Winter at Pok-O brings many things: snow, skiing, snow tubing, evenings spent curled up beside a wood stove, and...French Canadians!

Approximately one third of our client base comes to us from Montreal (our closest "big city") and other parts of Quebec. Although we had a few Canadian Schools in the fall, this is the time of year when they start coming with some regularity. These students are native French speakers who are learning English, and they come to Pok-O to practice.

This past week, we hosted 5th graders from the Sir Wilfrid Laurier school. These kids have been in an intensive English program since the beginning of the school year, and their hard work has certainly paid off---their English was very good. (I'm ashamed to admit that their English, after 5 months, was slightly better than my Spanish was after 5 years of studying.)

The English program at Sir Wilfrid Laurier was run for years by the legendary (at least among the Quebec English Language Learning community) Wynanne Watts. Wynanne retired last year (she serves on our Board of Directors now), so this winter we got to meet the new teacher, Marie Annick Poulit. Based on the level of English that the kids were speaking, we know that Marie is doing an excellent job!

Our program with Sir Wilfrid Laurier was three days packed with lots of activities. We did the full range of winter activities, including cross-country skiing, winter hiking, snow tubing, winter survival, and ice fishing. Below are a few pictures from ice fishing and winter survival:

In this picture, kids are using the ice auger to drill a hole for ice fishing. Because you need to both turn the auger and exert downward pressure in order to effectively use the auger, you either need to be tall, or work with a partner.

Here are some kids ice fishing. Unfortunately, we didn't catch anything on either of our early morning fishing expeditions. Fortunately, Chris had prepared something else for breakfast, so we got to eat anyway!

One of the highlights of Winter Survival is building snow shelters. Usually we build Quinzees, which are shelters that are built using loose, powdery snow. Given the weather lately, however, the snow was perfect for cutting blocks, so we built igloos instead. In the photo below, you can see the process of cutting snow blocks.

Here we are building the igloo...

Here is the finished igloo! Building a domed roof was beyond our engineering skills, so instead we built straight walls, then made a lattice with branches and topped it with more snow blocks. All in all, we were all pretty proud of our igloo!