Hey everyone, my name is Laila Onalik and I am from Kimmirut, Nunavut. I recently graduated high school in June and it was an amazing feeling. Congrats to the graduates of the Class of 2018! This year I am participating in the NYA Next program. We started off at orientation at Macskimming camp where the facilitators and volunteers got us prepared for our 2-month summer journey at Algonquin College. It is such a fun experience, but also a lot of hard work which is worth it!
Last year I did my Canadian Phase with NYA and I was placed in Glencoe, Ontario. My work placement was at the ELM’s Children Centre working with toddlers and preschoolers. It was very interesting and I have gained a lot of knowledge and experience working with children. I learned that every child has their own voice, and that all children deserve to be heard and included. This year I applied for NYA Next which is similar to the Canadian Phase, except I get to live in a college dorm for 5 weeks! NYA next has given me an opportunity to experience college and city life. City life can be risky sometimes coming from a small community. There are many challenges like having to get used to all the bus stops, all the traffic, and the different faces I’m seeing. It’s fascinating and overwhelming!
I have a short funny story to share. Me and my new friend Megan decided to go to the Bayshore Mall. We went there with no problems by bus. The funny thing is when we were trying to come back to the Algonquin Residence, we kept getting off on the wrong bus stop. We were somewhat scared, but we made it back safe and ended up being late for our session. It was an amazing few hours and we were both scared but we figured it out and had fun at the same time.
We also went camping for the weekend at Fritzoy camp where we met with The Assembly of the 7th Generation (A7G). We got to meet new friends, and experienced and learned about different cultures. We went swimming at the camp and did some group activities while we were there. All in all, camping was awesome. Three weeks have gone by so fast! At times I wanted to go home, as I was homesick, but with the never ending support and encouragement I am determined to finish this and get through the other obstacles coming my way. I learned that college life can be risky, fun, and challenging. Waking myself up at 7:30am to get to my construction class at 8:00am, dealing with the humidity, and not seeing the same people all the time is actually a lot to take in. In the first week of construction class, we were working on a picture frame and then we started working on dog houses that we are building for the Humane Society SPCA. Construction classes are actually fun and easy-going. Our professor Doug is one awesome guy. He always tells us to do everything “nice and easy”. I’m so happy I got to be a part of this program once again. Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed!
Laila
