Aye my name is Ethan Tutcho, I am 17 years old, graduated from school, here for the next program, and I am from Norman Wells NWT. My experience here was a good time, first, we started at the orientation at McSkimming area meeting all the other participants and getting prepared for the summer and it was a great time. Meeting new friends, having new assignments (which is pretty boring for me) and doing the activities. We did it for a whole week.

When the Canadian participants left to their placements we and the International stayed behind and cleaned up for the participants and got prepared for the summer on Thursday afternoon, later that night we had dinner at Boston Pizza with the international group since it will be our last dinner with them. On Friday we arrived here at Algonquin college where we would stay for the summer, we got settled in, but we said our last goodbyes to the international group before they left to Costa Rica.

We had the weekend to talk about what we are going to do for the summer, then on Tuesday we started our first class of construction, ain’t gonna lie I like our teacher for the construction class. We started out making picture frames, it was pretty fun building stuff which made me realize that I really like construction, so I had a great time being in the class. Now we are about to start working on our mini picnic tables that we get to bring home and I am planning to put it at the local park in Norman Wells for the youth.

We did some presentation of our NWT and Nunavut’s culture to the kids and showed them and the staff some of the traditional games, they had a great time playing the games. During the weekend of July 13, we went to downtown Ottawa walked around to get the taste of the city, to prepare ourselves for the city when we go on our own, we killed it, later on we went to the movies to watch either Annabel returns home or toy story 4 and then I chose toy story 4. It was a great movie.

On Sunday, July 14 we were able to go on our own to the city to check it out, me and Owen went to check out the mall, then we wanted to check a little store we wanted to see the day before, and the clothing was nice, but the gold chains and watches were fake.

My summary of my experience in Ottawa, I am having a great time being here and I am thankful that I took this opportunity to go on this trip, and I am excited of what comes next later on in the summer.