No nanuq

On Friday, our last full day in Igloolik, we started the day by wrapping up the remaining projects with Yvonne's grade 7s, Jeena's grade 2s, and Yvonne's grade 5s.  We started setting the gym for the assembly before we went back to the hotel for lunch.  When we came back to school at lunchtime, there were a lot more kids running around than earlier in the day.  Some were even climbing the school!

Ataguttaaluk Elementary School on Friday morning.

Ataguttaaluk Elementary School main office window.

Waving from the side of the school.

After lunch, we finished decorating the gym with the students' work and held an assembly, open to the community.  I was pleasantly amazed at how many parents came.  Ashley spoke for a bit about CANDAC and the projects the students worked on, then the students walked around the gym with their teachers to look at the other students' work and some of the demonstrations we set up (make your own thermometer, the hot and cold water in a jar, Cartesian divers, and making clouds in a jar).  We played a slideshow of the students throughout the two weeks we visited to keep the students who were not at a station amused.  I must admit, it went a lot smoother than I could ever imagine!  I was having nightmares of students swinging from the rafters in the nights leading up to the big day!

Jeena's grade 2 display.

Yvonne's grade 7s, my group making a measurement.

Vera's grade 6s, my group's pyranometer data
graphed with a line of best fit.

Leah's grade 5 display.
My group drew the cloud pictures along the bottom.

Yvonne's grade 5s, my group's bar graph
of their pyranometer data.

Clyde (the principal) introducing Ashley to the assembly.

Ashley talking about CANDAC.

The students are going to miss us; a lot of them gave us hugs at lunch or before they left the assembly.  One girl wrote me a poem, another made Ashley and I bracelets, and another student drew the four of us a picture.  And I already miss them.

Complete with a drawing of each of us
that correctly resembles what we were wearing.

After cleaning up the gym, we went over to Dave and Pete's house for supper.  This time, we made them supper.  Ashley made a cucumber, avocado, and tomato salad to start and I--with a lot of help from my two "sous-chefs", Anthony and Jonathan--made pineapple honey garlic chicken on rice for supper and pumpkin dump cake (think pumpkin pie filling topped with apple crisp topping) for dessert.  We played a game of Cranium and played with Siku a bit.  He got much bigger over the week.  When we first visited, he looked a lot like a polar bear cub.  Now he definitely looks like a husky pup!

Siku eagerly awaiting for us to climb the stairs to say hi.

Since Dave has never seen the rooms in the Co-op, and this is his last year teaching in Igloolik, we brought him back to our place and played cards for the rest of the evening.  After checking out in the morning (and paying a $2091.60 bill for the room alone), we drove up to the airport and flew away.

Igloolik airport.

Boarding the plane that took us from Igloolik to Iqaluit.

Interesting things happen in non-inertial reference frames.

25 years already?
I think someone is being a little optimistic!

Just north of Iqaluit.

Iqaluit is the only airport in the north to have security and you only have to go through security if you are flying to Ottawa.  Lucky me got to go through airport security twice!  After the first time I went through, someone getting onto a "non-secure" flight (i.e. not flying to Ottawa) lightly bumped into me.  One of the workers saw this and forced me through security again, in case the lady passed me something.

On the flight from Iqaluit to Ottawa, I sat next to a Toronto-area elementary school teacher.  She was amazed by First Air's ravioli dinner, complimentary wine service, speciality coffee, and warm chocolate chip cookie; but her stories amazed me more than that.  As a teacher, she has a focus in Aboriginal education.  She travelled to Nunavut to experience their way of life and see how the classrooms operate.  As part of this trip, a guide took her and the other teachers she was travelling with out on the land for the weekend.  One of the first things they saw on the land was a nanuq--a polar bear.  She said the first clue to give away his presence was that they could hear him breathe. 

Cumulus and cirrus clouds from the plane.

Big, fluffy cumulus clouds.

My first view of green in a week and a half.

I am slowly adjusting to "normal" life again, though I must admit, I thoroughly miss the midnight sun, the quiet solitude, the ice covered bay and distant snow-covered mountains, the students, and--of course--the inukshuks that watch over it all.