blogmi titiraqtunga*

I apologize, I haven't really been keeping our blog up. I feel bad when people say they like our blog because there's not much to it anymore besides old posts. I think I'm going to start writing in it once a week. I can handle that.

Luckily, this fall has been pretty mild so far. The temperature has been hovering just around zero, which isn't too bad. The roads and "sidewalks" have been really muddy. Usually the mud is frozen when I walk to work in the morning, but by lunch it's a huge mess and I'm surprised I haven't lost a shoe in it. I have to admit I am not looking forward to another long winter. Jen once wrote about this and I completely agree...as Nunavummiut (especially ones who have left warmer climates to live here) we are expected to enjoy the winter and not say that it sucks. But the winter does suck! It can't be denied. Who can say they don't love those balmy 17 degree days in the sun more than they love the -50C windchill days when you grab a metal door handle and learn what real pain is?

I keep meaning to take photos of the Inuit art we have purchased so far. We've bought a few things recently. A large drawing, a painting (I think), a wall hanging, and a bookmark. I forgot to ever mention that my ivory ring broke while we were on vacation. I was in a McDonalds bathroom in PEI or Nova Scotia and I swung my hand too fast and the ring fell off and broke into a few pieces. Jeff's dad was able to glue it back together but I haven't worn it since, out of fear it'll break again.

Anyway, Thanksgiving. We were invited to dinner at a friend's place last Sunday. The food was amazing. I don't think I could ever complain if wine and lamb are involved! Of course, the company was excellent too. We're lucky to have such cool friends here. That's the major difference in our lives here since last year. I'm pretty sure that Thanksgiving was the first time we went out (socially) last year, and we had been in Rankin for two and-a-half months by then. I could be forgetting something, but I'm pretty sure it was the first. After that, we didn't really make any friends until December and things have been great since then. Last year it never really occurred to me that I should be making friends to hang out with. I was friends with people, but we just didn't hang out. Now I can't imagine going back to that. One of the interesting things about living here is that if you're hanging out with a group of friends, usually the provinces and territories of Canada are pretty well represented. However, we have met far fewer Ontarians than I originally thought we would. For the most populated province in Canada, I only know a handful of Ontarians here. I actually once met someone who was living in our hometown (Sarnia) before he moved here. It was at work and I needed to see his driver's license and boy was I shocked when I saw "Sarnia" on it.

This week marked an interesting (albeit sad) "milestone" for our blog. Someone who read our blog last year while preparing to move to Rankin has moved on to another job outside of Nunavut. If you're reading this Mike, we wish you the best of luck! :) You taught me to stop replying with, "ME?" when someone asks me a question about myself, haha.

For the time being, I have removed my email address from our blog as I have had zero motivation to answer questions lately. I sincerely apologize if you have sent me an email and I haven't replied. I always procrastinate replying until I am in the mood, but I am still waiting to get in the mood and I'm not sure if it's going to happen for awhile.

The last thing I have to say is that I am in the process of learning Inuktitut. Inuktitut qaujisaqtunga. I don't know if that was correct, but if it was, it was supposed to mean, "I am working at discovering Inuktitut." Jeff brought home a CD-ROM that teaches the structure of Inuktitut and I am trying to learn as much as possible. It's a very thorough, lengthy, informative CD-ROM. I am not even half-way through and I have learned quite a bit. I am so excited to keep working on it. Learning Inuktitut is pretty much the most practical thing you can do here and I would absolutely love to be able to understand it enough to listen to elders tell stories about their lives.

*If that was correct and blog actually has no Inuktitut translation, it meant, "I am writing in a blog." I don't know the word for "my" yet.

(posted by Jaime)