May update

Ok, so I haven't posted anything in a while . . . so here is an update of what I have been up to lately. We now have pretty much 24 hours of sunlight! It never gets dark out. I have been having trouble sleeping although I have tin foil over my window . . . I think my brain knows that it is still light out! It is hard to get used to so much light. It will be nice to get home to a more normal sunrise/sunset pattern! Only 17 days until I'm home!
Also, we only have 7 teaching days left! Tomorrow, Monday, we are having a teacher's workshop. Friday we are done at noon as there is a big fishing derby near town. There are some big prizes! I believe that first place is $5,500!! There are four lakes north of town that will be used for the derby. The closest one is 2 hours by snowmobile. I'm not sure if I'm going to head up or not . . . depends how much work I get done in my classroom and if I can catch a ride or not!! Definitely too far to walk! The last day of class for the students is the 28th of May! Us teachers have to be in school on the Monday, then I will be flying home on Tuesday, June 1st, but have to stay overnight in Winnipeg that night. The only bad thing about being done in May is that classes start back up the first week of August.

Last weekend I was invited to a birthday party in an igloo! It was Arden's first birthday and her parents thought it would be special for her to have it in an igloo! We had cake, hot chocolate, and marshmallows. It was a perfect day for her big event. Here are some pics:

This is how we get around in the north! This is Heidi and Jenn with Arden in the Snow Coach.


Me in front of the birthday igloo.


We had a bonfire on the frozen lake. The ice was over 6 feet thick, so no worries about going through! Wasn't easy to find wood to burn as there are no trees up here! Luckily there were some extra skids from a construction site.

We played bocce ball!

A sic sic (Arctic ground squirrel) must have smelled the hot dogs! He ran down the hill to visit us.

I was also invited to go out and watch a caribou hunt! To get a caribou tag I have to be a resident for at least 3 months. . .which I was about 10 days away from, so I was only an observer. I'm hoping to go out hunting when we come back up in August. I went out with a fellow teacher, Jake, who had a tag and it was his first time caribou hunting. He got one with his first shot! He shot it in the butt, but it went down. The other two we went out with were Michael and his girlfriend Wendy. They are locals and Michael has shot tons of caribou. Wendy also shot her first caribou while we were out (took about 6 shots!) but she finally got it. Michael also shot one (also took about 6 shots!). It was nice to be able to get out on the land and see what it looks like outside of town. It is very hilly around Repulse with tons of little lakes (all frozen right now of course). It seems crazy how the caribou and other animals can survive in such a harsh climate!


This was the caribou that Jake shot.

The Inuit love to eat caribou eyes and tongue. Jake and Michael ate the eyes! I've been told it has a hard jelly-like consistency. Jake spit it out . . . yuck!

This was Wendy's caribou. It was all alone out there. It had already been shot in the leg, so must have been left behind the herd.

Sunset while out hunting.

The grade 9 class spent a night out on the land and did some fishing. They gave us an Arctic Char that they caught. Irene and I tried to clean it but it wasn't a pretty sight!