Eleventh Blog

Completely frozen section of the river

The weekend was very cold and windy, by far the coldest two days of this term. Saturday we had a blizzard and Sunday a sunny but extremely cold and windy. We didn't have internet for long periods of the weekend so it was hard to know exactly how cold it was. But I heard that it was roughly about -30 with windchill of about -40. On Saturday I went for an hour of walk with a colleague. It was too windy and I was walking backward for a good portion of the walk. Sunday I decided to head out at noon, supposedly the warmest time of the day. But soon I realized that there was no such a thing as warm for that day. It was crisp sunny and very beautiful though. You could see mist rising from the river and even though it was windy, everything appeared dead still. I had three dogs with me, the big black and still nameless dog, a chocolate brown female dog and a young husky pup. In the beginning it was fun having them around but soon things changed and they started to act very strangely. As soon as we left the village and out into the woods, they dropped behind me; soon they were nervously trailing me by more than two hundred meters or so. I started bribing them in order to calm them down and to calm myself down as well! There were wolf tracks everywhere and the dogs would examine each track and nervously look in all directions! The big black dog was the closest to me but even he kept looking back towards the town more frequently now. I knew the dogs could sense or perhaps see something but decided to move forward any ways, especially as I had one of the locals open the door and jokingly ask me to get her a ptarmigan or two!

Still nameless!

Soon I noticed a wolf is coming right at us on the road. I have learned that dogs and wolves trust their nose more than their eyes, and this wolf was coming right at us sniffing the ground without even lifting its head to see us down the road. I started to shout out loud and waving my arms to get his attention. Sure enough it worked and it went flying and disappeared in the woods to our right. I stopped and looked around to see if there were any more around. The dogs by now had made up their mind and were running back towards the town. I had to call them and practically beg them with treats to stop them from leaving me. I thought for a couple of minutes whether to continue or head back to town. I walked back by about five hundred meters, but then suddenly changed my mind and decided to continue with the excursion. By now I was about two kilometers away from the village. The dogs were a bit calmer but they stopped following me after a few minutes and zoomed at a point on a gravel mount on the left. I called them but they wouldn't follow and kept looking at that same spot. I went back and saw a magnificent grey wolf standing on the mount looking at us. It was exhilarating and scary at the same time, its hard to explain how you feel seeing a wolf in a classic pose about a hundred meters away. I shouted and threw my arms up in a threatening manner, but he didn't move at all and just stood there sideways looking at us. I knew there had to be others, since they tend to move apart from each other. But this time I didn't want to look for the rest of the pack and decided to head back quickly and as calmly as I could. As soon as I turned around the dogs were running back and soon two had disappeared. I only had the black dog with the help of treats to head back to town. I was hoping to take a picture of the wolf, but it was too cold and later on when I tried taking a shot of the almost frozen river, there was a message on the screen telling me the battery temperature is either too low or too high! So it wouldn't have worked any ways!

Its strange how different it is when you see one compared to seeing their tracks. I had seen their tracks all over the places I had ventured to, some as far away as ten kilometer from the town, but seeing them in person no matter how close it was to the town sent shivers down my spine. I am not sure whether I head out alone, well at least not without a real gun!

Work has been pretty good and if things move the way they have been for the past couple of weeks, we should be able to finish off the chapters we are working on before the break. Grade ten math, and grade nine science students are doing pretty good, my only worry is with the two grade nine math classes I have. It is hard to get them do any work and the few motivated students are coming to class looking more and more tired and sleepy in the morning. The problem is that we are working on the most fun section of the curriculum, drawing symmetric shapes, and finding area of 3-d objects. If they are not excited about this, I don't know how I can get them to do algebra once we get back from the break!

Last week we started an indoor soccer, Futsal team with scheduled practices on Tuesday and Friday nights. The response has been overwhelming and I am thrilled to take part in something that I truly love that they enjoy as well. On the first night we had about 30 kids and the next session twenty of the serious ones showed up. We start the session with some running, then stretching, drills and end it with a game. If things go as they are now, we will have a pretty good team capable of competing with any school in the province.