking about what people remember about these years of their life when they are back in diapers and need to be feed. What details and memories stick? Is it just the exciting ones or is it the routine things that happened day in and day out. I want to live a life full of memorable things, but does that mean I should strive for routines that are consistent and unforgettable or should I drive myself to do at least one out of the ordinary thing each day?

Can't wait for your feedback! Sorry to all the committed blog readers, but it has been soooooooo busy at school that I haven't been very consistent as of late. I am trying to write at least twice a week... But enjoy reading your posts still so keep it coming!

P.S. The snow came again this week and it SEEMS to be like snow that will stay... I am crossing my fingers and knocking on wood, but I think this might be it!!!! skidooing in two weeks maybe?!