Busy, Busy Week!

Wow, this past week has been a very busy one!

For me, it was my first full week back in the classroom, and I was busy getting together some lesson plans, as well as catching up on things that were behind there. As well, I got a student for online English instruction; putting together those lessons has been a challenge! I know English spelling, grammar, punctuation, and all that, but how do you explain to somebody about pronunciation and accents?? We'll see how this adventure shapes up.....

Lakehead has been putting on a series of lectures and debates this year, which they called the 3i Series. We've been to a couple, but this week was a big week for them. First, on Tuesday night, they had a debate between a representative of Oil Sands Development Group,, Don Thompson, and a leading author on the movement to stop the development of them, Andrew Nikiforuk. It was a very lively debate. Thompson, of course, had a very slick presentation that was very polished. Nikiforuk had a decent presentation, but was a bit all over the place in his slides and layout. Then, when it came time to the question and answer period, their positions were reversed. Thompson didn't answer the questions very well and just had standard answers for everything. Nikiforuk had some very well thought answers, and some plain common sense ideas to back him up. All-in-all, it was a very interesting, well done debate.

Then on Wednesday came the most important 3i lecture of the whole year! The one where Thamara was part of a discussion panel that centered on Challenges in Sustainability. There were 6 professors from various disciplines that were part of the panel; each of them speaking for around 10 minutes. It was really well done presentation by the group as a whole, and naturally, Thamara was the best of the group! It was a great presentation that showed off her future research plans. Everybody in the audience was rapt with attention! The whole idea went over really well with the group that was there. There were a lot of questions and great ideas coming from people that have been involved in sustainability and conversation in the area for a long time. You could feel the hope from the audience that now, with a university in the area, maybe something positive will really begin to happen! It was definitely a great feeling!

Whew! Then on Thursday, we went to a local place to try out cross-skiing. Wow, that was a decent workout! It sure is a lot different than downhill! We had fun out there, though. It was quite cold when we were first out there, but once we were moving for a while, it was actually nice out there; both of us were warm!

Stay tuned to find out what we are up to this weekend.....it will be interesting to see how it turns out......