What I say

Dear everyone,

I apologize in advance for the length and scattered nature of this
email, it's just that the months since Christmas have been both long
and scattered as well. Read it in multiple sitting if you like or, if
you are lazy and want the whole thing summed up in a few sentences,
skip to the end for the PS.

The months since Christmas have gone slowly. We went through the
three seasons of Fox Lake. There's the winter season, when it's too
cold to go outside, the thawing season, when it's too muddy to go
outside and the spring/summer season when there are too many bugs to
go outside. The spring/summer season has been the worst by far. I'm
sure you've heard tales of the mosquitos of the north. Well they are
all true. Ang and I had been running outside for a few weeks before
the mosquitos came out and got serious but not since. The one time I
ran when the mosquitos were out, I lost my nerve after 15 minutes and
went back home. In that time, 3 mosquitos flew into my mouth and I
got over 10 bites on my legs. The mosquitos have been ruling the
outside for the past two months. Last week when we were walking to
another teacher's place, a one minute walk, Ang counted 15 of them on
the back of my sweatshirt. Every time we walk back to our place, a
swarm follows us inside and we spend the next 20 minutes hunting,
killing and maiming. One of the high points of my year was when I
killed two with one smack of the wall. I did a dance of celebration.

Our social circle has changed since Christmas. The new teacher posse
broke into two groups. To explain it simply, there are two kinds of
people in the world, those who break into harmonized versions of
do-wop songs in public places and those who don't. We don't. Along
with another couple, Chris and Nikki, we started hanging out with a
group of teacher's who have been around a while and limit their
singing to karaoke stages and showers. We're more about playing cards
and laughing at each other than, say, planning elaborate dinner
parties with complementing dishes coming from each attendee. We
started spending our Friday nights with Dennette, Cheryl, Angus, and
Paul. Cheryl and Dennette are both from Cape Breton, Angus is from
Newfoundland and Paul grew up in Canada but was born in Ireland. From
them we've learned what a 'bun of bread' is and what it means to be
'half in the bag'. Wacky easterners. This group found it better to
just shake our heads and laugh at the craziness of this place rather
than get angry about it. Venting to this group every week about the
goings on in the school was a big help to Ang's sanity.

The social transition took some time, so for January and part of
February I didn't have a lot of social contact. For a while, the high
social point of my day was saying "see you guys later" to a couple of
teachers who did yoga in the gym. I would go over to the school each
day at 3:00 to shoot hoops while Ang ran laps of the gym. The
treadmill was, of course, broken and there was still 2 feet of snow on
the ground so this was the only way to go for a run. Also, the
teacher's had to stay at the school until 4. Ang usually had very
little work to do during this time so we figured it was a good time to
get a workout. A couple other teachers joined us and would run laps
of the gym between 3 and 4. That didn't last long. At a staff
meeting, it was announced that "the hour after school is not a time
for teachers to be exercising". No mention was made of the teachers
who spend the hour sitting in the staff room smoking.

Since Christmas, I have been out of Fox Lake for a total of four days.
We drove out for the teacher's conference in Edmonton. We also went
out on a day trip to High Level to get groceries. We got to cross the
Peace river ice bridge four times, it wasn't quite as scary as the
smaller, water covered Wabasca ice bridge but I always feel very
relieved when we get back onto land. Especially after a guy who was
working on the big job that was bringing power lines across to Fox
Lake went through the ice in a large vehicle and died.

A number of teachers put together a pamphlet with pictures and
descriptions of Fox Lake that was handed out to teachers interested in
applying for the vacant teaching positions. I have not seen this
pamphlet, but I can assure you, it is all lies. Check that, it might
not be lies but rather excellent spin. "Enjoy our pavement free
roads!" or "Due to neglect and malnutrition, your class is guaranteed
to have zero fat kids!" or perhaps "You'll love our 3rd world fantasy
camp game that lasts the whole year!" must be the kind of things they
are saying. Aside from saving money and possibly fleeing the
authorities, there are no benefits to living in Fox Lake. Angie and I
have tried to make the best of it but like many before us and surely
many after us, we discovered that the best of Fox Lake really sucks.

I reported back in September that there was a rape here in town. A
nurse was raped at gunpoint in her house. This was in newspapers all
over Alberta because, I am told, it was a white woman. The rapist
turned himself in to the police the next day and he was taken away to
jail. But not for long. Just before Christmas, that's just over 3
months he was back in town. No one alerted the teachers he was coming
back, (and considering there are 6 female teachers living alone that
might have been wise) but the news got to most everyone via the gossip
line. But back he was, apparently under house arrest. Now I am sure
in most places house arrest would mean the person was confined to
their house. But I just don't see that happening here.

As the year rolled along, Ang and I became more aware that many of the
awful things that happen here are deliberately kept from the teachers'
ears. I can only assume this is so they don't all run for their lives
and leave the school unmanned. Furthermore, the powers that be in the
community must not want the stories to escape Fox Lake or for fear
that they will be unable to fill the vacancies left by teachers that
do run for their lives. A classic example of this is the bomb
threat/hostage taking that happened just before spring break. I have
pieced together details of this event from various sources and I'm
sure I don't have it completely right but it's close enough that
you'll get a sense of what happened. The plumber of Fox Lake, Sammy,
had his brother visiting him. His brother stayed up all night
drinking and possibly 'doing drugs'. Early in the morning, he
contacted someone in Fox Lake, possibly the tribal police, to announce
that he had a bomb and a gun and that he was going to blow up the
house. This house is very central, across the street from the
Northern Store and on the main road about 1km from the school. Now
Sammy and his children were sleeping in the house while this was going
on. The police phoned back and woke Sammy up. I imagine it would be
a bit odd to call back a crazed bomber and discover there are people
in the house who are sleeping and have no clue what's going on. At
any rate, the cops bring Sammy up to speed and he gets himself and his
family safely out of the house. Around 7:30 or so, the school's
administration start calling teachers to tell them there is no school.
Now usually when school is cancelled, and it happened a lot this
year, we are told why it is happening. The water is off, the power is
off, someone passed away, whatever. On this day though, no reason is
given. The female teachers who live alone are told "There's no school
today, everything is fine, lock your door and don't go outside".
Confused Female Teacher: "Why? what's going on?" Administrator: "Oh
nothing, everything is fine here, situation normal. Just don't go
outside or open your door for anyone. Bye now!" Great. Because I'd
been downloading music overnight, we didn't get the phone call (yes
yes, I know, everyone who's tried to call us ever is shaking their
fist in anger right now, I accept the blame for always tying up the
phone line). So Ang gets ready to go to school but when she opens the
door to leave, some other teachers are there packing up their car.
They bring us up to speed on the situation, though they go a bit
overboard "He's got a bomb and an arsenal of assault weapons and a
bazooka! He has hostages and probably rips the tags off mattresses!"
The story got out because it was the day before spring break and
teachers figured if there was no school, they could head out. I guess
the administration had to warn them not to drive past the house or gas
up at the store. We turn on the news to see if word of Fox Lake's
bomb threat/armed standoff has made it to the outside world. It
hadn't. Ang called the school to speak to an administrator to get the
official word. He was very casual about it, downplaying the
seriousness of it all. He assured us there were no hostages but the
guy claimed to have a gun and bomb. I go on the web and still there's
no mention of it anywhere. At this point I decided to alert the
media; partly because it seemed like a newsworthy event and partly
because I've always wanted to alert the media. Ang and I decided to
only do it if it can be done anonymously because this is the kind of
thing teachers get fired for round these parts. So I called the CBC
news desk in Edmonton. No answer. Ok, well, it was before 9am
still, maybe they only take calls after 9. I called again at 9:15.
Still no answer. Great work CBC. Way to be on the ball there.
Finally I called the Edmonton Journal's news desk. They answered the
phone and took down the details of what was going on. I didn't have
the number for the cops here, but I gave them the school's number.
After that not much happened, sometime in the late afternoon the guy
surrendered or was shot and arrested, reports vary. Two planeloads of
cops of various specialties were flown in, a bomb squad and a swat
team I'm told. Sources say he didn't have a gun at all and his bomb
was just a gas can with a rag. Other sources say he was threatening
the police outside that he had bombs planted all over town. That's a
scary thought because we live about 100 yards from 3 propane tanks
that are longer than our trailer. Other sources still say that he was
making a bomb out of things in the house and that he dismantled
Sammy's Xbox for parts.

Because it was spring break most of the teachers were gone to nicer
places. The handful of us that remained gathered for a potluck
dinner. No one mentioned the bomb threat that had happened just two
days before for 3 hours, and then only in a hesitant "don't hit me!"
kind of way. One of the administrators was the host and explained
their reluctance to warn people when they called with this
justification: "we didn't want people going down there and getting in
the cops way, that's the last thing they need is people rubbernecking
while they are trying to take care of things" Uh huh, that sounds
like what all the teachers would have done if you said a guy with a
bomb and guns was holed up in his place. I know my first thoughts
were "A bomb!? cool! let's run down there and interfere with the
police!" She went on to say that "someone leaked the story to the
Edmonton Journal, can you believe that? Who would do that?" Because
I wanted to preserve Angie's job here I just frowned and shook my head
thoughtfully along with the rest of the room. To this date we haven't
told anyone I called the paper but now that Ang has a job elsewhere
and the year is almost over I figure it can't do much harm. The story
showed up deep in the pages of The Edmonton Journal and even made The
National the next night. For a first time alerting the media I think
it went pretty well, no thanks to the CBC.

That was the one and only bomb threat of the year, but it was not the
only time the school was closed. Oh no. There should have been
roughly 195 school days this year. JBS School was in session for 153.
Most of the cancelled school days were due to deaths in the
community. The second most common reason was the water being off. I
would guess the school was closed for 15 days because of the water
being off for part of the day or for a number of days in a row.
Naturally, if the water had to be turned off to fix something, it was
done on the weekends. The longest stretch with no running water was
three and a half days. I wouldn't have minded these stretches as much
had we been given some warning. One time is was off for 8 hours and
they warned us it was coming but that was the only time a heads up was
given. If you know it's coming, you fill up your bathtub and all your
empty milk jugs so you can flush the toilet and do dishes while the
shutoff goes on. If you don't have a chance to stock up, it gets
pretty rough after a couple days. Again, the reasons are rarely
relayed to the teaching staff but the stories usually get around. On
one occasion, a woman, (one of the Chief's daughters) took out the
fire hydrant in the school yard with her car. She was, of course,
drunk and she faced, of course, no consequences. This knocked off the
water for the teacherages for almost 2 days. Just a week after, the
water went off for no apparent reason. After causing two days of
school to be cancelled, a water expert guy was brought in from the
outside to check things out. When he got to the water plant, at noon
on a Friday, he found the guy in charge of the water and the foreman
in charge of all public works drunk and still drinking. In fixing the
water system on this occasion they had to dig up pipes near some
teachers' trailers. Whoever was operating the digger knocked out the
phone lines so 2/3 of the teachers had no water or phone for the next
day. Most of the time, the places they were working on the water
system were visible from our trailer. The work crew usually showed up
at the crack of 11:30am and called it a day at 4pm. It's hard to keep
one's rage suppressed when these kinds of things cause you to be
without water for extended periods. I got a portion of revenge by
making all my #2 bathroom stops at the school. None of which can
boast the necessary trifecta of a working door, an attached seat and a
supply of toilet paper. It would have been a more satisfying revenge
if anyone ever cleaned the bathrooms.

Jean Baptiste Sewepagaham school constantly finds new ways to baffle
me. Teachers that go there everyday and try to teach these kids are
heroes, there's no two ways about it. Every student is ESL. Many
students come to school exhausted and sleep for hours at their desks.
The administration is not supportive of the teachers. There are no
consequences handed out by the office for anything it seems. Imagine,
if you will, what would happen if the following events transpired when
you were in Jr. High. Two big, aggressive students forcibly take away
a smaller, passive student's sweatshirt. They rip it up, drag it
through mud puddles and jump on it. They then give it back to the
passive student and laugh at him. Other students witness this and
report the incident to a teacher who reports it to the office. In my
school, that would almost certainly have been a suspension for both of
the bullies, their parents would be contacted, they would have to pay
for a new sweatshirt and there might be some meetings with the
principal before they are allowed back in the school. But that's not
how things are done here in Fox Lake. This is the Vice Principal's
explanation to Angie of the consequences handed out. "The two boys
were just goofing around, they promised they wouldn't do it again.
They were very honest about what happened so I don't think we need to
involve anyone's parents. We agreed they would replace the damaged
sweatshirt by buying a new one or giving one of their own." The
bullied kid now has no sweatshirt AND he's instructed by the Vice
Principal not to tell his parents what happened. This is a regular
occurrence. A student will misbehave to the point that they must go
to the office. The Vice Principal says "oh that's odd, I know this
student, I had dinner with her parents a while ago and she was very
well behaved then" and nothing is done. Brilliant. The Principal, the
infamous Bill who I introduced a couple emails back, does nothing.
Well, not quite nothing, but almost nothing. He spent 3 days in the
fall colouring in a map of the town. He has a master's degree from
UBC, is the principal of a school and he spends 3 days colouring.
More recently, he spent almost 3 hours taping up decorations in the
gym. My understanding was that principals were busy people,
especially toward the end of the year. Well even if that is the case
Bill doesn't let it affect him. Some people have sincerely questioned
his mental health. To give you a comparison, he's a lot like Milton
from Office Space but not as driven or organized. One day he was seen
walking the halls, alone, slowly flapping his arms like a chicken.

There are, of course, some teachers who might be better off in another
line of work as well. The legend of the grade 8B homeroom teacher
and Jr. High math teacher, who we will call Clem, will live in the nightmares
of other residents of Fox Lake for a long time. When he was hired,
Principal Bill was impressed by all his experience; 10 different
schools in the past 10 years. This didn't set off any warning signs
that maybe he couldn't last longer than that at a school. Hindsight
is always 20/20 I guess. There are many good Clem stories...

Paul, the Jr. High Social Studies teacher was teaching a class when
Clem knocked on his door. This was odd because Clem had a class at
that time too. He asks Paul, "Do you know how to divide fractions?"
Clearly Clem was supposed to be teaching the students how to do it
but couldn't as he had no idea how to himself. I learned how to
divide fractions in Grade 6. And even if Clem had forgotten how, he
could have made a lesson plan and rediscovered the wonders of flipping
the divisor fraction and multiplying.

Two teachers, Paul and Allen had Clem ask them how to get a
percentage out of a raw score. For example, he had test scores like
35/42 and 18/42 and he had no idea how to turn these scores into a
percentage. And keep in mind he's been teaching math for 30 years and
has a program on his computer that should do this calculation for him.
Clem was not invited to renew his contract at JBS school. The way
the school goes about renewing contracts is a story in itself that I
will get to shortly. However, Clem was not happy about not being
invited to renew his contract. The weekend after he found out, he was
at the nursing station and someone asked him if he was coming back or
not. This is a very common question for teachers to be asked around
that time of year. Clem went off, yelling and swearing about how
stupid the kids were and how stupid the administration was and what a
horrible place this was and so on. Now it's one thing to email your
relatives and friends about these things, but it's quite another to
yell them out in the community, punctuated with curses while the chief
happens to be nearby. Clem was fired the next day and given one week
to leave Fox Lake.

The TAs in the school are a crack squad of savvy, motivated personnel.
Though there are a few exceptions, the majority of the
para-professional staff does nothing. The librarian has been with the
school for 35 years but has yet to get the novels or children's books
into alphabetical order. Nor are the reference books arranged as
Melvil Dewey would want them to be. Nor has she found the time in her
35 years of devoted service (for which she was given a lamp at a
ceremony this year) to put the novels, children's books, and reference
books onto their own shelves, preferring to leave them in a chaotic
mash. She is very good at drinking coffee. I know my Mom would have
cringed, as I did, at the sign she posted on the library door "Please
take off shoe's". A librarian that misuses apostrophes!!?? There
should be a law. Anyway, the teachers that have TAs that do nothing
eventually learn to accept it. They don't count on their TA being in
their class or doing anything they are asked to do. Some of the TAs
have been hanging out in the staff room for so long that no one can
even remember who's class they are avoiding working in. The other
day, Dennette, one of the heroes of the school, asked one of these
staff room fixtures to watch her class for 20 minutes while she took a
quick break to eat some lunch. (The entire elementary staff was
without breaks or 'preps' for the last week for a number of
complicated but truly JBS school reasons) When she came back, 15
minutes later, he was back in the staff room. "The kids wouldn't
listen to me so I left". One of the TAs is actually worse than the
ones that do nothing. He disrupts classes and will start joking and
wrestling with the kids. Even during silent reading time. This guy
started off the year in Nikki Galenza's class. He often told her that
she didn't know how to teach. He would even take it upon himself to
advise the administration on how to deal with the kids in her class.
Cleary, he wasn't working out as a TA. So they made him the full time
PE teacher. Brilliant. He usually showed up at school after 9:30
(school starts at 9:00 and teachers are supposed to be there no later
than 8:30). He would also leave randomly throughout the day. His
philosophy for Physical Education was "open up the equipment room at
the start of the day and maybe close it at the end of the day". I am
told he was very skilled at unlocking the equipment room door and
keeping it propped open with some piece of equipment. Amazingly, he
has all of these skills even though he didn't finish high school.
During this year, this guy, let's call him Kevin, got engaged.
Because of his impending wedding, he missed many days of school. Of
course, he never warned the school and sometimes the equipment room
door didn't get opened at all. Now from time to time, bingos are held
at the school. They are always a part of some kind of fundraising
effort. Well Kevin had the following brainstorm. Weddings cost
money. Bingos bring in money. Bingos happen in the gym. I'm the gym
teacher, therefore I have keys to the gym. Hence, I can hold a bingo
to raise money for my wedding. And he did exactly that. Less than a
week after this illegal money making scheme, he rolled into town in a
brand new truck. Just the kind of guy I'd want educating my children.

Ok, so the school has incompetent administrators, the odd inept
teacher, and do-nothing TAs. How about ridiculous wastes of money?
At Jean Baptiste Sewepagaham School, they've got that too. This is exactly what you think it
is, an unassembled playground. It's been sitting in this spot, which
is not on school grounds, but rather behind the public works building,
for over a year. No one seems to know why it wasn't put together when
it arrived. It cost Canadian taxpayers no less than $60,000. People
who were here last year tell me that a good percentage of the pieces
are gone. A work party was planned for May to finally set it up on
school grounds but someone must have realized that too many pieces
were missing so the work party didn't happen. It will probably be
where it is for a very long time. Another instance of foolish
spending is one all you computer science folks will appreciate. Last
year, the school bought 50 new computers. They are Celeron 2.4Ghz
machines running Windows XP. They only have 128 megs of RAM. For all
of you who aren't filled with rage by this, imagine buying a car and
trying to save money by only getting a 4hp engine. All the teachers
complain about their computers being slow but they are brand new and
probably cost over $1000 each.

The tragic and depressing stories about the students and their
families seem to be endless here in Fox Lake. One of Ang's students,
a 15 year old girl in grade 7, is part of a particularly troubling
story. She is in foster care for reasons that will soon be very
clear. One day, her real mother picked her up from her foster home
and took her out partying. She ended up in hospital with severe
alcohol poisoning. This was not her first time in the hospital for
this reason. The doctor in emergency warned her that if she was to
drink that excessively again she could die. The day after she was
released from hospital, her sister picked her up and took her out
drinking. She had a stroke. All Ang has been told is that she 'won't
be back to school this year' so we don't know what became of her.

I could easily go on and on with pages of depressing tales but I
really try not to think about them. It's so hard to see so many
children who will never get an education because of the setting they
are being brought up in. So many alcoholic and abusive and neglectful
parents. Parents that do not see the point in attending school and
need to be bribed into registering their kids each September. I quote
the following directly from a letter sent home to all parents by the
Vice Principal. "Over the years, we have not done enough to recognize
the parents/guardians who have made a significant contribution towards
JBS and students. In an effort to acknowledge these
parents/guardians, to increase students' attendance and to provide
students with a more positive formal educational experience, we are
proposing to have a mega-bingo with a grand prize of an All Terrain
Vehicle (Quad). To be eligible to win the Quad, each parent/guardian
will receive one bingo card for each one of their children that is
listed on JBS School Nominal Roll. As everyone is aware and all
educational research indicates, students regular attendance at school
will greatly contribute and enhance their academic success." Three
quarters of this letter is devoted to encouraging parents to register
their children and explaining how much attendance is required for the
school to get money for the students. At awards day, medals were
given to any students who had 80% or better attendance. One of the
teachers made a good point when he said that anywhere else in Canada,
if a kid only has 80% attendance in elementary school, Child and
Family Services is going to come knocking on their door and have some
questions for their parents. Angie estimates her grade 7 class had
about 55% attendance for the year. Factoring in the many days the
school was closed, this means that the average grade 7 student was at
school for roughly 80 days, which is 110 less than they should have
been.

In listening to various teachers' stories of their classroom's
adventures and, more recently, in perusing the school's yearbook, I
have learned that some of the students have hilarious names. I had
planned to put in a Top Ten list of funny male and female names in
this email. Then I started to notice that many of the unusual names,
when considered with the age of the child, could be explained. For
example, there are two students named Kirby. One is in grade 9 and
one in grade 10. I have only heard of one other Kirby in my life and
that is former Twins centerfielder Kirby Puckett. These kids are both
16 or 17. That means they were born at the peak of Kirby Puckett's
career, when he was winning gold gloves, silver slugger awards,
batting titles and twice came 3rd in AL MVP voting. Coincidence?
Another child, who will be starting kindergarten next year, has the
unlikely name of Jinx. Funny enough name for a boy, but where have
you heard that name recently? That's right, the cat from Meet the
Parents and Meet the Fockers was named Jinx. Meet the Parents was
released in 2000 which is the year Fox Lake's Jinx was born.
Coincidence? In grade 3 there is a student named Evander. He is 9.
That means he was born at the peak of Evander "The Real Deal"
Holyfield's career. 1996 being the year that he captured the
heavyweight title for the third time. Coincidence? Lastly Denver,
also in Grade 3, is also 9. Denver was born right at the height of
the Denver Broncos' successes. (They won Superbowls in '96 and '97)
Coincidence? I don't think any of those are. There are some names
that I hoped would match up with their pop culture connections but the
timing was off. Duran (Denver's brother), for example, was born well
after British pop band Duran Duran had faded from the spotlight. And
Forrest was born two years after Forrest Gump was released. It is
possible he was named just after the movie won all those academy
awards but it seems like a stretch. Some families have patterns of
names that crack me up, one set of brothers:
Steveroy
Billyroy
Jayroy
Delroy
Killroy
Jason Arnott
No, I didn't make that last one up. I guess the parents ran out of
names that go well with 'roy'. There is also a set of sisters:
Calinda
Melinda
Delinda
Belinda
One of my faves is the pair of sisters Dawn and LaDawn. Not to
mention the twin brother and sister duo Cordell and Coral. And then
some names are just funny all by themselves. The aforementioned Jinx
has an older brother named Geronimo. And, keeping in mind the school
is 100% Native and 0% Hispanic, there are 2 boys named Fernandez and 1
named Rico. The other male names that I get a kick out of are: Alexis
(that's right, it's a boy), Wyatt, Dathan, Delmer (brother of Duran
and Denver), John Wayne, Ramsey, Fernando ("there was something in the
air that night…"), Dolphis, Adolphis, Absolum and Savannah (that's
right, it's a boy). As for the females there are Belladonna, Yoko,
Elvira, Dallery, Dollery, Dulcey, Viola Iola, Darcella, and Rodrica.
Lastly, there was a couple here in Fox Lake, now separated, comprised
of Elvis and Priscilla.

A few other random Fox Lake stories…

As soon as the snow was gone, there were frequently small fires in the
woods around town. The local firemen get paid by the number of fires
they respond to. So, of course, they start fires in the woods so they
can go put them out and get paid.

A few years back, kids kept playing around with the fire extinguishers
at the school. They would shoot them at each other, or on the walls;
it's not like we all haven't wanted to try that out at one point or
another. The school's solution? Put every fire extinguisher in a
locked storage room where, over time, other much less life saving
items have been piled on top of them. There are two people in the
school that have a key to this room. The fire inspector came this
year and spent the day checking the school out. Nothing was done.
The fire extinguishers remain stored safely away.

One of the guys who works in the school shot two whooping cranes last
year. After some help from my brother we learned that the penalty for
killing a whooping crane is "up to $100,000 or two years in prison."

The post office here is a branch of Canada Post. Sending large
packages out of here costs more than it would other places because all
mail has to be flown out. However, the way prices are set at the post
office are very suspect. For example, Dennette had a very small
package to send out. It was about the size of a stack of 7 CDs. All
it had in it was a sleeper outfit for a baby and was going no farther
than Canada. The postal employee said it would cost $88. Dennette
complained and they dropped it to $35. She again said that was too
much so they dropped to $12. No one I asked has ever seen them set a
price with the assistance of a scale.

The last weeks here have been very exciting because we are getting
closer and closer to leaving. We've been counting down the days for
almost 3 months. The day Ang got the job in Williams Lake ranks as
the happiest day of our marriage so far and amoung the best days of my
life. The idea of another year here was a depressing thought that
hung over us like an evil swarm of mosquitos. We were all given a
sheet with pictures of the new teachers on them and my heart goes out
to them. They do not know what they are getting in to. Most everyone
on the outside has told us that a year in Fox Lake will be a great
experience. I guess I might feel that way 10 years from now when I've
suppressed memories of some of the bad times and intense boredom I had
here. I will miss living so close to people and not having to drive
or deal with crowds ever. I will miss the northern lights. I will
miss some of the people a lot.

A huge thanks to everyone on the outside who helped us through this
tough year. Some people sent us cookies or fudge or candy. Others
sent computer parts and games. Our families were especially great and
are a big part of the light at the end of the tunnel that is now
growing to a bright sunrise.

All the best


PS Even though you don't need to hear this, I have to make sure.
Don't ever come to Fox Lake. Not to visit, not to work, not for any
reason. Trust me.