God's Paintings

Tonight I thought I would share some of God's handiwork. We have seen the Northern Lights many times this year and have enjoyed them each time. Whenever we see them we always let the rest of our little group of teachers know so that we can all enjoy them together. Hope you enjoy some of God's paintings.

BBQ!!!!

Today was a momentous occasion for us here in Deer Lake! We (along with Jon and Jill) invested in a BBQ. Although it is not a bbq in the traditional sense it is still so exciting. We got a little Grillmate, which reminds me of a camping bbq. Tonight Greg and I got to bbq a nice hamburger. It was so yummy and smelled delicious cooking. I thought I would share a few photos of our exciting event.

This is what Edgar has started doing now when one of us leaves the house. He hopes up on the couch and watches out the window to see what we are doing. Here you can tell his tail is waging! He could see Jon and Greg BBQing and Dexter was outside running around.
Jon sitting by our little Grillmate!

The boys. By the way today was an exciting day for Greg. The Blue Jays started their season today in Cleveland. Greg was bummed that the game started at 2:05 our time and he was teaching through it. Luckily school was dismissed early 3:30 and we made it home to watch some, then we went to the grocery store bought our BBQ and he came home assembled it, cooked and still got to watch the same game at 6:30 while we ate our dinner. In the end it worked out for Greg to watch the 16 inning game with the Blue Jays winning (7-4). I think this is a great way for him to start the long weekend. He is already looking forward to Mondays game (Season Home Opener)
While we were BBQing a few kids came over to play with the dogs. Edgar had a great time!
The four of us with our new investment! We were really excited.

Cookout!

Well yesterday was Sunday and our Sundays are usually pretty low key, but this Sunday seemed to be pretty busy. Our morning started off with me sleeping in until 10, which was really nice. Then Greg and I went across the road to Jon and Jills for a brunch potluck. We then came home and I slept for two hours (I have seemed to be very tired lately).

Vicky the Native Language teacher then came over to invite us to a cookout at Little Bear Beach. We went and had a great time. The weather was super nice yesterday, a change from the weather we have been having (rainy, snowy and gloomy). Greg, Jon, Jill, Vicky, Marianne (Vicky's sister-in-law) and I all enjoyed the cook out.

When we got there Marianne and her husband Amos were on the ice checking their net for fish. The edge of the lake is not frozen anymore, so to get on the ice you have to jump over open water to get to the solid stuff. Amos had been there for a while and had managed to shoot down a duck. When I first saw it, I thought it was fake because of how rubbery its feet looked. After we finished cooking Marianne showed us how to prepare a duck for cooking. She plucked the duck of its big feathers and then to get the little feathers off you burn it in a fire and then hit it with evergreen branches. It was really neat to see.

Enjoy some of our pictures below of our adventure yesterday.

Jon and Greg cooking potatoes and pork chops over the fire. Marianne did most of the cooking, but the guys finished it up. It was so good!
Greg and I standing by the lake.
Greg going on to the ice. Leave it to him to want to try and walk on the melting ice. He managed to get on and then walked around for awhile.

Greg holding a piece of the ice that has melted away. The ice is still about a foot thick but it is full of air bubbles.

If fishing is a sport, then I'm an athlete

Well, we have made it back to our Deer Lake home. It was quite the journey, but enjoyed ourselves along the way. We left Bala at 9:30 on Saturday morning and rolled into Thunder Bay at midnight. The drive was actually pretty cool and was nice to see different parts of Ontario. About two hours outside of Thunder Bay, it became very foggy and visibility was extremely low. But we managed to make it into T-Bay. And both Claire and Edgar travelled very well.

Some news from Deer Lake. While we were out, there were two drug busts. The first yielded $1,400 of cash and $47,500 worth of OxyContin pills. A similar bust happened at the same time in another reserve. Later in the week another house was searched and $15,000 worth of pills were seized. Amazing amounts, but consider that one pill is worth $400 on the streets of Deer Lake.

The weather was scorching here as well. When we arrived it reached 19 degrees. The only snow left was in the woods or in piles on the side of the roads. The winter road is no more as the heat quickly put an end to many peoples' minds. In fact, several vehicles had left before March Break via the Winter Road and had tried to come back over the weekend. Since the heat melted away those ideas, cars were stuck on the road. Now, you might be wondering how a car could be stuck on the ice, but the road is actually mostly over land. From Deer Lake, there are only two lakes you must drive over. Cars were now stuck in mud and at the edge of lakes were ice used to be. These vehicles and people were stuck in the middle of nowhere, far from outside contact. To save them, helicopters were picking people up from their stranded positions. Bad luck for the rescuees as they now leave behind a vehicle for an entire year. One staff member was stuck and had a family member kill a moose with a hatchet for food (I don't know how true that story is).

Tomorrow is career day at the Nursing Station, so another afternoon of chaos and missed lessons. Today's title was inspired by Steve's (the Janitor) t-shirt.

Winter Carnival

Today we had our Winter Carnival for the students. It was about -10 outside all day with heavy snowfall to start the festivities, but the sun made an appearance near the end of the morning. The kids seemed to have fun although there were a number of them that went inside due to the cold. Claire was the timekeeper and I ran a hockey-style game in the snow. Afterwards the school had prepared bannock dogs for lunch.

This year the school hasn't run a breakfast program, even though they order food at the beginning of the year. Since much of it was expiring, we have been giving things out for a couple of weeks. Today was the oats that were being given to the students to take home. After a while, they noticed that inside the bag there were bugs so they had the students return the oats. Some did make it out of the school, so let's hope parents see the message on facebook about the bugs.

Tomorrow we are off to Niagara for March Break. Time seems to fly and we are excited to catch up with family and friends when we are home. It will be nice to see Edgar again as we have both missed him the past two months.

Winterpeg

We returned today from a conference in Winnipeg. We flew out last Sunday afternoon and came back this morning. The conference ran for three days but felt like years at times. As normal, there were one or two workshops that were beneficial, while the rest were better skipping. We had two keynote speakers. The first was Gabor Mate, a doctor from B.C. who has done a lot of work on holistic medicine and addiction. He spent 3 hours telling the audience that it is not the fault of those addicting drugs, but instead their parents and others. Furthermore, that kids misbehaving is on the parents. No personal responsibility whatsoever.

The second speaker was a Native from Manitoulin Island, Bea Shawanda. She had run several workshops throughout the conference. In one, in which Amanda and Jill attended, she spent the entire time discussing the us vs. them argument. Basically that before white colonization of Canada, the Natives were fine. This theme was pretty evident throughout the week and was tiring. Mate had stated during his 3-hour blame presentation that, "before white settlers came to Canada, Natives were not addicted to any substance, even though it was on the land (tobacco, herbs)." We spend most of our time in Deer Lake fighting both subtle and blatant racism. We figured that this week was going to be a vacation from that. Unfortunately this didn't happen. Here's hoping March Break goes differently.

On a similar note, a little comparison. Many of the more common 'hard' drugs make their way from South America. Almost any program on National Geographic will attest this fact. Can you imagine a family of an abused going to the, oh let's say Colombian, government and blaming them that their loved one is addicted to the drug. Well this same logic is currently being employed by those at the Workshops and in Deer Lake. Our students use the same approach when they are in trouble. They will whole heartily blame Claire or I for something they did. For example, it is our fault when the student gets suspended after swearing and threatening either of us. Unbelievable.

We did have decent time in Winnipeg. Able to see a couple of movies (The Vow, The Woman in Black). Obviously a lot of shopping was done. All three of us got sick at one point in the week, so that wasn't exactly nice.

Lunch Tales

Claire and I had our evaluations yesterday. A lot different than last year when we planned and prepared for days before hand. Johnson, our principal, came into our classrooms for something like 10-20 minutes. Only good things to report. We were supposed to be one of the last teachers to go since he was going to start from the early grades first, but he postponed them all for different reasons. Jill, the grade 6 teacher told him that he was doing hers, even if he was only in there for 10 minutes. Claire took the same approach for ours to get them over with.

It is has been frustrating of late in the school dealing with a couple issues. One that is bothering us involves duty coverage. Each teacher, with a partner, has a day that they must watch the students on recess and lunch. Teachers are forgetting about their duties or not coming in. Yesterday at lunch though, none of the primary end teachers came back to school in time for their duties. Jon, Jill, Claire and I were sitting in the staff room eating our lunches when two girls came to tell us that, "Jonah is bleeding." The four of us didn't know who Jonah was so we asked them. The on girl from grade three adamantly replied that he was, "Jonah." This went on for about thirty seconds, when finally I said, "Look, the only Jonah I know, was in a whale."

Our week is almost over, as is everyone else. We are heading out on Sunday afternoon to Winnipeg for a week-long conference. Needless to say this break comes at the right time.