Christmas

The holidays are big in Kawawachikamach. In the first week of December one of the Naskapi teachers held her annual potluck dinner. The dishes that were brought periled in comparison to the dishes that were made by the host. It was a Chinese buffet of caribou meat. Caribou meat is very flexible- there were egg rolls, honey garlic ribs, spicy meat balls, and the light meat was used for "Hawaiian chicken". It was delicious! I love caribou.

The following day we had our staff x-mas party. Another potluck, the school had bought turkeys and had over 20 dishes to choose from. Needless to say it was easy to gain weight.

For the kids it was decided on the final Wednesday to have a sing along. Below are a few pictures of us at the NCC (Native Community Center), and a sample of the grade 3 singing the 12 days of Christmas in Naskapi (sorry there was very little light.

Then, on Thursday we had class parties. The kids came in at 10am for two hours. The sec 4 and 5's decided that we would play games... aka poker. The morning went well, we cleaned our rooms, moved the desks and chairs and left for the holidays (Dec. 14- Jan 7 (but we work several Saturdays and start early).

I'm HOME!!!

And so I'm going to try to take the time to write down some of my various experiences while I have access to a reliable internet connection.

First things first. From the moment I arrived I was taken aback by the many packs of dogs that wonder freely between Kawa and Schefferville.

The issues with the dogs has become bothersome, pulling on my heart strings as the temperatures drop and food becomes increasingly rare. The first photo shows Andy providing food scraps to one of the packs. One point of interest is that a husky is always the pack leader, you can tell as he pushes his way into the window after the last of the scraps.