Potatoes, and condoms, and rockets! Oh, my!!

What has been going on with those Pondlets who have been slacking with their blogging? Well no worries, we are here now to fill you in!

Sexual health week commences!! We started off last week teaching in grade 7, 8 and 9 classes about puberty. With some giggles out of the way the students mastered their reproductive organ puzzles with the correct labels and everything. The boys even wanted to learn about menstruation and PMS (smart boys picking up on some tips when they are young). On top of that they got by the awkwardness and really took advantage of hearing the information from some younger non-teachers and were not afraid to ask questions. Unfortunately, I think we made the changes that happen during puberty seem like a scary event more than a natural one since some kids did not seem to want it to happen to them, but we cleared up those fears asap. Reba awoke early Tuesday morning with some interesting goodies in her back pack she could not wait to unleash to the unsuspecting children. Liz crawled out of bed only for coffee. Then it began… contraceptives day. With the kids expecting the typical banana demonstration for proper condom use, it was fun to see eyes widen when the life-like wooden penis from Pond’s great health resource centre was revealed. Reba performed an impeccable 10 step demonstration on how to use a condom which was emphasized as “FO FREE !!”at the health centre. After the kids came out of shock, we discussed some other forms of contraception available and mostly used in Pond based on our meeting with a health outreach worker in the community. This week we plan to go over STI’s and healthy relationships to emphasize our safe sex lessons.

After teaching there is nothing better than hanging out with the kids after school in a non-rules environment. Floor hockey, hip hop, art club, movie night and volleyball were all chosen as after school activities for this week! We met tons of kids that we have not had the chance to talk with since we have not been in the primary school or senior grades as often, so this was awesome.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were Career and Technology System days for junior high. In the mornings we helped in Anne’s rocket building class! Rockets were made out of plastic, construction paper, garbage bags, and glue. With some doubts we hit the road outside away from wires and housing and were ready to test the homemade rockets with their inserted engines and gun powder. ALL OF THEM WORKED!! Expecting silence or at most a small lift off, when the first one shot up very quickly and out of sight it was realized we needed kids as shields just in case one went off route. Woops we mean we acted as shield for the kids….

 

For the whole afternoons we had our very own CTS leadership class!! Our class was making a short video to the song “Hope” by Shaggy. With many scenes shot by some aspiring Steven Spielberg’s,  which included locker scenes, bullying scenes, and dancing on desks after throwing papers at Liz, not to mention the dance Reba and Liz taught the class in the attempt to make a dance scene in the movie (but we were mostly just laughed at), the music video is now ready to be edited and sold to a big record industry.

Some of our CTS group!

This weekend the grannies finally stayed up late. At 10pm Jim Coax opens a window of a boarded house to sell candy until the wee hours of the morning. Seems sketchy, but it is the go to place for everyone in the community. On the midnight walk around town to get to the “candy store” we realized no one sleeps!! Kids from school were all shocked to see “we were awake at this hour”. Our pseudo-angry responses pretending to be young obviously was doing a great job at hiding our heavy eyes and yawns. With Pond turning from completely white to almost all brown ski-doos were being used on the water for rides for kids. Not only did we have a great time seeing so many kids but we met the love of our life!! It was a newborn puppy riding in a carriage with one bright blue and one brown eye. Both of us considered grabbing her and taking her back to Kingston….still might happen. QHO mascot??

LOVE!!

Casual 1am view

After our STI lesson today we got some disgusted faces and eeks so we think it was a pretty effective lesson. After lunch we went down to Ulaajuk Primary School. It was the grade six graduation and we were trying to help get the kids all ready in their caps and gowns along with pump them up for their big day! It was adorable to see all the little graduates and QHO will have a great time teaching them soon when they are at Nasivvik. Not only did we get to meet tons of new younger students but we now will be teaching oral hygiene with the younger kids tomorrow. It has always been hard for QHO to teach in the primarily Inuktitut school so this is a huge step for us and we can’t wait for our lessons tomorrow!

The grads!!

Tomorrow night is the Nasivvik graduation dinner and Liz and Reba signed up to make scalloped potatoes and dip. Little did we know we would be presented with FOUR bags of potatoes (approximately 45lbs). We also want to make bracelets for every student we have taught (over 60) and make the ever so welcoming high school teachers a goodbye staff room treat. Can you say busy night!! Wish us luck, all you can hear is chopping and country music blasting from this kitchen.

Opposite of potato famine

Going crazy?

Four more days left in Pond and we do not want to leave!!!

Stealing Webby’s format:

Most adorable part of the week:

Puppy love and kids saying they were sad we are leaving soon

Most disgusting part of the week:

Reba using a 2008 expired condom for every contraception lesson (we lied and said it was fresh)

Best purchase of the week:

Celebratory $16 box of mocha ice cream (which we forgot in the school freezer this afternoon… nooooooooooooooo)

Most proud moment of the week:

Liz finally becoming a girl and learning how to make a bracelet AND do a french braid (que applause) 

Most embarrassing part of the week:

Liz being told she looked like Frodo from ‘The Lord of the Rings’

Looking forward to:

Staying up all night on Thursday with the kids before we leave on our flight Friday morning

Pond Potatoes out,

Reba and Liz

If you wanna go and take a ride with me, we're 3-wheelin' in Pond instead of gettin tipsy, HEYY must mean we're healthy!

Yeah we are trying to pull out some Nelly. If you couldn’t tell from the title (we really don’t think there should be any confusion) we were teaching substance abuse this week!

Our week started off with teaching about smoking. Since Nunavut spent $42 million on tobacco last year, we realized how important it was to present the scary facts about smoking in a very engaging manner. We presented the bad effects of smoking with an interactive exercise with the kids covering areas on the body they think would be hurt by smoking. By the end, the body was pretty well covered which really got our point across. To polish off the lesson we brought in lungs from the health centre that were healthy and then smokers lungs. We even had the chance to blow them up to show how well they breathe to compliment our breathing through the straw activity. The kids were disgusted to see the smoker’s lungs and how much more trouble they had inhaling since one lung was not even working anymore. Some students even took our stop smoking challenge, which was SO awesome to see.

You go healthy lungs!!

After school Liz played some basketball while Reba ran walking club with some kids. Since we were told about the amazing views at the dump we figured we my as well let the kids guide us there instead of wandering for hours looking for it. The kids loved the trip and getting to know Reba outside of the classroom. Not to mention the trip allowed for some possible CD cover photos to be taken.

One Direction should take note!

Wednesday was our alcohol lesson with our junior high classes. We really stressed the dangers of homebrew since Pond is a dry community, and how alcohol not only can hurt our bodies physically but the mental and emotional problems abuse of the substance can cause. We then showed some pictures of liver cirrhosis that emphasized to the students how it really can hurt our bodies instead of just talking to them over and over about the ways it can have a negative effect. That night we had art club and this week was bracelet making! We had both boys and girls come and some major tunes blasting that some teachers even had to come in occasionally to dance to. Many friendship bracelets were made, except ones from Liz since no one would want to wear anything she made…YouTube tutorials will be watched…

Our lesson on inhalants and the pictures we had on what it does to the human brain along with explaining sudden sniffing death syndrome kept the students surprised and interested in the lesson. To wrap up substance abuse Reba and Liz did some peer pressure skits substance abuse edition and relied on the kids to plan the outcome for us to act out. Not only did this create a more interactive lesson that the kids got really involved in and stirred up some laughs, but the answers used to help out the skits were really effective and helpful ways to say no to peer pressure! After successful lessons we hosted a movie night of Rango, which we think we enjoyed even more than the kids did.

BOYZ NIGHT IN THE AFTERNOON!! This Saturday we went to school early to get cooking since we know what growing boys eat. After hours of floor hockey and shield dodgeball (the boys were so low maintenance, legitimately run on their own forever) lots of pizzas, pasta, cakes, cookies, and some healthy treats were devoured. With full bellies everyone rolled into place to either watch Liz star as Amanda Bynes in She’s the Man (tricked the boys into thinking I was actually her in the movie) or play some card games. Overall, it was an awesome day full of laughs and tons of fun.

This weekend we even got to go out on a little scenic trip on an ATV! Since Reba tipped Liz off the ski-doo last week (pretty much barely escaped with her life) Liz only thought it would appropriate for some payback. Although she leached on well I think it’s safe to say Reba has a little more off-roading talent and Liz should stick to solid roads. Did we mention we got to meet a whole dog team before a seal feeding as well?! Hello full Northern experience! To wrap up the week we needed to do some major lesson planning for our upcoming sexual health lessons!! The time we have been waiting for…. Actually that Reba has been waiting for (there was even a comment in the question jar asking why she wants to talk about it so badly)

Can’t believe we have been here since May 2^nd!! Time has been flying by in Pond because we have been having so much fun, so we remain cherishing every second we have left!

Husky hugs from Pond,

Liz and Reba

Veggies and Fruit in the North? It’s True!!

Well we have officially completed two full weeks of teaching at Nasivvik High school, and this week was definitely a full one! To complement our lessons on physical health last week, this week’s focus was more mental health related, and then finished up with some introductions to substance abuse. We started off the week heading to the Health Center early Monday morning before school. We were able to meet with a community health outreach worker, Apphia, who gave us really useful info about health issues in Pond, AND free rein to the closet of health related teaching goodies (like a candy store for us, but better because there were no processed sugars in sight-helloooooo dental hygiene!).

Monday’s lessons focused on bullying, an issue, we found as the week went on, which is very present and pressing at Nasivvik and Ulaajuk. After school we ran sports club, and worked up a sweat playing basketball. Lay-up Liz (as she can now be referred to) came close to beating the whole boys Bball team in a game of 3 point bump (PRO). Rebound Reba’s height advantage made up for the fact that she was foolishly wearing non-stretch jeans (poor clothing choice for fast-paced basketball). After basket-ball Reba and Liz hung around for Monday Hip-hop, but there was lackluster turnout due to the senior high land trip, so it kind-of turned into art club (Reba was really relieved).

Tuesday was respect, teamwork and cooperation day, and after a shorter than usual lesson we split up classes into teams for structure-building contests… 7 pieces of paper and 10 pieces of tape/ per team resulted in the winning structure of the day by the grade 9 class that could hold 23 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) large books- The New Canadian Encyclopedia volumes to be exact. It was a great day of teaching, maybe our best so far. The whole class really got involved in the activity, and seemed to take away a lot from the lesson. After school it was more basketball, aka more of Liz and Reba reliving their high school glory days.

Wednesday was self-esteem day for teaching, and it we felt it went even better than Tuesday, even though we found it to be a harder lesson to make. It is a seriously important issue up here, especially as bullying is very obvious and everywhere in the school. We had some good goal setting sessions, and played class-wide “guess my future career” type games. In the girls-only grade 7 and 8 classes, we continued to focus more on bullying and self-esteem. We did some great activities to show the effects of bullying and bystanding on girls self esteem, and the girls were definitely all listening (RARE!), so we were pretty stoked with that, and with the comments and questions we got from them after. Our Wednesday after-school art club was a hit this week, with lots of drawing and painting, and sneaky photography. FUN!!!!

Some aspiring artists!

The creative juices are flowing

Wednesday we found out that due to new school schedules and end of the year events at Nasivvik, we actually have very few days left for teaching! So after Wednesdays successful end to Mental Health, we moved on to an intro to Substance Abuse. We learned that students here are pretty knowledgeable about the effects of many substances, such as tobacco, but that this does not stop many of them from participating in substance abuse. This topic will carry over to our third week, and we are definitely going to make it as interesting as possible, to try and get some messages to sink in.

Thursday we also got to go to the Arctic college in the morning. There was an environmental biology course finishing up this week, and we were asked to come in and give a lesson on the currently known effects of mercury on human health! Such a cool way to spend our morning- the class had just gotten back last week from sampling seals in the Pond Inlet area, and are sending the samples off to Environment Canada soon to test for mercury levels. The class and instructors were all so knowledgeable and into the topic so it was very much a dialogue instead of a formal lesson- SO GREAT!!

Very sadly, there was a death of a student in the community on Friday morning, so we didn’t really teach that day, just hung out in some of the classes with the students. It was very powerful to see the effect of a death on the entire close- knit community of Pond.

That night Liz got seriously studious to finish (err and start) her assignment in a correspondence course she is taking (she is super-woman). She stayed cozy with her new seal fur and raccoon slippers that Rhoda made for here- so lovely! Reba headed over to Rhoda’s house to work on some sewing, and even started making (with a whole lotta help) the pattern and under-layer of her own parka!

Saturday- GIRLS NIGHT (in the afternoon)!!!! Liz and Reba got busy setting up for the girls get together on Saturday morning. The girls arrived at two and the afternoon flew on from there! It was filled with making cupcakes, homemade (and pretty healthy!) pizza, fruit and veggie snacks (on sale at the Co-op- SCORE!), beading, friendship bracelets, water balloons, nailpolish, card-playing and chatting! It finished off with a movie on the ‘big-screen’ in the gym. SO MUCH FUN, SO MUCH (HEALTHY) FOOD CONSUMED, SPARKLES AND BEADS EVERYWHERE!!

Art skillzzzzzzz

Food- a central theme of this delicious girl's night (in the afternoon) 

Nail polish for errryyyyboddaaaaayyyy

 For the rest of the long weekend we have been doing lesson planning, going for some long walks in the BEAUTIFUL Pond area, organizing for the next 2 1/2 week of teaching (sexual health education countdown- ONE WEEK! woooo!!) 

Liz, Reba, and our Mamma for the moment, Juana- Enjoying some sunshine on the sea-ice!!

Reba pretending that she can drive this thing- we almost flipped (off roadinggggg) 

Sorry for the longest post ever,

COUNTDOWN FOR Discovery SHARKWEEK IS ON (LIZ)! Only 71 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes and 54 seconds …..53….52…

Peace out from the Pondlets

Goodbye Trail Mix...yes we bought the one with M&M's (...yes we know we deceived you Ellie)

Reba, who also goes by the tall one and who was told her eyelashes were so long and pretty and Liz, the short one who got told she looks 17 and has creepy eyes, wrapped up their first week of teaching!! Unfortunately, it did not end injury-less just like every other northern project blog….Interested? Keep reading…

As was stated in our earlier post, this week was physical health week featuring Liz doing the seizuring robot (hip hop class). We covered the topics of hygiene, dental hygiene, nutrition, diabetes, heart and stroke, physical exercise, first aid and online safety. We taught almost every period of the day in grades 7-senior classes, and even a CTS northern studies class.

When we did our end of the week review through a jeopardy game the students participated like mad, yelling out those correct answers like bauses. We were prond (Pond proud). We were a little worried about the diabetes lesson since it can be a little complicated to explain and a dry topic but the biology nerds pulled through!! WOO WOOO! We ended up making up a little physical exercise diabetes game for our senior phys-ed class after watching them want to sleep during our lesson. The gym was the teacher Ian’s blood, while everyone else who was joined in pairs by linked arms were cells. Then we had three volunteers, two who were glucose and one who was insulin. The glucose had to try and run away from insulin by linking arms to someone who was a cell (glucose going from the blood to the cell because insulin controlled it to do so….HAHAHA we loveddd it!!...you do too, don’t lie) To add a special twist it turned into tag so when a glucose linked up with a cell the farther linked person then unlinked and became the glucose running from insulin in the blood to go into the cell. When insulin could not catch the glucose we said that there was too much glucose in Ian’s blood and he was diabetic. When glucose kept getting caught we said insulin was doing it’s job and Ian did not have diabetes. The kids LOVED it!!! They were all panting and working up a sweat along with screaming (who knew insulin could be in the next big horror movie). They also started yelling out the actual terms like “who is insulin?!”… “no I’m glucose!”. SCORE!

With the end of the first week excitement winding down Reba and Liz decided to be granny’s on a Friday night while all the kids were at the dance and watch a chick flick with some sour key candies, so nutritious of us. On Saturday we went to another sweet C-Hall flea market where we bought some crackle nail polish for our girl’s night happening next Saturday! We then went to Jeannie’s, a teacher at Nasiivikk, house for dinner since she so sweetly thought we missed our families and mothers cooking. Her parents passsed away this year but were very respected and involved elders in Pond, and were known for their sewing, singing, drum dancing, teaching, hunting, and raising many children. Liz even had the honour of wearing Jeannie’s mothers beautiful hand sewn Amautik, which is used to carry children. The beading was so intricate and detailed Liz was a little scared wearing it but a memorable moment for sure.

Missing our mom’s on mother’s day despite Jeannie’s delicious and generous meal we decided to make some one of a kind cards for them! We had our own Mother’s Day dinner here at our wonderful host family’s home of caribou Sheppard’s pie which was UNREAL!! Another elder Rhoda joined us for dinner and then after dinner she did the measurements to make Reba a coat and Liz some seal skin boot slippers (step up from salty uggs)! 

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY !!!

WE LOVE OUR MOMS!!!

Since our P90x plans got dampered by heavy caribou bellies we are turning in for some mental health week lesson planning starting with a bullying lesson tomorrow, followed by some after school basketball then hip hop.

Pond Patooties out,

Liz and Reba

Insert random artsy photo here

P.S. I bet you were wondering what that injury was right…yeah get ready. Liz scratched herself on the tin question jar. Intense right. Good thing we took first aid is all I’m gonna say. Strengthen up Northern!!

Let's get physical- Physical Health that is!

We are now done our second day teaching at Nasivvik High School in Pond, and it has been awesome and very educational so far- for us definitely, and we hope for the students! Yesterday we taught 2 grade seven classes and 2 grade eight classes. All the students were great participants in the lessons, and had a bunch of questions for our question box afterwards (although a few of these questions went something like "Liz is cute". Participation still!!). The lesson yesterday was personal and dental hygiene. A big thanks to Nick Roberti for hooking us up with some teeth from his dentist friend back home- we plunked these pulled molars in a cup of coke over night, and in today's lessons everyone got to see the results of pop on our choppers! "Ew" was a pretty standard response.

We also ventured out and met some more people around town the last couple nights as well! Although Reba was a little delirious and had to stay home monday night because of some flu symptoms, Liz made it out to monday night Hip-Hop at Nasivvik. As I'm sure you can imagine, she was one of the biggest hits there, having to battle two separate times, and dance some solos in front of everyone assembled. Liz was so into her moves that there was no time for pictures, therefore this blog post should be read with inventive imaginations for highest quality viewing. The kids were still talking about Liz's moves today, and we can't wait until next Monday for round 2! 

Tonight we both headed down to the C-Hall to watch a play put on by some community members. The play is called "Changes" and was originally written and performed in Pond in 1984! It has not been performed anywhere since, but a couple members of the original cast were in this performance as well- really cool! The play was about what happened to some Inuit families with the introduction of the fur-trade, alcohol, religion, and the RCMP in Mittimatalik (Pond) earlier in the 20th century- very thought provoking. It was mostly in Inuktitut, but there was a lot of traditional dancing, singing, and throat singing (so awesome to watch!) and we could definitely follow along with the plot, even if we didn't understand what everyone was laughing at so hard at times. After the play we hung out in the C-hall with a bunch of the students that had come to see the play as well, and we met lots more from Ulaajuk Primary school that we had not had the chance to meet yet.

All in all it's been a pretty action packed and amazing 2 days. Can't wait for tomorrow, but for now we are signing off and moving on to lesson planning for the rest of the evening!

Later gators!!

Strong Northern feeling of love!

Liz and Reba

Cause baby there aint no iceberg tall enough to keep us from comin back to Pond!

What a wonderful weekend we had here in Pond! It all started with the flea market in the C-Hall. It was awesome to see all the authentic homemade food and items, and it was great to see so many people of the community all united in the same place. Not only did we realize we could not justify buying $10 orange juice at the store, but we also realized we could afford bannock… and lots of it. After all that eating we figured we better do something active to sweat those calories away so we hung out with our new pal and his dog. Reba and him thought they were some tough characters.

Good thing I can't run into these two in the dark!

It was an absolutely beautiful day here with the sun shining and snow starting to melt so we thought we would be adventurous and take a little hike out to the iceberg anchored about an hour from town. After realizing how bad our distance perception really is we finally made it, and it was worth every bead of sweat! We could not get over how beautiful and calm it was, to the point we considered making an igloo and cuddling a piece of ice there all night. We then realized our first day of teaching is TOMORROW!! We are so excited to start meeting all of the kids and seeing how our first four lessons of our physical health week go. We may be even more stoked to show off our skills tomorrow night in hip hop class…we studied the new Justin Bieber “Boyfriend” music video to get prepared…yeaaa be intimidated. That is all for now folks, time to turn in for our busy day tomorrow!

Biology nerds gone wild!!

Pondtanic out,

Rizeba

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr It's cold in here.... we must be Ontarians in this Northern-sphere! (we are lame and loving it)

Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik)! What a place this is, and what a welcome we have had! We arrived in Pond after a short delay in Iqaluit, at 8pm on Wednesday evening... to bright sunlight, and seriously aw-inspiring views. The people we have met the last few days in the community and in the schools (Nasivvik High School and Ulaajuk Primary School) have been equally as amazing and welcoming.

Overhead view coming into Pond!

Despite the almost 20 hours of day light (and even though the sun does set for 4 hours now, the sky is still light 24 hours/day), we slept well in our awesome temporary home at Bob's (a Superintendent here). We spent yesterday and today getting accustomed and familiar with Pond, it's education and health centres, and the public library. The staff at Nasivvik, where we have spent most of our time setting up lessons and chatting with teachers, student assistants and anyone who was around for a talk, are all very accommodating and have said they are excited to have us. We have had a good chat with the Principal of the High School (the awesome Meeka), and have got a better idea of the curriculum we will follow for the next four and a half weeks. We are excited to start teaching at Nasivvik on Monday!
Ulaajuk is a primarily Inuktitut speaking school, so we will hopefully get in there to do a few lessons with a translator or other students... all in all it has been a busy and exciting first few days in Pond.

Nasivvik High School

Liz and I both experienced some freezing fingers and bums this evening when we had an impromptu playing-out (playing outside) session with a group of about fifteen kids! They are all so friendly and came right up to us asking us a million questions in Inuktituk and English. Although Liz and I did go to an Inuktituk class last night at the High school, we are not quite able to follow (anything) of the Inuktitut, but we got by with smiles and piggy-backs. After a lot of games of freeze (literally) tag, we had to head home at around 9 for some dinner! Hello peanut butter!

That's all for now! Tomorrow we head to the flea market in the community centre (C-Hall!), and will maybe walk out to the Ice-berg that's anchored in the shore ice about an hours walk from town!

Lot's of Northern love!
Liz and Reba

After hours of packing aka stuffing every possible item we own into hockey bags we own as true Canadians (Toronto Maple Leafs bag represent !!....haters gonna hate) we think we are finally prepared to leave K-town. Even though our self esteem took quite the beating when we realized we really aren’t as jacked as we think we are once it came to lifting them, Pond here we come! WE COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED! After experiencing a night of luxury in a hotel here in Ottawa Home Alone 2 stylez we will fly out early in the morning, and after a couple plane rides we will be in Pond early tomorrow night. Don’t worry everyone we have Gravol on stand by. Wish us luck and keep following as we fill you in on the amazing people we are about to meet and experiences we will have!

Miss everyone already and tons of Northern Love,

Reba McEntire and Liza Minnelli

Yeah Reba’s legs are the length of my body….so…whatever… I’m not jealous at all…