Things I learned today

For some reason my classroom often turns into drop in and hang out central. Two of the custodians regularly stop by when they're picking up the garbage to shoot the breeze. A member of the school board also drops in sometimes to sit down and tell me about life in The Village. I don't know why this is. I think it looks like I'm not working because I spend a lot of time working on paperwork on the computer (the life of a special ed teacher). Today I even had a student in my room trying to get a writing assignment done when someone came by to chat. It's nice to talk to these folks and I often learn interesting stuff but I'm trying to get my work done in a reasonable amount of time. You know?

I've had two visits today - one of the custodians and the school board member - and I see now that the other custodian is vacuuming my side of the building. I'm to finish this up quick so I can get some more work done before the chatting starts up again.

What I learned today:

- you can "call" for seal by scraping a shovel on the ice. This apparently mimics the sound seals sometimes make.

- you can trap lots of fish by going to a hole in the ice and sinking a 5 sided trap (a cube with the top removed). You put a tarp over the hole to block the light. Wait a while so the fish return. Remove the tarp and fish swim away from the light and into the trap. Pull the trap up.

- in bad weather use pieces of wood to point in the direction of the place you're heading in case you get lost on the tundra and have to turn back. This is supposed to be useful since we don't have trees to mark the way. I'm not sure where you're supposed to get the wood from though.

- you can also use chew to mark your way. Just spit on the ground every once in a while and then use the black marks on the ground to trace your steps

- you can give directions by iceberg: "Go past three icebergs then turn left." I'm not kidding.