My First Weekend

Friday:

I woke up with a plugged ear. I assumed my sinus cold had spread to my ear. I decided I should see a doctor/nurse incase it was serious - it's so hard to enjoy your day when your balance is off. I waddled my way into the health centre, located in the middle of town, and took off my boots then sat down. That is something that is hard to get used to. Whenever you enter a building, (school, health centre, restaurant) you remove your boots. I find this especially hard because my socks pull off with my boots, so then I'm stuck in my bare feet. Anyways - what service at the health centre. It's much faster than the old Aberdeen Hospital. Within minutes I was in the nurses' office and she was taking my temperature, sticking something in my ear and handing me a bottle of eardrops. Since Nunavut doesn't have a great deal of doctors, nurses are given more responsibilities - they can do pretty much everything. My nurse was originally from out west, and I asked her if she would consider going back "down south" and she said she would find it boring since there are so many restrictions.

After my appointment I went back to school for last couple hours. When I walked into my class one of my students said, "you're late - you have detention". I found this incredibly ironic since most kids come to school whenever they want (if at all). I just smiled at her and took my seat. We watched a movie called "The White Archer" which was filmed here in Pond Inlet. As I watched it I realized that most of the actors were people from around the community. Half way through the film the recess bell rang, so I ran down to the staff room to get some coffee, in there I met one of the main characters, Lamech Kadloo. He was sitting there because his wife is the school secretary. My co-op teacher, Donna, introduced us and I told him he was famous and he agreed because that was the 8th movie he had been in. Small town!

There was a big Hip-Hop dance Friday night at the "Sea Hall". The students had been working on it all week, and instructors from all over Canada came to teach for the week. The building was packed, and everything said in English was translated into Inuktitut. There was traditional throat singing, folk dancing (accordion music and group dancing) and then hip-hop battles. It was a very long night. It started at 7 and by 9:30 it wasn't over. There were seats, but those were for all the elders. Mandy and I were on the floor, and we must have sat every way possible to get comfortable, but it wasn't possible. I got fed up and decided to stand in the back. As the night wore on, I decided I would go to the bathroom. All houses in Pond Inlet have limited water. It gets delivered Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It restricts our shower lengths and how much water we can use, so I try to use the washrooms in public places to save our water. So, as I said, I decided to go to the washroom. That was a mistake. None of the stalls had toilet paper - I don't mean they were out of toilet paper, I mean there were no dispensers. So, I went in search of some, and once I found it I went back in. I quickly realized I wasn't alone. There were kids everywhere; they were crawling under the stalls, over the stalls - everywhere. This doesn't work for me so I left, and as I did, all the kids stared at me.

When we got home Pat, our house mom, wanted to inform us why our internet had been so slow. I guess their internet is different than ours back home. They have 3 GB to use for a month, and for years that had been more than enough for them. During the one week we have been here, we exceeded their 3 GB to 7 GB. This pushed our internet into dial-up mode, so everything is much slower. It's like I'm back in 2000.

Saturday:

Mandy and I went for a walk around the town to take more pictures. We went into one of the stores (there are two grocery stores) and a bucket of KFC chicken was $49.99 (flown in), bags of chips are $8, toaster strudels are $12 - our eyes popped out of our head.

Because of the restricted internet access, I can't post pictures for a while, but this place is beautiful. We're supposed to go to someone's house tonight to play board games.