Life on campus

First off I’m going to introduce myself, my name is Marthajoy and I live in Pangnirtung Nunavut. Myself and another participant came to Ottawa late since our flight kept getting canceled due to the weather back home. Otherwise when we finally made it here it was at midnight and we didn’t get to meet everyone right away. We didn’t make it for the orientation, therefore I was pretty overwhelmed on my first day since everyone knew what was going on when I didn’t. But throughout the week the leaders and the staff were helping me catch up on what I had to do, and explained everything I missed. Life on campus is pretty interesting, why? Because we’re getting an idea of what it would be like if we went to college and how it would be living at the residence/dorms. At the residence you share a room with a buddy but you get your own bedroom.

What I’ve done/experienced so far

Be ready for all the things that you will do when you get here:) I got very exhausted by the end of the first week, but the leaders gave us time to rest on Sunday. On Mondays we have cooking class, and from Tuesday to Friday we have construction classes. We also did a lot of fun things in between, we had a tour at Algonquin college and Carleton university so far, but we’ll go on another tour this week at Nunavut sivuniksavut. We also went to the theater, took swimming lessons, watched the parliament light show, volunteered at the beach for HOPE volleyball, and we also visited the nature museum. We take the bus everywhere we go as a group, but there’s also a lot of stores close to the residence like the college square mall, McDonald’s, Tim hortons, and a convenience store.

What I enjoyed the most so far

I really enjoyed volunteering at the beach. We were taking down the volleyball nets. After that I got to watch a couple volleyball games and played just for fun with the other volunteers, some of them also went swimming. I’ve never experienced anything like that before, there were a lot of people, all kinds of canteens, and loud music playing everywhere. But to be honest I really miss my time alone. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it out! You’ll have tons of fun and you’ll miss your time alone at the same time. It’s a very good opportunity to learn and experience new things!