Work??

Tuesday, September 7th

Today I went to school only to discover that we would have no students. They are laying new flooring throughout the school and things got behind schedule. All the classrooms had been emptied into the hallway but no floors were complete. So we spent the day planning. Kathy and I worked on our Science and Social Studies year plans. The curriculum is itself a bit difficult to nail down. Nunavut has very little of its own curriculum and uses a combination of Alberta, North West Territories and the Western North Canadian Protocol. The first order of business was to make sure we were both working from the same document. While still down south I downloaded all the appropriate curriculum documents I could find so when we sat down to work I was looking at these. Kathy was using the hardcopy we had been given but we soon realized the hardcopy was seriously out of date. So we both switched to the online version. It’s a fairly daunting process to look at the full curriculum but know that our English as a Second Language learners won’t be able to do everything. So we are viewing the curriculum as a goal and we will just work our way towards it.


The best part of not having students today was that when Joey, from the airport, came to school to tell me that our belonging were arriving I was able to drop everything and go home with them. Joey and a local kid started bringing in box after box. How exciting to have our stuff!! In the end there were still 4 pieces that had not arrived but there was still another plane due later in the afternoon.

The airport's moving/delivery truck.  Full of OUR things!

The kitchen, full of everything

 
I tried to call Richard to tell him the good news but the phone just rang and rang. I mentioned this to David who said he wasn’t surprised. The high school still doesn’t have phones. There is one phone line but it rings in the furnace room and last time he was there he noticed there wasn’t even a phone plugged into it! Eventually Richard called me (so there must be a phone somewhere) and said he had already heard the news. It is hard to surprise someone in a small town. After lunch we were back at work when Joey arrived again. They had more boxes for us. Poor dogs, because of the rush I put them in the closet instead of the bedroom this time. So three more boxes came in and I realized that the one thing that had not yet arrived was our bed! Yes we did bring our bed because we love it and there is nothing like a good night’s sleep! Joey said he didn’t know when it would arrive because food mail shipments start going out on Wednesday so the planes would probably be full. Sad, but at least we can start unpacking and making this feel like home. Tonight was spent unpacking boxes from within boxes. When the movers left our house they had 130 items. When we got our boxes off the airplane there were 41 pieces. Half were 4 cubic feet boxes and the other half were wardrobe boxes. So inside each big box were up to a dozen (sometimes more) items. One box had the arrows going the wrong way and I discovered a large Tupperwear bin full of tools and another with Kitchen things sitting on top of my sewing machine. All seems okay so far. I don’t think a single box actually got unpacked tonight. Maybe tomorrow...


Margot