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Hello, My name is Crystal Enoogoo and I am from Arctic Bay, Nunavut, and I am Participant in a Canadian program 2019. Thank you to everyone who supported the program and especially my mentor Paulette Campbell, without your support my experience with NYA wouldn’t be possible.

My host community is in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. There are many things you could easily access in St. John’s. It’s not isolated like Arctic Bay. In St. John’s, I would have to go to bus stop at 8:30 am and it would take half hour to go to my work placement and back to host parents, but I didn’t mind because it got me over my fears of learning how to use the bus alone.

All summer I volunteered at the St. John’s First Light Native Friendship Center. I worked with 10-15 kids at day camp. We mostly go to the park with swimming pool and without out the pool so we bring crafts such as sewing supplies, painting rocks or papers, coloring, key chains and bracelets. They play games, water fights, and play with instruments. I supervise kids and help the other staffs clean up and help the other staffs organize the activities. At my work placement, I learned lot of things more than I thought, like being more patient, being more flexible and open-minded, and my time management has improved a lot since orientation.

I really loved my host family I stayed with over the summer. My host mother is Erin, my host father is Kent, and the dog named Molly. They’re super fun to be around because they’re pretty open. It feels like I’m home because of they’re pretty welcoming and warm, which made the stay very comfortable.

Some of the fun things I did over the summer were: I joined the local soccer team and its 15 and under, I find it so much fun, lots of running we play every Mondays and Wednesdays. I started playing 2 weeks ago and I couldn’t get a goal.  On this last Monday I finally had a goal and my teacher/mentor was watching me with her friend and her husband. I met up with Leetia Kalluk and Paulette at the mall.  It was good to see Leetia and her boyfriend bought a new SUV the day we meet up. Dawn, Erin, and I also went to unexpected Ferry trip to Bell Island, we went to go watch whales and puffins they were lots of puffins but we didn’t see Whales but it was still fun.

Being a Participant for NYA has been a lot of fun and challenging so far. The program helped me so much my English is improving so much since I left Arctic Bay, being more open about my feelings, learning how to work as a team, learning about the city life.

What I’ll be doing with my experience with NYA when I get home. I’ll try to let the teenagers amazed about my experience with this program so that they’ll be interested in going NYA and I’m going to have presentation when I get home and its very important for our future.

Thank you for reading my Blog!

Sincerely

Crystal Enoogoo