June 19/06
Well I'm here in Tuk. I'm at this house for ten days, until the teachers move out, Then i get moved closer to the pool. So far I don't have internet or a phone :-(. I didn't realize that cell phones can't tell time when the signal is not digital. I'm hoping to get Cheryl to call and wake me up tommorrow morning. This house has a giant TV and satellite so i'm not even missing the oilers game. It's really wram here. There is only one bench in town. They call it "The Bench". I get to be here for Aboriginal day on wednesday. It doesn't look good for the Oilers just now.

 

June 20/06
Today I started work. I went through the pool storage for books and stuff. There's stuff in there from the Red Cross programs, but from when the levels were colours. There's minnows and gupies stickers. There is so much safe boating stuff and Hypothermia stuff. and we have a billion whistles and some cool keychains for prizes. I went grocery shopping today. nthing is really more expensive except for produce and bread. but at the stanton I can get bread frozen for $5. and peppers and $5 for the stop lights, but at the northern they're $8/lb. pop is very expensive. i've heard the milk is often sour at both stores. It's now 12:02 am and it's lighter then it was this morning. and it's really warm. is 25C right now. i hope i can get the internet at home, although i'll get keys to kitti hall and i'm pretty sure they have internet. i hope so anyhow. if not i'll get a local dial up number and use dial up. :-(. so i don't have to work tomorrow because it's aboriginal day. the guy from connecophilips is gonna buy me pizza tomorrow because his sister lives in rocky. i think she's a chiropractor. he told me i'm brave for being up here.

 

June 21/06
aboriginal day was neat. i got put in the canteen though. I got some videos of drum dancing. i'm gonna get a bunch of cool pictures on canada day. It was pretty warm today too.

 

June 22/06
Nothing happened today. apperently when there's an event late i don't have to go in until 1:00. now I know. Stuff get very wet when it rains. and then stupid people dig trenchs across the road to drain out their yards into their neighbours. It makes the gravel even worse than usual.

 

June 23/06
Today stuff finally got going. pipes were connected. holes were patched. monday the boiler will be lit and tuesday morning the water truck will come. alice, i think is funny. It rained yesterday so everything here is muddy. all the roads are gravel and all the houses are on stilts. Vera says that the town is slowly sinking into the sea. she says that wen she was younger you couldn't see one island over the other island and now you can.The 24 hour sunlight is really screwing up my sense of time. but it's really cool that I can go to bed at 3:00 am and it's still light. It's finally Friday and I get the whole weekend off. I don't know what I am going to do though. apparently there's baseball going on this weekend, but I really hate baseball. Really hate baseball.

June 26/06
Today I figured out what Pingos are. Which is good because tuktoyaktuk is the land of the pingos. the short story is they are silly shaped hills. the real story has something to do with lakes and ice. <a href="http://arctic.fws.gov/permcycl.htm"> This site</a> has a great illustrated guide to pingo formation.
i need a new memory card. every other time that i stick it into my computer, it needs formatted and I lose all the pictures. it really isn't good at all. So today there is water in my pool.

 

June 27/06
the kids here are strange. they get up for school and i still saw some of them up at three when i went to bed last night. apperantly in the summer nobody gets up until after noon, so i never work before 12:30. i got the system circulating and the boiler on. i hope the temp will go up soon. tomorrow i have to add chemicals, but nobody can find the chemical filter mask. this could be scary. saturday if it's nice i 'll get to go whaling. plus i'll get to see all the traditional stuff at canada day. there's gonna be a square dance. I got a carving of a swan from a guy named david. i gave him more money so he could get some rock for another one. i think it's gonna be a bear. i still owe on the bear though. he says he carves because he has nothing better to do. he works in the winter, but makes more money carving in the summer. i'm getting them really cheap because i'm gonna get him a website. ah the joys of being a nerd.

 

June 30/06
The pool opened today. it was busy. i'm tired. also i moved today. but the teachers couldn't be bothered to clean up the house at all. there was dog hair everywhere. luckily for me the hamlet conned some ladies into cleaning it for me. it was mostly done when i finished work. for some reason i can't get a dail tone on my phone line here. and i can only find one jack. there are five bed rooms and only one jack. it's a strange house, but really really big. i wish i could get on to the internet. this really sucks. the guy who i'm plant sitting for has many many many plants. there are alot of them. somebody left the book of mormon here so i might read it. the intro thing sounded interesting. on the plus side they left me some food here. i had pancakes for supper. all the food i bought is still at kitti hall beacuse the woman i was with demanded that i be out before 5 and i worked til then so i had to move out at noon. so i didn't have time to clean anything up or do the dishes. oh well, i guess if you are rude to your tenants they aren't gonna leave the place nice. i need to start taking money for swimming lessons tommorrow. a lady tried to pay today. i am currently not attending a square dance because i have a headache, partly from chlorine. david is makeing me a bear and a muskox. the company who makes my memory card says that if i ship it down there, they'll get me a new one. mom can you just send me a different one. i small one is ok, because i can just run home and upload the files. i'll send mine away when i get home.

 

July 1/06
Happy Canada Day, eh? Any how today was day two of the pool being open. I'm pooped. Lucky for me, we're interveiwing this week, but I still have at least three days by myself. At least the were better behaved today. so i tried a muskox burger today. it tasted very strongly. i'm guessing the flavour is muskox. it was acutally pretty good. i didn't stay for many games. when i got there after closing the pool, the fish cutting competition was on. after that was tea boiling, but i didn't stay because i'm pretty sure it's not very hard to boil tea. i think i may have missed the fun stuff while i was at the pool. after i got my burger it started to rain so i walked home. the kids up here keep asking me if my eye colour is real. i guess they don't see many people who don' have brown eyes. plus they think it's wierd that i where flip flops around town. and they think it's wierd that i walk, especially in flip flops. i was debating about having a midnigh swim but i went in there tonight at midnight and it was too dark. i think the sun was behind clouds. there is a building in between the pool and the sun after about 9:00 pm. the non-slip mats on the floor are killing my feet. they are very sore. i need to remember to get a handle for my mop on tuesday. so i don't have to hose the lobby anymore. the bed in my new house has pokey springs, so i'm sleeping on the couch again. oh well, its two flights of stairs closer to my front door.

 

July 2/06
Today it was too cold to open the pool, because nobody had time to install the heater. it'll get done on tuesday because i don't think anybody works tomorrow except me. so i grabbed the crayons and some boat saftey activity books and some kids, and i took them to my house because it was clean and kitti hall was not. some of them didn't stay very long. a few of them stayed to watch Spirited Away and play some hide and seek. I got hungry so i decided to make lasanya because i wan't sure if some of them would stay. apperently two of the four that stayed had never had lasanya before. mine was kinda unique because i didn't want to wait for my tomatoe sauce to rehydrate. so i reydrated some, and added some ketchup, bqq sauce and mild salsa. there was some beef and mozerella and parmesaen. i also put in some chillies. it was really good. it was a bit sweet, because of the ketchup and the bqq sauce. but it was yummy. i totally think i would make it that way again. so then they left. and i haven't really done much since. but i did see a lemming. at least that's what thomas says it is. and there is a couple ducks that live in the puddle behind my house. it's a very sheltered puddle. much more sheltered than the puddle behind the school. also much smaller.

 

July 5/06
those kids told me it was some kind of a squirel, they call ti a sicsic. it snowed today, off and on. i learned something for next summer. inivik pays their lifegaurds between $25 an hour. $52,000 a year. dude i want one of those jobs next summer. i could totally do it, especially with experiance up here already. plus i could apply any time, because it looks like i'm gonna be on the waiting list all year. not saying that i want to move up here for a year or anything.

 

July 8/06
last night a kid broke into the pool. he crawled under the fence and slashed the tent. but he wasn't smart enough to make the hole bigger so he could climb through. i put 40kg bags of filter sand on plywood ontop of the holes under the fence that should hold until monday. carl is a lifesaver. when boys are being boys he can go check up on them. if something goes wrong while there are people in the pool he can go fix it. he knows all the brats names.  he can yell at them too. when he gets bored he starts fixing things like the end on the hose. now it works. i trained him to help spine board somebody. next saturday is the amazing race and the pool is a station, so we have to cancel some swimming. i'm thinking the task there should either be rescue a kid, or find a certain kid. i dunno yet. i implemented a punch pass system, but we are giving the kids the option of leaving their cards with us for safe keeping. $10 for 11 swims. swimming lessons are $10 and swim club is $15 and parents are complaining that our prices are high. that's silly, because a case of pop is $12. you know what's strange? the RCMP officer that came to the pool this morning is friends with richard smith, skye's dad. and his sister used to live around rocky. wierd eh? they are very short staffed. there are supposed to be six but there is only two right now. tomorrow i am going to sew up the holes in my pool tent. stupid short muddy kid. i bribbed some kids into telling me the name of my culprit. i've never had to call the cops before. last night a kid named florence ate all the peanut butter. bummer, not. anyhow she stuck her hands in and gave up useing the spoon. she was covered in it. it was really gross, so i confined her to her chair until she was leaving. the last thing i want is to have peanut butter everywhere. this is the same kid  that an hour earlier picked all the books off the floor and put them on the shelves. strange child. sorry i haven't been updating this regularily, but the phone at this house has been disconnected. and i keep forgetting to ask janna if i can get it reactivated. strangely, there are no kids here tonight, when i don't have to get up in the morning. silly kids.

 

July 10/06
i know that kid's name now. its john t. i told the rcmp today, but nobody is on duty until this morning, so the lady just left him a note. it's 3am and i can't sleep. the sun is to the north now, and it's really foggy. i saw the barge today. there was 6 barges being towed by the ship. i guess alot of people order stuff that way up here. and some communities are more isolated than tuk. at least they have the ice road in the winter. i started this book yesterday about the days leading up to the eruption of mount vesuvias. it follows around the engineer of the aqiduct. i wonder why it's so foggy right now. it was really warm out yesterday, my thermometer said 30C. too bad the wind never stops blowing. it feels like it is blowing accross ice right before it gets here, but that's not very likely because the ice is a long way out. i learned that sundays aren't a great day to grocery shop. there wasn't much left. i've never seen such huge gaps on grocery shelves. i'm gonna take a bunch of pictures this week and put them on cds to send home. so if you wanna see them you can call my mom, or thomas' mom. man my typing is pretty bad right now. swim club starts today at 4pm, swimming lessons start tomorrow. i got some sicsic pictures and a movie today.i guess it was yesterday now.

 

July 12/06
i got a phone number yesterday. 977 2704. man yesterday and this morining are buggy. have you ever seen that bug spray commercial where a person puts their arm in the jar with all the moesquitoes? well it looks like that jar outside. its really bad. my first water sample came back yesterday. it's clean, which isn't surprising because if it wasn't then the drinking water isn't either. i learned from heather s that my stripper name would be fantasia glittersizzle, which is the funniest stripper name i've ever heard. not much else to say except that i need to recruit more kids for swimming lessons.

 

July 15/06
i just got off work at 1:45am. the rcmp came to tell me that the only thing they could do was talk to the kid's parents, he's only 10. i went to the far grocery store today to get real ice cream and they had bagged salads on for $1.98 so i have a salad now. plus green giant makes really good stir frys. alot of kids were kicked out of midnight swim. becasue it was so busy, we let less things slide. my first real accident happened today. a girl hurt her arm. she refused to let me look until the swim was over. it didn't hurt when i pressed on it, only when she moved it, so i put it in a sling and called her mom. she's my neighbour across the street. i got a bunch more kids to join swim club though. i already have two girls that i won't take to Inuvik, because of behavior.

 

July 16/06
one of the girls kicked out of midnight swim for punching a little girl, did it again yesterday. if she punches another kid, i'm gonna have to call her parents and kick her out for the summer. i am sick, so is carl. yesterday wan't any fun. carl fell asleep. lucky for me i have gaurded while i was more sick than yesterday. today i just have a sore throat, and some of my muscles hurt. just the big ones though. my neck and thighs and back. i slept from 10:00 til 1:00am, then from 1:30 to 11:30 last night. i still don't think i can swollow anything solid yet. thomas said maybe i got west nile. i nearly gassed myself yesterday, and nobody was around. i don't get a day off this week because we have a rental. i also am missing canoeing again. amazing race got moved back a week. i'm not sad that i missed canoeing. it's crazy windy out there. even the little lakes have waves.

 

July 18/06
I think i may be in love with this place. it's really pretty. i went for a walk last night/this morning. i went to the other end of the road. i saw mile 0 of the transcanada trail. this is part of a water route. i have no voice right now. it's really funny. i'm not sure if i will get to go canoeing sunday or not. that's when the amazing race was moved to. i want to go out. it's so calm right now. there is no wind, but the bugs are gross. i don't think they bother me as much as other people. plus they don't stay ichy very long. carl called that girl's mom yesterday. today i get to see how distracting babysitting during a swimming lesson is. last week the little girl was scared of carl, and wouldn't swim.

 

July 21/06
I can't sleep. I still have no voice, and every time i lie down, i start coughing. so my solution to this is to sit up, and now i can't sleep. it's 3:30am. i'm tired of being sick already. it should just go away. i'm going canoeing on sunday wether or not i am still sick. i learned who the punching girl's mother is. she is a crazy woman who isn't smart enough to know that white is see-through when it is wet. there is alot of that here. i can't belive the number of people who will try to go in in a white tshirt. one little boy came in in white spiderman undies. today a kid came in with a giant rip in the seat of his shorts. apperently he never noticed. i sent him to get other ones. it's been cloudy for the last few days. yesterday there was a freak 4 minute downpour. it really poured for 4 mins, then it stopped. it was while the beuafort delta recreation co-ordinator was taking a look at the pool structure. so he put on his report that there was an opening in the top of the tent that rain and dirt could get in. tourists keep stopping by the pool because they want to know what the strange shaped building is. the lady today used to live here in the 70s. her husband was a corpreal here. yesterday one stopped in with a strong accent. if you walk underneath the pool deck you can see where the joists are starting to rot. i learned yesterday that Lee is leaving the rocky pool for the dawe center in red deer. the pool will be a different place without him. i still have soap bubbles in my pool. stupid kids. i'm not sure if i will ever get them all out. it's not hazerdous, so i'm just gonna keep diluting it. i guess soap is a dangerous thing to have at a small pool. i need to call aklak today for airfare prices. i need 10 seats. half of our transportation costs are being covered by the beaufort delta sports and recreation something or other. so all we need to fundraise is half the airfare and $30/kid as an entry fee. I'm gonna have to tell steve what swim meets are worth up here. parents don't seem willing to spend much money on keeping their kids out of trouble. There are only 2 girls in grade 5 who don't smoke already. it's pretty sad. one of the two girls moms threatened that if she was ever caught smokeing her mom would break up the smokes put them in a bowl, pour milk on them and she would have to eat them for breakfast. i think it would be pretty hard for her mom not to find out up here too, so there will be at least one kid who doesn't smoke. smokes are also $14 a pack. i'm not sure if that's more expensive than alberta or not. today davie took our heater in to fix it, but never told us. there was a few moments of panic, but then who can steal a 300lb heater from right outside the tent with out us hearing a tractor. later we found out that davie was fixing it. my 4-6yr old lessons are going to be interesting. i have one kid who can side glide and one kid who barely puts his face in the water. plus i think he may be spoiled. his dad comes in with him, and he argues with his dad at lessons. he says that he can't do things because he doesn't want to. the other kid only barely listens to me, and i think it's only because he knows he won't be able to swim if he doesn't. it's now 4:00am. i wish it would hurry up and be nine, so at least i can get something done. i hate the internet here. it keeps disconnecting. there's something wrong with my phone line inside my house.

 

July 22/06
It seems i keep writing these early in the morning. something keep trying to run on my computer, it's irritating. at least I have my voice back. i resubscribed to norton antivirus today. it rained tonight. Here is the story of the stupidest woman in town: This woman rented the pool tonight. ( it was cold and foggy, but that's not important) She decided that only her immediate family should be alowed to change in the woman's changeroom. so she kicked the rest of her friends into the boys changeroom. this included a middle aged woman and a 12 yr old girl. it meant that when carl walked through the changeroom, he saw a middle aged woman in a thong. he doesn't think it's funny. we just assumed that the woman in the boys changeroom was stupid, until at the end, i knocked on the boys door, and somebody hollered come in, where i walked in on two girls. i called janna who said she would talk to this retarded woman. she has set herself up for a sexual harrassment suit. if i was that girl, and i ran out of money, or lost a job, i could sue this lady for making me change with boys, as a teenage girl. i can't belive that lady could be that stupid. anyhow, i don't think i'll let her rent again. other then that, today i met carl's gf ashley, she just got in. she lives in calgary. my internet died on me while i was trying to buy baby books earlier. i wish i could kill what ever program keeps trying to run itself.

 

July 24/06
i'm bored right now. this is gonna be a really busy week, fundraising. there are two 50/50s going on tommorrow. and on friday we are running a teen dance. there is gonna be a bake sale on saturday maybe, and another cake raffle also on friday. if i can con somebody into making rice krispy squares i'm gonna sell them at the youth center. i hope i hear from aklak soon, because i'm  hoping they will give us a discount, being kids and all. its funny, nobody who rents to pool bothers to read the contract. it says that they are responsible for any damages, and if anyone is hurt, the hamlet and it's staff are not responsible. we made $168 on a cake raffle on sat. this mornign we found a bird stuck in the heater. poor thing probably flew in on sat, when it was warm. carl rescued it. i'm still waiting on the last two water samples to come back. i wonder where they got stuck. unless i forgot to put the fax number on them.... ooops, that's probably what's going on.

 

July 27/06
Today was my only sleep in morning this week. the mayor wants to rent the pool right before the dance tommorrow night. right now i think he may be trying to pull strings. tomorrow i have to get up and buy canteen suplies. somehow a whole buncle of flies got in here.

 

July 30/06
I totally just went swimming in the Artic Ocean. it's cold. We started going for a walk, then the one guy kicked the basketball in, and ran in after it. then a different guy said he just got a water trampoline. it wasn't very far out, but there was a cut bank. i think i could stand up , but the girl told me that the bottom was gross, so i swam. it was hard to climb onto, and then i slid off into the ocean. the first time my head went under. it's the unsaltiest ocean water ever, because the mckenzie river joins the ocean really close. luckily there was a fire, because i wasn't prepared to go swimming, so i warmed up. we wne to visit another girl, then i figured i should go home because i have to work today. somebody rented the pool again. Carl called in sick yesterday, and today his friend cody, who was swimming too said he was drinking last night. carl also jumped off the dock yesterday. i worked 9 straight hours yesterday because carl called in sick. usually, there is exactly an hour where there is nothing in the pool, so i can run right after the kids are out of the pool, and carl stays, but he wasn't there, so i had to stay. then a lady called to rent the pool. he better actually be sick, cause i'm gonna be pretty mad if he was just hungover. Teen Dances here are really boring. a sand fly took a chunk out of the side of my foot. the sun sets now, but it's still twilight all the time. cody said that next week it'll start getting dark out. i'm guessing not for very long though. i've been warned that it gets really dark. i guess they've had a bunch of city lifeguards who always have street lights.

 

August 3/06
Carl is really sick. I learned something Monday night/tues morning. Never go for a walk with cody if you have to get up in the morning. we were out until 6am. it was fun though. i got all the permission forms in today, so i will be faxing them tommorrow. i'm hoping to borrow the rec truck to take the kids whose parents don't drive to the airport. janna and patti won't be here anyhow. i'm excited to go to inuvik. i'm gonna get some chinese takeout and take it home. and maybe some groceries where it's not as expensive. i can buy milk that's normal priced. its $13.97 for 4L of choc milk in tuk. yikes. one of my swim club kids has pnumonia.

August 8/06
i got back from Inuvik on Monday at noon. our flight left the first time at 9:30, but we did this cool tour thingy and returned to Inuvik because one of the gauges wasn't reading properly.  then  we hung around the airport until we finally left just before noon.  lucky for me most of the kids fell asleep at the airport. also carl it seems he can't stay awake.  that really sucked because the gravol was really kicking in at that point and i could barely keep my eyes open. i finally confined the ones who were running around to thier chairs. When I got home monday, i paid me $100 to the u of c and put my blanket in the wash. then i passed out on the couch. it was 3:00pm. i woke up a couple hours later because some kid pounded on my door. so i put my blanket in the dryer, and had a snack. and fell asleep for a couple more hours. the next time i woke up i pulled my blanket out and had a real sleep. i woke up at 10:30 this morning. that makes 19.5 hours of sleep for me. wow. anyhow about the swim meet. our team is the tuktoyaktuk leopard seals. we placed fourth. i figured out the trick to winning meets set up like this one, you have to have a swimmer in every category, because there is bound to be one without anybody else in it. then they automatically get the winning time and the points. it was a pretty hectic time. on sunday a couple of kids were in the water from 10:00 to 10:00 except for when they had to get out and eat. one of my swimmers placed in every event. the inuvik pool is really neat. it has fake rocks on the parts where they don't want people to walk, and a tropical mural surrounding it. it almost makes up for the fact that there aren't any windows. i guess who wants to swim while looking at snow for most of the year. they had lights under the water all the way around, so for the pool party the could turn alot of the overhead lights off and still see the bottom. they have this cool lazy river thing with a wicked current. i could barely swim in the other direction. anyhow, not really much more happened this weekend. i'm up here for 16 more days, then it's on to chetwynd bc. then to calgary. i bought an mp3 player today off ebay. sadly not a waterproof one though. i'll see lots of you in a couple weeks,