Tasty Turkey Temptation

Thanksgiving has come and gone and though it wasn't as balmy as the one you southerners experienced, we at least had some sun and above zero temperatures. A couple of friends made a turkey and hosted a pot luck, making for deliciousness. I baked some apple-flavoured squash, yams & apples, while my roomates brought some roast moose. The snow keeps piling up here, leading to a lot of people getting up on their roofs to shovel it off. Roof design isn't meant for a lot of snow up here, so barely peaked or outright flatness aplenty. The skidoos are out in full force, roaring around town and taking short-cuts wherever they can. They're probably better on gas than the huge trucks most drive, so I don't blame them. All the building adaptations that seem strange without winter are starting to make sense: big heavy doors with no windows & very few glass store fronts to prevent heat loss and grated steel stairs and porches with jagged edges to give you some traction in the hard packed snow. It's still a bit of shock to see kids (and teachers) trudging through the halls with big winter boots on. You can't pretend winter doesn't exist like down south, where kids (and adults) try and wear running shoes winterlong. On a winter plus side, I saw my first full blown northern lights spectacle, complete with shimmering reds and greens. So much like staring into a fire. I stood there for so long just waiting for the lights to bloom somewhere else in the sky.

The library is starting to feel alive. The junior high classes are coming in for silent reading on a weekly basis now. I've been trying to be a good librarian and have a book of the week I've read and can recommend to the kids. So far Schooled by Gordon Korman and Small Steps by Louis Sachar have been good picks. I think I might try some Jerry Spinelli next. The school has hired a part-time library tech to start running some programs for students as well. So we're starting by running a organization session on how to use your student planner. Hopefully the students can find the planners handed out at the beginning of the year and they can actually write some stuff in their calendars.

Being a part of the community relations committee at the school, I helped organzie a community feast last week. Community feasting seems to be a big part of northern tradition, so we cooked up 10 turkeys, 10 hams and you don't want to know how much macaroni, potato & garden salads and tried to fill up our gym with community members. We were lucky to get our Gwich'in teacher to bring in bannock and caribou soup too. There's some pictures added and it went off pretty well. I didn't have to do any cooking, but I rounded up door prizes from local businesses, who were all very supportive, and helped set up and take down. Lots of work for lots of people, but it goes a long way to strengthen relations with the community and get people into the school. Plus who doesn't like having a big free meal.

scholarly snowy suds

Winter is officially here. It snowed pretty much all weekend, so now we have a foot of sloppy snow covering everything. It's a lot like southern Ontario winter: about 0 degrees, slushy and generally gray. The highway into town is still open, but probably within the next week or so, the ferries will come out and we'll be cut off by road until the ice freezes thick enough to let the dare-devils to cross the Mackenzie and Pelly Rivers. We've still got plenty of sunlight (when we've got clear skies), but it doesn't get light until after I get to school (~8:30) and I noticed yesterday that it's setting much more southerly than when I got here. I can watch the sunsets from my apartment though, so that's pretty nice. The weekend held a great party celebrating Quebecois beer thrown by the Francophone society. Those Quebequers really know how to make 9% beer.

This week I managed to finish up my Ontario med school applications. Now I just have to wait 8 more months to find out if I got in or not. The incredibly popular intramural floor hockey league started this week at school. Even though I'm not much of a hockey star, I figured I could call the game like it is, so I've got myself a whistle and don't put up with highsticking or cherry picking. The library is starting to come together now too. I'm getting my office room cleaned out and the books on the shelves. Next week I'm going to get classes of kids coming in to introduce them to our revamped library space and do some silent reading. I think I'll start taking some books out too, lots of good ones keep catching my attention, mostly the SciFi/Fantasy of course, although I've got to try the new Gordon Korman.