When in Wemindji...: Winter Wonderland

Well, winter has been thrust upon me here with little regard for my feelings or mental well-being. The first few major snowfalls resulted in quick melts within the next few days which I was particularly pleased with! These melts happened usually the next day, always after I'd done a thorough job shoveling. So this time I decided to not shovel and wait for it to melt. Well... that was a bust. The snow is still there and I am upset to say the least! Perhaps if I can muster up the energy to pick up a shovel (that and I have somehow injured my back which prevents me from wanting to move around) I will TRY and make a path around my giant vehicle in the driveway.

This weekend has been a lazy one but still quite fun. Thursday night Monika and Carmen and I attempted (I'd say fairly successfully) to make home-made sushi! It was delicious and pretty fun. Friday night was Brandi's birthday and we celebrated in typical Wemindji style, Pictionary and a sordid game of "Never Have I Ever". Saturday I cleaned, organized, and stayed in as I promised myself one night where I did nothing (my favorite thing to do).

I didn't realize how soon Christmas (and Christmas break) was coming up! I guess that week in Val D'Or really sped things along! This month of December will be super busy as we have the Christmas concert, Christmas Tea for parents and families in our classrooms, Staff Dinner, Secret Santa, birthdays and lots of other events coming up. It is a few 5-day weeks smushed together (usually I abhor 5-day weeks) and there is so much to cover in those weeks as well as practice for the concert and prepare for all the social gatherings ahh!!

With the mail service being a little iffy at the moment, it is also hard to do a lot of shopping. I worry that my things will not get here in time so I am going to leave the bulk of my Ontario shopping until I get home. It will be a mad dash but I'd be really sad if I ordered things and they didn't arrive in time before I left for Oakville. I have managed to get all my Wemindji shopping finished which is awesome and now the fun begins! Visiting the post office daily until all my million packages arrive!

Last week was my first week back after being away in Val D'Or and Oakville. The kids missed me and I missed them! The classroom was intact and really nothing was out of order which I appreciated! There is nothing worse than coming back to chaos and your stuff missing/all over the place so I was grateful! The kids had fun with their supply teachers and I was able to pick up right where I left off! It was a 4-day week with a data-oriented PED day on Friday. As soon as we got back from lunch 2 hour scheduled power-out happened and everyone got to go home a little early. Of course I had piles of marking to catch up on so I stayed behind. It was kind of nice though, plowing through my work and organizing my classroom uninterrupted for a couple of hours! This Thursday night I will probably decorate my classroom with all the fun Christmas stuff I picked up in Oakville and Val D'Or and do my Christmas door! I can't decide on what I will do. I have 2 ideas, one recycled from a previous year that I had stolen from a colleague in teacher's college and one of my own. Either way they will be super cute.

Last week I also introduced my class to their new classroom pets! As a reward for excellent behavior (and I needed to NOT have 6 hamsters in my living room) I brought 2 hamsters into the classroom as our new pets. The kids were ECSTATIC. I knew naming them would be an ordeal so I had everyone pick one name for a girl and one name for a boy. We threw them into two separate baskets and drew fairly to see what the names for our new pets would be. We came up with Nick and Mary. Now, don't get me wrong. Nick and Mary are two very decent, classic, respectable names. Just not the kinds of names I personally would have named hamsters, nor expected a class of 7 year-olds to name hamsters. There were some golden picks like October, Awesome, Princess and Boy but fair is fair and we have Nick and Mary. Nick is very sweet, loves to be held and seems to like the kids. Mary is perma-afraid, pees whenever I touch her and generally hates the world. So we'll see!! We have a new chapter book we are reading together about a classroom pet hamster which is really cute and I am excited to embark on tons of creative writing opportunities about these new guys! I am still waiting on a kind gentleman to come and pick up his two hamsters and then I will be down to 4 hamsters. JUST 4 HAMSTERS YAY... Still praying none were early developers and procreated before I could separate them.

Anyways, I have a full schedule today, putting up my Christmas lights, MAYBE chopping down a Christmas tree for my living room, cleaning my 6543 hamster cages, decorating my house? Who knows.