48 Hours

It's bingo night again, and further to my posting of a week ago, the big prize still hasn't been won so tonight's pay out could be close to $30,000! Someone's going to have a happy Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, we're in the middle of a very exciting/nerve-racking 48 hours at the moment. Yesterday was graduation day at Nunavimmi Pigiursavik (my school); we tend to have two graduation ceremonies during the year, one at Christmas and one in the summer, as the courses we offer all start at different times and have different requirements in their hours of study. Yours truly was asked to M.C. the event - it's the third time I've 'hosted' - and if Hugh Jackman can't make the Oscars for some reason, I'd be only too happy to stand in for him.

Today was my last day with the students, and I spent most of it playing 'Copter', an inordinately frustrating yet addictive online game. One of my class introduced it to me, and I guess this was the modern equivalent of when you were allowed to bring in toys and games on the last day of school. This was always the highlight of the year, and nearly always ended in tears when someone's prized toy was trodden on resulting in the teacher having to call everything to a halt with a cry of "well now you've spoiled it for everyone, haven't you?"

Having spent most of the afternoon crashing my aircraft into the rocks, thoughts now turn to my flight home tomorrow; thinking about it, playing 'Copter' probably wasn't the best preparation for my flight, was it? Much like the way I made my friend Kevin watch the film 'Alive' the night before coming on our old school's ski trip probably wasn't the best preparation either.

I'm meant to be flying from Inukjuak at 1.45 pm tomorrow, spending the night at Montreal airport - I've already booked the comfy sofa opposite Tim Horton's - then catching a flight to Kingston via Toronto very early on Saturday morning. For those of you who know your Canadian geography this route makes no sense, but there you go. I say meant to be flying though, because the local forecast for tomorrow afternoon is not the best, and it's going to be a nervy few hours ahead as we watch the weather. A snow day is normally cause for celebration, but not when you're scheduled to be flying home for the first time in nearly four months.

So hopefully my next post will come to you from Gananoque, but I don't want to tempt fate and face waiting for Another 48 Hours, because that really wasn't a good film...

Eyes down...

Thursday night is bingo night in town, and tonight's prize for a full house is $24,000. That's right, twenty-four thousand dollars. Apparently no-one has won the jackpot for a few weeks now, and the money has been rolling over. The weekly bingo game is huge here, as you can imagine with such prizes, and the way it's played is quite unique. Not that anything can be quite unique, but we'll leave that discussion for another time.

To play, you buy your card(s) from the local store, then tune into the radio (or the FM, to use the colloquialism for local radio here) on Thursday evening and let the games begin. I tried playing once, but as my grasp of Inuktitut is tenuous verging on the non-existent, it was quite a harrowing exercise: "What did they say? What was that? Was that a number? Please slow down!"

Anyway, I shall endeavour to find out tomorrow whether anybody won or not; shouldn't be too difficult - it'll be the person with all the new friends.