Adventures

I am very sorry for the delay in my blog posting. Things have been busy up here in Whale Cove. I flew home February.17th for professional development week. I had a great week, I was able to take some music lessons, shop, spend time with family and friends and attend a education conference in Toronto (which game me an excuse to visit my sister at her new apartment in Toronto). I returned back to Whale Cove with lots of energy which was then drained from me at the end of the first Monday back. The week back after PD week was a tough week, there was not many kids in the highschool which makes for a long week.

Last weekend I was able to go to Rankin to watch Avataq - the biggest hockey tournament in the Kivilaq region. I was booked on the calm air flight to go to Rankin on Friday after school. However, a small blizzard hit. 4:00pm came around and I had a feeling my flight was going to be cancelled. I called the Calm Air agent and sure enough the flight was cancelled. I found out later that my flight landed in Whale Cove, but did not notify the Calm Air people here in Whale Cove, so no one was at the airport. I was beyond frustrated.

I lined up a Plan B on how I was going to get to Rankin. My friend Pamela offered to take me to Rankin with her and her family by snow machine and Qamutik ( a wooden sled). The ride from Whale Cove to Rankin took about 3 hours. It was a bumpy but beautiful ride. There were three machines in our group, each snow machine was pulling 1 qammutik. The machine that was pulling Pamela and I broke down. So Pamela's grandpa ended up pulling 2 qamutiks behind his sled each filled with people and bags. It's a weird feeling being out on the land in the arctic, all you can see is white. If I was stuck out on the land I don't think I would have a hope in hell of surviving. However, the people that I was travelling would know how to survive if we got stuck, so that was comforting.

My hands and feet started to get cold about a hour and a half in. It was a beautiful day, but when your out in the open, no shelter from the wind it can get cold pretty fast. We made it to Rankin at 2:30. I missed Whale Cove's game so I headed to the hotel. I stayed at Nanuq Lodge (If anyone is ever in Ranking I highly recommend this place). The couple that owns this bed and breakfast own about 12 dogs for their dog sled team.

Whale Cove played at 8pm against Rankin. It was a very intense game, Whale Cove fans outnumbered Rankin fans 2-1. In the end Ranking won 6-5 in over time, very close game. By saturday night, my back was sore and by Sunday morning my back was extremely sore. I decided to leave Ranking by plane and arrived back in Whale Cove Sunday in the later afternoon. It was a fantastic weekend.