Northern Lights and a 6 year old Yogi

I cannot stop staring at the sky. I know that my last post was about the sky but I want this one to be about it as well because I saw the Northern Lights for the first time last night! At first I thought it was just some clouds laying low in the sky, but then I noticed the stars peeking through. I was in my backyard and right away I called my neighbor over to look at the sky. He also said it looked like the Northern Lights, so we drove to a spot outside town with no lights and stared at the sky for 45 minutes. The lights were breathtaking. I couldn't get any pictures because everything was so dark, but the lights were shimmering and almost dancing across the sky. There were clouds of the lights and they looked like they were alive in the sky. A couple came to the spot we were at and set up a tripod to get some long exposure shots and those caught the lights in the most amazing way.

This evening on my way to the gym, the sky was glowing yellow, orange, red and purple. The pictures cannot even do it justice.

This weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving (or Columbus Day across the border) and I made my first trek back to Montreal since June. A few friends and I left town at 3:30pm after school, and after a quick stop to drop off Lily (my puppy) to be boarded for the weekend, we went on our way to the big city. In total, it took us 10 hours to get to our destination. We were asleep at 2am! The next day I made my way to Lennoxville to visit a friend and run some errands. It was a long weekend and my friend and I enjoyed ourselves by staying in bed and watching Netflix most of the day on Sunday. After 3 solid weeks of teaching, it was a much needed lazy day. Another 10 hour drive on Monday brought us home to the North. Below is the view from my friend's balcony.

I have not updated much on Lily, but she is officially mine now! She has been spayed and vaccinated and registered with the town of Mistissini. She has grown now to 18lbs, compared to 10 lbs when I got her in August. She grows a little bit every day and even has new coloring on her legs and tail. This is such a cute picture of her, she was being silly one day when I came home for lunch!

You can really see how long her legs and paws are!

I took my students to the school library for the first time today, it was quite the experience. The students are just learning how to recognize letter sounds and some are beginning to read simple words such as "dog", "sit" and "mad". I read them a story about Halloween then gave them some free time to look at picture books. In the middle of reading, one of my students takes out a few yoga mats that were in the corner, counts the students in the room and sets the mats up in a row. He then gestures to the other students to come sit on the mats and take their shoes off. One mat is in the front and he takes a seat on that mat. The other students listened to him so well! They followed all of his yoga-like moves, from up-dog to the splits and even some stretches and kicks! The students were having such a great time, I swear they listen to each other better than they listen to me sometimes. 

Next week is the "Achieving Excellence for Indigenous Canadian Learners" Conference in Downtown Montreal. Most of the elementary school teachers will be attending the conference, which means that we leave Tuesday and come back on Friday. It will be a very short 1-day week for me next week, but I will post after the conference with more updates. 

One more day until the weekend, which is supposed to be quite cool, highs of 5C (41F) and lows of -2C (28F). I am hoping that the snow stays away at least until after Halloween, my fingers are crossed. 

Thanks for keeping up with me and Happy Friday!

~Vicki