Sunday, January 14, 2007

Opps, Missed one







Hello everyone,
I was just sitting here triing to figure out what to blog about, when reviewing my previous posts I realized we never saw or discussed the games I went to at Christmas.
This event was held on Dec 27th by the Land Holding Corporation. It started around 7:00 with the childrens games and went until 2:00 am (or so I'm told, I took off around midnight). There were many prizes given away including 2 ski-doo's.
The first picture was of a charming little girl named Tuunu, that followed me around all night, plaing peek-a- boo and touch the new white guy, until around 11:30 when her Mom caught her. I'm not sure if her Mom though I was a wierdo for having tickle fights with her, or if she thought the girl was bothering me, but I didn't see her again after that.
The second picture was of a adult game held around 11:00 pm, where all the adults sat in a large (and ever decreasing circle). Several sets of dice worked there way around the circle and a caller announded which number would be eliminated. You roll the number, you leave the circle. It started with about 400 people and lasted about twenty minutes "till there was one".
The third picture is of two little guys who found it to be great fun to pretend they were frogs and hop towards the new Kabloona till he could get close enough to tickle them, then they would run away and do the whole thing again. They quickly lost interest in the whole game though, after about 90 minutes of the hop game they hopped along to someone else.
The fourth picture depicts your average wheel barrow race. All the boys groups engaged in this game. They had to make seemingly endless (8 I think laps of the entire gym), I was exhausted watching all the laps. The games for children all had several events. This was usually the last event.
The fifth picture shows a new game to me. All the children involved would go to the center of the arena and when the caller said a number they would have to form groups of that number then sit down after they were counted. This event involved the most frantic hugging I think I have ever seen. The adults (I think it was the single adults, but can't be sure, my Inuktituk needs work) also played this, but with harder numbers when they went after 17 it really turned silly, the counters couldn't count the groups as they kept moving, people just kept joining and leaving at random. I think eventually the counters just go sick of the whole thing and started telling 'em to sit down just to get on with it.
The sixth picture was anaother boys event, which I know as Russian Bear dancing. It was amazing to see the young people performing so well at this difficult action. which is apparently a difficult action to get a good photo of. Everytime I took a shot, the guy closest to me always fell in the shot, but trust me this was pretty fast and intensive action.
Interestingly, all the boys events seemed to be focused towards speed and strenght with a strong empasis placed on winning, whereas the girls events seemed to focus on endurance and completeing the event rather than winning.

Take Care
CG

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How interesting to see some things are the same no matter where you go - people love to play games. And so much commonality - the group game you mentioned (forming groups of the called number) - we play that game with our Brownies! In some cases I think the hugging is to keep them from falling over as they run at each other at breakneck speed to beat other girls to the group. LOL

Cheers!
T :+)

Anonymous said...

It was nice to see all your pics and the descriptions of the games that were played. A real community thing, with all ages involved - like in the olden days. As a youngster growing up in a small farming community, we had many celebrations that involved all ages - a thing not heard of these days, unless it's a family event. You got to know your neighbors and it seemed that everyone looked out for each other.

I awoke this morning to no hydro, so hence no morning coffee. Ed's workplace called to say that he was not to come in, so he has the day off as well. I must say that Ed loves these kinds of challenges and quickly sprung into action. He got a fire going in the fireplace and before you know it, had water boiling for coffee -- even made toast. I have long held the belief that he was born in the wrong age and should have been born back in the 1800's. I on the other hand was thrilled when power came back on just after noon.

Everywhere you look outside, everything is coated with about 2-4 cms of ice. It's actually quite beautiful. Overnight we had a few hours of freezing rain, then temps flucuated back and forth between 1 and -1 degrees. No snow has fallen as yet, but is forecast for later today - it should be a really pretty sight, but do hope the hydro doesn't go out again.

Hope things are going well there for you guys and that Christopher is healing. Take care -- Rosalie