It's been way too long...

And the worst part is, now I'm going to submit a blog entry without pictures. When technology reaches the point that I can have a camera implanted in my head, I'll get much better at taking pictures when I should be taking pictures. I have some pictures from when my parents were here in Pikangikum, but they're on Jill's computer, and she seems to be using it right now. I should have taken some pictures last weekend, but the camera has been in Jill's classroom since the start of the year, where she tends to take pictures of students, which, while cute, are a grey zone when it comes to putting them in the internet without permission. Call me old-fashioned if you will...

What have we been up to here in the great white north since the last update? That's a question I'm afraid I can't answer in a blog entry that anyone would read. It would take about a week and a half to write, and by the end, I'd have asked Jill a dozen times whether I need to include each time I brushed my teeth, or if I could just put in a chart listing how many times I brushed them on an average day. So instead, I'll start with the most recent news, and work my way back.

Current news: everyone is sick. Or at least it would seem that must be the case, given that school is canceled until further notice for students. It's unfortunate, given that Jill and I have both had relatively good attendance this week. As have most of the other teachers we've talked to. To be fair, though, I haven't talked to any of the teachers in kindergarten or grade 1, and those are often the kids who get hit first. If there really is something going around, I guess maybe it's better this way. Too bad, I was having a really good week so far. Having a good week has been a fairly regular state of affairs this year though, so hopefully when we get back to work, I'll continue to have a good week. The one major drawback for me from a classroom perspective is that tomorrow was supposed to be a unit test, and I don't think I can do a unit test on the first day back after a long layoff. Back to the review drawing board.

Most recent news: I love taking kids to hockey-related things, and being on ice with them! Last weekend (yes, that's right, I missed Hallowe'en), 23 of our students and a whole bunch of coaches went to Red Lake to participate in a powerskating camp. This year, we're taking a little bit different approach to the hockey program: instead of making a high school hockey team and trying to tell kids that miss classes all the time to come to school or else they're off the team, this year we've chosen kids who come to school and behave themselves, and rewarded them by finding equipment for them (out of all of the donated stuff we've received) and putting them on the team. We chose kids from grade 5 through 9 (aimed for 6 from each grade, but somehow ended up with 9 from grade 7 - how could that have happened?) and the idea is that by the end of the year, we'll be able to compete against the Red Lake peewee and bantam teams. Our players are registered for Red Lake minor hockey, so we can go play there and they can come play here once the ice road is in without having to worry about insurance issues.

Those of us involved in coaching the team this year just found out about the powerskating weekend two weeks ago, but we managed to get our kids picked, and the ones who needed equipment equipped. After school on the Monday and the Tuesday before we went, we had 6 or 7 kids and 3 or 4 coaches in the office, rooting through bags and bags of donated hockey equipment, and finding just the right stuff for our players. To see the smiles on the kids faces as they slowly but surely found everything they needed, I knew we were going about it the right way this time. A lot of parents here either can't afford equipment for their kids, or choose not to buy equipment for their kids until they stop growing. This is turn means there aren't enough kids with equipment to have regularly scheduled kids hockey, which means that ice time isn't scheduled for kids, which in turn means that parents don't bother to buy equipment for their kids. I believe that would be the definition of a vicious cycle. That's what we're trying to break this year.

Once we had the kids and equipment for the kids, we had to figure out how to get them there. Our budget is a little tight this year (the school's budget is tight, so the hockey program's is even tighter...) so we couldn't fly kids out; luckily, the lake hasn't frozen over yet! We ended up with 6 boats full of students and equipment going out, leaving right at dawn on Saturday. It was a cold trip, but it was mostly uneventful. One boat broke down on the trip out, but we got where we were going. We got on a bus at the Nungesser Road, and got to the arena just on time for our first ice time. We were actually a little bit late getting on the ice by the time we sorted all of the equipment out, but I don't think the kids minded only having a 50-minute practice instead of 1 hour and 15 minutes. The first time on the ice was a little bit rough... We had a number of kids who were walking around holding the boards to stay upright, and we had as many kids off the ice as on the ice at any given time trying to sort out equipment issues. Nonetheless, they still all finished practice keen to get back out there.

After our first ice time we had three hours before our next ice time, and most of our kids headed outside for some fresh air. A few wandered over to the outdoor basketball court next door to the arena, and found a basketball in the bushes behind the court. Before long, most of our kids were playing basketball, and as the power went out in the arena (it's not judt here in Pik that it happens!), a bunch of Red Lake kids came outside. I was the only chaperone outside at the time, which was too bad for the others - it was pretty cool watching an entirely referee- and rule-free game between Red Lake and Pikangikum! The kids played for half an hour, and even after the power came on in the arena, a lot of them stayed outside and kept playing. They still had lots of energy for the second hour of ice time anyway (poutine must be great energy food!), and you could already see some improvement.

We spent Saturday night at Stormer Lake, which is 75 kilometres out the Nungesser, and I was reminded again just how nice these kids are when you put them in a situation where they are away from bad influences. I had two grade five kids in my cabin with me (and two other chaperones and a couple of grade 8's, a high school student, and a grade 6), and before they fell asleep, they had all kinds of questions, and when I compare the attitudes of those two kids with the kids in my cabin when I worked at the camp a couple of years ago, I realized just how positive these kids could be.

The next day we were on the ice twice more, and I think the best example of how far our kids came was Rocky Turtle, one of my grade 7 students. At the beginning, he had never been on skates before. He was one of the walkers, and it took him about ten minutes to get from one end of the ice to the other. By our last ice time, Rocky was skating end to end just as fast as a lot of the kids who had skated before, and when the coaches showed us fancy moves (which were way beyond most of the kids, but they had fun trying anyway) Rocky was right there giving it his best shot. He'd skate up to the defenceman pylon, tuck the puck between its legs, and do a spin-a-rama. Sure his spin would take a few more steps than it was supposed to, but he was having a lot of fun trying! It'll be another week or two before the ice is in here, but I can't wait to get out with these kids and keep working on their skills.

The ride in was pretty uneventful - it was just unique to see kids sleeping in boats in the middle of a snowstorm - that's how exhausted they were after all of their skating.

The one interesting bit of new news to come out of this is that we had two grade six girls who were keen to play, but were feeling a little bit shy; in order to make them a little bit more confident, I promised I'd find another beginning skater to come learn to play hockey with them: Jill! So we've started collecting equipment for her, and once the ice is in, she'll be coming out for one practice a week!

That's all for now I suppose... Moe's been whining all day, and it's a beautiful November day, so I suppose I should take her for a nice long walk. I'll see if I can remember to take some pictures along the way!