Robert (left) demonstrates Inuit Games with fellow Participant James during a presentation at Algonquin College. (Photo Credit: Thorsten Gohl)

Hi my name is Robert Isluanik, I’m from Arviat, NU.

During Orientation I met a lot of participants from other communities in Nunavut and Northwest Territories. We went to go see the Ottawa Champions baseball game which was fun to do again this year. That took place during our orientation week at Macksimming. We did fun activities at orientation like nature walk, team building activities, Let’s Talk Science, and jeopardy.

We ate our last orientation dinner at Boston Pizza, I had some delicious pizza there. After orientation camp, we moved into Algonquin residence. I like my roommate James a lot because we mostly speak Inuktitut to each other because I don’t usually speak a lot of English.

Soon after we moved in we started our construction trades class. We have built picture frames and animal housing structures. I’m really enjoying construction class because I really want to become a carpenter. I’m on a team with Chris and Justina building our house. My favourite tool to use is the table saw. Few days later, after we settled here in Algonquin, we went to camping at Fitzroy provincial park, we were having so much fun there, we went to beach, played some sports, talked about ghost stories. We had a great weekend there.

My favourite part of the program right now was going to the movie theatres and carpentry class. In the theatre we saw the Purge movie. It was a little bit scary but I was okay sleeping at night still. This program is fun because I get to see my Arviat friends and my uncle and my host parents from my Canadian Phase last year too at Parliament Hill.