Hello my name is Seth Franki and I am 17 years old from the capital city of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife with the population of 19,569 people. I am very grateful to be a participate of 2017 Northern Youth Abroad Canadian program. This program has taught me many things about myself and surroundings, like working with children age’s 5-10 years old, being a young adult living away from my home community and family has taught me how to be an independent youth worker. I love to travel because it’s a great experience.
I was placed in Squamish, British Columbia which is an amazing place to be placed because there are lots of out-door activities like rock-climbing, hiking, mountain biking, sky-diving, white-water rafting, wind & kite surfing, heli & flight seeing, golf, stand-up paddling, kayaking, boating, sailing, fishing, canoeing, horse-back riding, scuba diving, snorkeling, nordic skiing, back country skiing and boarding, snowmobiling, tubing, tobogganing, eagle viewing, farmers market. I’m working at Ecole Squamish Elementary school day-care, Assistant worker. My duties are taking care, watching over the children, head counting, making sure the group of 20 kids stays safe, and together.
The population of Squamish is 19,512 people. Theres only a few months of winter and in the summer it gets very hot with the average weather temperature at 24°C/75°F in July and 2.9°C/37°F in January.
There are a lot of wild animals, that come behind my host family’s house including a family of 5 raccoons that come by, play around, and eat.
My host family Justin and Ken parry and very nice and out going folks. Ken likes to go on long mountain hikes, and Justin has multiple jobs for school which is cool cause I never seen someone work many jobs for school.
The best part of my placement was that I got to travel from home as I have never travelled this far before.
On the first couple of days here in Squamish me and my buddy Dallas Sassie walked 6-7 km to downtown, to get used to Squamish and it was such a nice and hot sunny day. Our host family is up in Garibaldi Highlands, uptown and we walked all the way downtown which was good as it gave me and Dallas a chance to talk about the things we have in common.
Next year I’m hoping on joining NYA again for their international program because I have never been out of Canada before. I recommend being in Squamish, BC for those who are gonna be joining next year because it’s beautiful and amazing with lots of culture, events, views, and great weather.
