Hey, my name is Destiny Beaulieu but I go by Des. I live in Inuvik, NT, but I grew up in Fort Smith, NT.  I did my Canadian Phase in 2017. It was so much fun and I knew that I wanted to go for Northern Youth Abroad’s other programs. So I did. I applied in 2018 but I didn’t go that year.  

I am in Ottawa at Algonquin College for the NEXT program and I’m really enjoying it. One of the things that I like most out of all of the activities we’ve been doing is the cross-cultural learning we do.  It’s an opportunity to experience both Dene and Inuit culture.  My dad was Dene and I used to be a lot more involved with his culture than I am now.   

We have been doing a construction class here at the college.  I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy it or not, but it’s pretty cool.  Our projects are to make a picture frame and a small picnic table. I am almost finished my picnic table and it’s the cutest thing, I love it.

We have gone to the BoardGame Cafe twice now, and It’s great.  So far we’ve played Pictionary, Sorry, and Cards Against Humanity. We also got to try fried cauliflower, which, for me, was delicious. 

Last week, we split into two groups to tour either Nunavut Sivuniksavut(NS) or Carleton University. I went with the NS group because why not? I already toured Carleton once in my Canadian year. The tour is great, the campus is a lot smaller than I expected but it’s more intimate that way. It seems like a long term version of NEXT to me, with the way they described it. 

After the tour, we had the choice to either go back to campus, or stay downtown and do whatever for a couple hours with a buddy. One of the rules here for NEXT is that, whenever you leave the residence building, you must let a leader know and have a buddy with you at all times.   We accidentally broke that rule. So there were five other participants with me to go home so we were waiting for the bus. Three come up at once, the first one wasn’t going to the college so we headed for the second one, which did. At this point, we were getting a little separated but mostly still in a  group. We, at the front, see that the last bus was a double decker so we were like ‘hey thats cool lets check if it goes to the college’.  It did, and five of us got onto the bus.  We noticed that one of us weren’t with us and tried to hold the door to try to see where our friend was in the crowd but the driver told us we either get on or off. We decide to message our Project Leader in hopes that he could go check to see if she was still at the bus stop in case she didn’t get on. About 20 minutes later, we get to our stop and our friend is there.  We laugh about it now because she got back safely and was okay, but it shows us why learning how to get back safely on your own/with a buddy is important.

Thanks for reading my blog!