Whapmagoostui

Last night, we stayed in Chisasibi. In the morning, I did a drop-off/pick-up of equipment at the high school and then jetted to the airport for our flight at noon. Between the three of us women, we had 880 pounds of check-in luggage. Since we're only allowed 30 pounds check-in each, the excess ended up costing an additional $580. I swear, we had about 16 boxes and suitcases. Here I am getting on the Air Creebec plane. Yaaaay!!!

This sounds stupid but I am very VERY proud that I can say 'bonjour' and 'merci' with an accurate Quebecois accent that the stewardess thought I was Francophone. When she asked me what I wanted - northern Quebecois accent is thick and I don't know what she even said - plus I forgot how to say 'ginger ale' I had to switch back to English. It was nice to sit on the plane and not do ANYTHING for 35 minutes!!

Moving between place to place is hard work*. We've been on the road off and on 5 days now - having left Waswanipi on Saturday, to Rouyn, then to Waskaganish to drop off other staff and FINALLY in Whapmagoostui (wah-MASH-to), our final destination.



Here, A. is guarding our stuff at Whapmagooshui:

T., who is another staff, had arrived 2 days earlier. He took us to the school and we met some teachers, got ourselves sorted and had a mini meeting. At the end of the day, we got introduced to everyone at a teacher's meeting. Mostly the school is supportive but there is one person causing a big pain for us. I cannot publicly go into details about this.

After work, we walked to the Northern Supermarket on the Inuit side. Whapmagoostui is half Inuit and half Cree. They don't like each other as the Cree wanted to be part of the deal with Hydro Quebec. The Inuit voted against it. Whapmagoostui is the one Cree community that has, therefore, lost the opportunity to get funding (i.e. $) from Hydro Quebec. The other Cree communities ended up having schools built by Hydro Quebec and they are nice schools. This school board is probably one of the richest ones.

Anyway, there are lots of food choices at the Northern. There's even tofu! It's nearly $3 though. A. and I shared milk, eggs and a block of butter ($7.99). I think Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are $2.05 for three. Actually everything is not as horribly expensive as I had expected. We walked back and a dog followed us. T. said not to pet them because there is a rabies epidemic here right now and you can't tell which has rabies and which does not.

We didn't get back and unpack until 7 pm. I ate a giant bowl of pasta with some premade pesto and devoured my poor asparagus which I've been carting around since SATURDAY (from supermarket to car to hotel fridge bar to car to fridge to car to ... you get the idea). Man I took a plethora of food up - a suitcase full and a cardboard box. I even have daikon, beets, kai lan, tempeh, two bags of Daiya and a giant box of salad, two bottles of Kraft salad dressing. T. said that almond milk is popular here since it is portable and doesn't have to be fridged. I am so happy but I haven't been able to find it yet. For now I'm drinking milk with my expensive Quebecois granola. I don't like drinking milk but I got sick of eating yogurt with it. I can't wait to find almond milk again!! I hate milk!!!!

I'm not exhausted, just glad to be sitting. It's actually nice that it's a little bit of a workout to move stuff around (bruises suck though). Now I am sleeping at a research centre owned by University of Laval. I get my own room with 2 sets of bunk beds. This is only for 2 days as we wait for another bed to be moved to an actual house. Man we've been moving for 5 days - I don't want to move anymore!!! I have to repack all my food ...

Internet here is slow so I really can't upload very many photos. It took me 10 minutes to do 2!! Keeping a blog is also work. As I settle in more I can slowly catch up on phone calls. It's too hard moving so much right now for me to call anyone. I'm glad that at least I got to talk to my grandma for 45 minutes last week as I had not called her in 3 weeks.

OK drink some water, lotion all my dry skin and bed.


*As I was going to take a shower tonight, I noticed that I had accumulated a lot of bruises. There were a few on my knees and a few long bruises on my shoulder.