It's Cold Here!

My number one observation thus far.

So, as of the 28th of January I am living in a town small Northern town in Quebec. There is one road into town, which is not as rustic as I was expecting at all, in fact it's paved. Because it's so close to another larger town called Chibougamau, it also has many of the amenities that I was worried about doing without! The grocery store is a little more expensive than one you'd see in a more populated area, but it's pretty reasonable. I'd been expecting things to be five times the price, but it's more like just adding 50 cents onto a loaf of bread.

My job is interesting! I work where young teens come from all over the James Bay area. The Centre is a sort of institution for troubled youth that are awaiting court dates. I teach all the essentials to students who are not overly enthused (to put it nicely...), but the daily resistance to everything educational seems to keep things lively. Some students are only there for a day, and others stay for months at a time depending on the situation.

The town is quite lovely; nice little houses arranged in a sort of suburb in literally the middle of nowhere. The town is surrounded by woods and the large lake. Our first weekend here we went for a long walk on the frozen over lake and checked out a couple of the islands. There is A LOT to explore, apparently there are quite a few little islands on the lake. I discovered new leg muscles as I trudged through the snow on the ice; but survived. Before we came here I bought a new extra-warm coat and snowpants, and by the end of the walk I was sweating, even though it was easily -20 outside. The days have been generally in the -30's area since we've been here, but pretty manageable. You know it's cold when you step outside and your nostril hairs instantly freeze. Pleasant!

Talking to one of the teachers at the highschool, we also found out that there are in fact lots of moose and caribou in the area, which is cool! I hope to see some wildlife soon! When we were driven from the Airport in Chibougamau, our taxi driver was full of interesting facts about the area, but claimed that there were no caribou in the area, which I was sad about! But the teacher claims to have seen them on a hunting trip no more than 10km outside of town. Sweet!