Ice Fishing and Seal skinning

After yesterday's teacher fishing expedition, there was movie night at the school. They show movies projected onto the wall of the gym using and lcd projector. They typically show 2 movies. The first movie was Peter Pan and I caught the last bit of that. Little kids were running around and slinking around under my chair and grabbing onto my feet. I'm constantly being asked what my name is because all of the students only begin to learn English in grade 3 and I suppose that conversational English starts with "Hello What's your name"? The second movie was Scary Movie 2 and I, like most of our students, decided to give that one a pass.

Today we took the students out on the land to go fishing. This time I rode both ways on the Hamatik which is a large sled that the skidoo drags behind it. The students had a great time lying on the ice looking for fish and jigging their lines. I don't think any of them ever caught anything other than each others lures. Our hosts lit a campfire and cooked us up some hot dogs on sticks and a kind of stew prepared in tightly wrapped aluminium foil. One of the packages broke and spilled its contents onto the grate over the fire. Lisi started to rescue pieces of food as quickly as she could and flicked them onto the lichen-covered ground next to the fire. She called the students over and I had a great time videotaping the kids while they picked pieces of chicken off the ground using sticks and feeding them to each other. We all got a little sunburned. My nose is pretty red (again) despite three applications of sunscreen with spf 45 today. And it has been very overcast the entire time we've been here in Sanikiluaq. Imagine if I hadn't worn any at all.

After we returned and freshened up, it was another night at the school. Lisi had hired a hunter to go out onto the land a kill a seal. We all watched while the seal was skinned and butchered in the skin room (aptly named). I got some great video footage. She cut through the skin and then scraped the blubber away from the meat. Each of us were offered a piece of the raw liver (a delicacy meant to honour guests). And I gotta say, our students for the most part were receptive, and excited and ate their liver. I've also got some great video of them eating flesh from ribs, drinking blood, and eating brain. I even have footage of the squeamish one shyly looking over the others from outside the doorway. I tried the flesh from the rib myself and well, it tastes like...blood. But you have to expect that and seal is the stape bread and butter food of the Inuit. They eat it, use it for light, heat, games, cloths and all kinds of things. An elder explained the importance of the seal at the end of the evening.

Tomorrow is church day and I plan to spend it relaxing and hunting down some nifly inuit soapstone. Best to all.

Leslie