Another very cold but sunny day

I can't describe how cold yesterday was up here in Salluit. The wind was the worst of the ordinary wind.. it was preblizzard. Th e little bits of my skin that the wind touched hurt like knife cut for several hours. I have had a rather sharp severe headache in and round my left eye. I finally figured out it was where the wind hit a tiny bit of my eye when I was walking to and from school. That is only a 3 minute walk. Gladys froze her cheek last week doing the same walk. I see lots of my students with dark brown patches of skin from frost bite. It peels off after a week or two. It looks like those old skin diseases we had when I was in school.

I pull my hat right down over my eyebrows, then pull my hood tightly over that and often put a scarf over the whole lot. On the big walk around town last week I gave up my scarf for little Danille. I was able to wrap the scarf severeal times around his head and neck. From a distance it loooked like his head was in a giant pumpkin. He could hardly see.

Sometimes I try to wear sunglasses, even if the sun is not out. The problem with that is the metal or plastic becomes very cold, very quickly giving the bridge of my nose a bit of a cold shock. The walk home is directly into the wind. That is a real pain in the head.

I was sure the weather would work itself up into a full blown blizzard so I took lots of work home with me in case we had no school today. The class is well into fractions so I needed to figure out where to stop that unit and start another. And I have to go over their work closely to see who has done so poorly that they need to do it again. I often redo a unit as homework.

Victor, one of my boys , is a very young 10. He finds it difficult not to do play fighting. It is a natural for him to want to wrestle around, push others into the snow and do the things that boys like to do. He is a good kid. There is a ban on play fighting as often someone gets hurt , or even feelings get hurt so that the play gets rougher and rougher. I have the class reminding Victor that he must not play flight. Yesterday he wrote in his Journal: "I am a good boy but I keeps on forgetting the rule." I am still chuckling about that. I like that he has positive image of himself, the grammar needs a bit of work tho.

So many of the kids are like him. They are good kids but they forget the rules. The rules are not natural to them. How do you ask Inuit children not to throw snowballs? How do you ask little boys not to wrestle? As a teacher I fully realize that accidents up here are dangerous. Even broken arms and legs have to be flown out to other villages with better medical care. We do have a nursing station in Salluit but we ship patients to other villages as a matter of routine.

This week the pregnant wife of the vice-principal had to go to Iqualit 24 hours after her labour
started. I can't imagine being in the middle of labour and then having to get on a plane to go to a hospital. She had to leave her other two children here in Salluit with Michael and Patsy. The older daughter speaks some English so she can communicate with the other children in that home. The youngest has picked up Inuktitut so she will be OK but they will be missing their Mum and Dad. We had planned a baby shower for her on Sunday but she was at the nursing station. We'll do it when she gets back and has recovered.

I was up early to watch the Canadian women play their last curling match. I hope they won it. When I dashed to school at 8:45 they were way ahead. I think I will take the afternoon off tomorrow to watch the men go for the gold. I only curled for a short time while at DRHS and I was not very good at it at all. I have so much respect for how they do those complicated shots. I would be hard pressed not to fall on my butt. I do wish the talking heads would explain more of the game. I am learning some of it by watching but if they gave out real information I might enjoy it even more.

Have a great day.
P