Quick Catch Up

SHAME!!

I am so behind on this blog.  Shame!! I have been knee-deep in end-of-year events and preparation and this blog has been pushed to the back burner.  That is because I have been hella busy.  In the past few weeks I don't think I have gotten more than 5 hours of sleep a night and this coming from someone who likes to be in bed by 8pm, is really damaging.  I have been sleeping ever since I arrived home on Saturday early in the morning.

I will detail my incredible busyness in chronological format guided by my iPhone camera roll because honestly I can't even remember what has happened since we last caught up.  Here goes.

Flat Tire

I had my tires from my "old" van finally shipped up to me and after a wild goose chase through town, I found them no where close to where they were supposed to be dropped off, but in Wemindji nonetheless.  My trusty go-to for all things fix-it Daren swiftly replaced my plugged tire with a full-sized spare and I was off!! Thank god for people who know what they are doing.  This man could quit his job and work solely for me fixing all my things and it would be a full time gig.

Radisson

Since Monika decided this year was her last year in Wemindji, we decided to make the most of it and do as many "last things" as possible before the end of the school year!  This included a "last trip to Radisson" made possible by a new tire!!! We set out one cool Saturday morning with Raquel, Meghan and Jill in tow and had a lovely little trip to Rad where we feasted on burgers, poutine, pizza and the rest, although there is no more Eggs Benedict on the menu which sent me into a tailspin of depression. I managed to recover by doing some retail therapy at the craft store where I bought myself some new mocs (my old ones needing to be replaced badly), a teeny little seal so cute and Monika bought me the most gorgeous hair clip.

Packing

I had been slowly packing my personal teaching materials and resources for some time since about Goosebreak.  I had been doing this because we are moving to the new school and I wanted to keep track of all my own things rather than leave them for movers.  Each year we pack up our classrooms and usually move rooms.  I have been lucky in the past but this past summer a few of my boxes went missing and I was left without some pretty important things at the start of the school year.  So, since the move is so much bigger this summer (school to school rather than room to room), I didn't want to take any chances!! I packed up my own things and slowly started moving what wasn't vital for that time in the year into storage in my own home.  Since I own almost EVERYTHING in my classroom, there are about 12 billion boxes full of teaching stuff in my spare bedroom right now.  I have some regrets and I am already dreading moving these things into my new classroom BY MYSELF come August, but I really can't risk losing anything that I have paid for.

Sports Day

Every year the gym teachers organize and put on a really fantastic Sports Day at school.  This year was no exception and the kids had an absolute blast!! They all participated fully, showed great sportsmanship and really enjoyed a morning outside trying for first place in everything! It was a gorgeous day which also meant lots of bugs but I was prepared with my bug spray.  I was not prepared however for the deceiving Wemindji sunlight and got a good start on my "bib" burn for the summer, yay!

Swimming

Our last swimming took place the week before school ended and it was as fun as could be!! We had a blast (I watched from the side of the pool as usual, its very disconcerting how few kids - think:zero - ask to use the bathroom while we are there for 2.5 hours...).

Happy Trails Farewell BBQ
The weekend before the last week of school Marsha and I hosted a fantastic goodbye BBQ for the many faces leaving Wemindji this year.  It was a team effort with so many staff bringing delicious dishes to share, and a really fun wild west theme and I think people had a bittersweet blast!!

That weekend I spent a lot of time in the classroom packing and preparing for the final week of school. It was going to be a short and busy one with our first ever field trip, awards ceremony, our own mini graduation in the classroom and last day of school celebrations!

The Hydro Dam in Radisson

Last Monday the entire Grade 2 class, a handful of brave volunteers and the teachers and I went on a very cool field trip to the Robert Bourassa hydro dam in Radisson!  It was AMAZING.  A real marvel and testament to human engineering.  We took the mini bus and Wemindji coach on a 4 hour round-trip tour.  The kids were incredibly pumped to be taking the bus and watching movies on the bus and were very well behaved.  It was a great incentive to use in the classroom as these guys have never been on a field trip before!!  In case you didn't know this, Wemindji is suuuuuuuper far away from anything so field trips are a) very difficult to organize, b) expensive c) would probably require overnight supervision and d) impossible.  So while you might think that a trip to a hydro dam might be less than exciting for 45 8 year olds, think again!! The kids all got to wear hard hats and safety goggles as we explored the underground power generating station and were amazed at the size and capacity of the above ground dam.  We had only one puker and overall it was a great experience and I hope to do it again with my next class!

Next Year

I have done a lot of preparation for next year as I am glad to know I will be teaching grade 2 again.  I have recently connected with my new teaching partner and I am VERY excited.  She seems super cool, creative and NORMAL!! Yay!! I am anxiously awaiting starting the new school year and doing lots of fun stuff!!

Ride Home/Monika

This trip home was bittersweet for me.  It was the last trip I would be taking with Monika as she has made the very difficult decision to not return in August to teach in Wemindji.  I am going to miss her terribly.  She has become my best friend in the North, my confidant, surrogate mother and Wemindji boyfriend.  She has given me so much in our friendship and encouraged me to be a better person.  I like who I am because of how she has influenced me and I will always be grateful for her calm and cool attitude, her quick wit, her ability to think things through rationally, her beauty, style and social comfort, and most of all: the way she accepts me and my craziness.  I know that whatever she does she will be incredibly successful and fulfilled and I am so SO glad to know we both still call Oakville home so I will see her again and again.  That is truly what is stopping me from jumping off a bridge.  LOL jk...

Anyways I decided rather than leave on Thursday after school and be a giant tired ball of stress, I would leave bright and early Friday morning (a Quebec holiday) and make the drive straight through to Ontario!  Monika, Raquel and I hopped in the car and turned left forever onto the access road.  We made awesome time, had great weather, no accidents or tickets to report and had a lot of laughs.  We stopped at Mike's and had the most delicious pizza ever, sang lots of nostalgic tunes and did some great reminiscing of the past 4 years in Wemindji.

Home

I arrived back in Oakville very early Saturday morning and I promptly crashed into bed.  I spent most of Saturday and Sunday sleeping and visiting with ROBIN and my beautiful family and yesterday I got some wonderful shopping under my belt. I was saying to friends about shopping, there is something to be said for going into a fitting room and actually trying on clothes and seeing what they look like on a hanger as opposed to on a webpage.  While many stores have great shipping and return policies, nothing really beats trying stuff on.  Oh and try stuff on I did!! So weird how pretty much everything I tried on I liked and bought.... well you need some new things to bring on a fabulous trip to Europe don't you?!!?

Planning UK/Paris

Tonight my Auntie Melanie came over after work and graciously gave us hours of her time to help us go over the details of our trip to London, Paris and Wales in just one week!! We have soooo much planned and ready to go but we really needed to iron out the details and get organized.  Luckily we pre-booked almost everything which is a relief because things are basically all booked up or extremely expensive now that it is so close to the travel date.  We got our tickets and vouchers organized, finalized bookings and made an itinerary so we wouldn't forget the many awesome things we are going to do in the two weeks overseas as well as keep track of the many means of travel we will be using to gallivant around the motherland, fatherland and land of cheese, wine and baguettes.

Writing

I have also been fortunate to be writing again for the quarterly Wemindji Newsletter!! I wrote two more articles for June's publication, a school-related update and another personal piece that once again focuses on the fabulous me (you'd think I'd get bored of talking all about me....).  Click the link below and scroll to the bottom to see the PDF version of the newsletter and my pieces!!!

http://wemindji.ca/


Hopefully I will blog again before my big trip so until then, au revior!!

Testing Takeover

I am happy to report that my dear class has finished 3 weeks of intense school board standardized testing.  They handled it as well as I expected and it was stressful but we managed to find some ways to have fun in between. The math part was pretty difficult, it had been updated recently after we complained that it was too easy.  Well THAT was a  mistake!!! The Language Arts part was actually not bad and the kids could definitely do most of it quite independently.  I was proud of them!! Now all that is left is to finish up my PM Benchmarks (a reading and comprehension assessment), some curriculum and then the school year is officially over!!

We have almost 2 weeks to go and it is crunch time, both with curriculum and organizing myself in the classroom and packing up.  We usually have 2 PED days at the end of the school year to pack up but we had to move some around this year to accommodate teacher training.  So, now we have one and it doubles as parent-teacher interviews.  That means I really have to be mostly packed up before the last day if I want to be able to devote any time to parents who drop by!  That also puts me in a bit of a bind because I don't want to and can't pack up anything I use on a daily basis (which is A LOT) so I think after school on the Thursday is going to be filled with lots of last-minute packing.  I have done a lot though and try to take home a few boxes of personal teaching materials every day.  My spare room at home is PACKED TO THE CEILING of personal classroom items and to see it all separated from school-purchased/owned materials is actually frightening.  I have spent sooooo much of my own money its not even funny.  I look at it this way though, anything I own I will take with me when I finally return south to teach.  I will have one very well stocked classroom when the day comes let me tell you....

Anyways, things are trucking along with planning the trip to the UK and Paris and I am getting really excited!!! Everything is paid for now and it's just spending money I have to come up with.  Seeing that I heard you have to pay to use public toilets means I have budget quite a lot.... :P

While I spent a few hours in the classroom this weekend packing, planning and organzing, I also managed to have a little fun with friends!! A group of us took a nice little road trip to Radisson to have a meal and do some shopping.  I am sad to report that Chez Mika no longer serves Eggs Benedict which put me into a deep depression but I managed to sooth my soul with a cheeseburger and massive poutine.  Then, I attended a Japanese potluck-style birthday bash which was awesome!! We have a few teachers on staff who taught in Japan before coming to Wemindji, and one teacher's Japanese husband offered up his culinary skill and cooked masses of amazing Japanese fare, and everyone managed to bring something very unique and delicious.  It was awesome!! I hope it will become an annual thing.

Anyways, the sun is shining but it is quite windy and cool.  I try to take advantage of these sunny moments and get Bobo and I some natural vitamin D! It snowed on Friday by the way...

Beautiful Bacon

The countdown is on!! In just 3 short weeks I will be travelling home with some good friends back to southern Ontario where upon crossing the Quebec/Ontario border I will no doubt burst into flames like the day walker that I am due to real summer weather.  I have been lucky as a ginger living in the North.  I manage to avoid sunlight and hot temperatures for the better part of my time spent here, therefore allowing me to live in basic comfort.  I do not worry about sunburns and heat exhaustion in Wemindji.  My alabaster (or glow in the dark) skin can exist peacefully beneath my comfy over-sized sweaters.  Once I hit "The South" however, I immediately burn to a crisp.  My skin, like fine spider-spun silk, immediately catches fire and I become a sweaty mess.  My mother, bless her heart, no longer feels the heat effects of menopause and has now entered the phase of life where everything is "too cold" and the A/C is suddenly set to a temperature that actually HEATS the house instead of cools it.  I'm not kidding.  Once last summer the little fire symbol was active on the thermostat.  Wish me luck, as an internally hot individual with skin paler than that of an albino cave-dweller, summer and I just don't mix.

On another note, the school year is both ramping up and coming to an end, if that is at all possible.  Entering our 3rd week of standardized school board testing, the kids and teachers are at their limits.  Well, I am speaking for myself my class I guess.  While testing literally sucks, it is giving me a really clear picture of where I dropped the ball in some areas, where the kids really picked up a strong base of knowledge and ability, and areas I want to focus more on next year.  Overall I am very proud of the hard work my students have put forth and happy that we are almost done!  While all this testing is going in, I am still working to cram in as much curriculum as our brains will allow us to accept before the end of the year.  With teaching and testing, we are finding fun ways to celebrate the end of the year and provide some fun opportunities for the kids.  Coming up this month we have swimming, sports day, awards day AND an amazing field trip!! Being so isolated and far away from everything and anything, the field trip opportunities are very limited.  The conventional class trip hot spots; the zoo, the museum, art gallery, splash park, safari or even provincial parks, are non-existent.  To take my kids to the nearest zoo would mean chartering a plane, arranging for hotels and taking 51 7/8 year-olds overnight.  NO THANKS. So, My teaching partner Stacy took the initiative to plan a field trip to the Quebec Hydro dam in "nearby" Radisson.  We leave early June 20th at 8am, take a 2-hour chartered coach bus to Radisson where we will eat lunch and receive a guided tour of the amazing engineering marvel that is LG2 Robert Bourassa generating station.  Now, to most, the idea of taking kids on a field trip to a hydro dam is less than exciting.  BUT WE ARE TAKING THE BUS!! That reason alone is why the kids in my class are so pumped.  AND THE BUS HAS A DVD PLAYER!! Well, hold your horses, this could be the most exciting field trip EVER.  So the kids get to take a cool bus trip and I get to see the dam!! It's a win-win.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Bourassa_generating_station

Last weekend I hosted my 3rd Annual Bacon Party! It was a complete success and to be honest, there were some very creative and delicious contributions this year!  People really take their bacon seriously here and I don't think anyone left with an empty tummy.  Some honourable mentions were: maple-bacon pastry, bacon and asparagus potatoes, bacon-wrapped fries, some delicious bacon, a bacon, bread and cream cheese concoction, bacon potato skins, bacon cheeseburger dip, bacon pizza, red cabbage bacon salad, Cesar salad with bacon, candied bacon, bacon wrapped grilled cheese, baked bacon omelet, bacon-churro ice cream bowls with ice cream, bacon cupcakes, bacon-wrapped sausage, bacon popcorn, bacon wrapped peppers, bacon broccoli salad, bacon ranch dip and *gasp* veggies, my bacon chili and SO MUCH MORE.  It was obscene but so delicious and a good time was had by all! It was really great to see so many faces in my humble abode and share some good food and good laughs. I can't wait for next year!! 

Anyways, as I write this I am fighting a cold that will hopefully not have me out of commission by the end of the week as I have planned a "last trip to Radisson" with Monika and Raquel and a few others to mark the last time Monika and Raquel will be going to Rad! THAT'S RIGHT - Monika has decided to take the leap and settle back down in Oakville.  I will miss her terribly but since we both live in Oakville, I am not worried that I won't ever see her again.  This isn't goodbye, its see you soon ya big buffoon! I will also be missing Raquel (Monika's sister) who has been up here almost every spring substitute teaching and has been a really awesome addition to our crew.  

I will leave you with the link to my most recent articles written for the quarterly Wemindji Newsletter!! Scroll down to "PDFs" and both issues that I have written for are posted :) Enjoy!

http://www.wemindji.ca/

Baby Dion's Walking Out Ceremony!