Second Blog

The weekend was very strange in terms of weather; Saturday scorching hot about 28 degrees and Sunday cold and windy.

On Saturday I took a couple of new teachers and a returning colleague for a very long hike to pick berries and fish. The hike was about 12km one way. We did however stop on numerous occasions to pick blueberries and low bush cranberries. There are just so much of many varieties of berries up here. I dont know why on Earth I didnt hear about them last fall. All I had to do was wander off any trails and would have stepped on hundreds of berries! So we did make it to our destination after about three hours. It seemed that it was a bit of a stretch for some as it was too hot and too long of a hike. I volunteered to run back the distance after fishing and bring back the truck to drive the gang back to our compound. I kind of regret the suggestion as it was pretty hot and I struggled to make the distance non-stop. I cheated and walked a few times before I finally made it back to the school. On the drive back we decided to go by the dump and see if there were any bears. Sure enough there was mam bear with her two almost grown-up cubs. Took a few close shots from the truck and called it the day. No fish by the way. I think I will go hungry this winter!

Sunday was pretty cold and I only headed out a couple of times to try my luck with the river around the village, once again no luck. I did however lose three or four very expensive lures! I could have bought an expensive wild sockeye in Vancouver and still it would have been cheaper than those lures!

Monday September 12th. Our first official day of school. It was filled with excitement and I was so happy to see the new and old faces of the grade 9 class. predictably the new faces were happy to see me, and the returning students, well lets just say that they werent overly excited with the prospect of seeing me for another 10 months. We did spend most of the day registering them in their classes and groups and I am hoping they will respect our full day's work and come to their proper sessions tomorrow. After school I decided to go and get my bike back from a local friend's house who was nice enough to store it in their garage. I then headed out to pick berries with two other teachers who brought bikes with them. It was a very chilly day and by the time I made it back home my hands were almost frozen. I thought I was being a softy, but then when I checked at the forecast, it showed a mere 2 degrees for today's low.