The morning of May 10th I woke up early, coffee in hand, picked up my now roommate Lily, met with the other fellows and we were off for a new beginning. We arrived late afternoon of the same day after a long but very pleasant drive, the night was spent unpacking and settling in, we were taken on a quick tour of Boyer where we met a few community members and some friendly dogs and then we were off to bed to prepare for the next day and to jump into our experience. Lily and I are staying in the fire hall, we are staying up above the fire truck in apartments built on the second floor. Apart from settling in and decorating our separate rooms Lily and I share a living space and kitchen which we decorated with a reading corner, or as we like to call it the book nook, with shared reading materials and some nerdy decorations.
The past few days have been a whirlwind of names, faces and new places. The second day we were here our guide, Tori, the fellow from last year, introduced Lily and I, or as we are increasingly becoming known as, Emilily, to everyone in the band office as well as anyone that happened to cross our path. This took a little less time then I had anticipated, but that just left us more time to chat and start building relationships! In the early afternoon we took a trip to High Level, having already seen Fort Vermillion on our drive up, those two being the nearest towns as well as the two closest grocery stores. We bought groceries as well as saw the other locality within Beaver First nation, Child's lake, and visited the museum/visitors center in High Level. At the visitors center just outside they had a bug removing station with a squidgy that could be used to clean off ones car. I was very excited to see this as the front of my truck by this point was a hodgepodge of bug guts and other debris! Lily so kindly offered to help me clean it off, leaving the truck looking brand new...for about fifteen minutes. Later that night I made supper, a big deal as I am not by any means a competent cook, then Tori guided Lily and I to the Forks, of which I have attached a few pictures. It was a beautiful spot, the sun was shining, the frogs croaking, all was at peace and therefore I was too.
The third day of my stay in Boyer was started off with laughter. The moment we stepped outside of our apartment the sound wafted over to us from the Band office about fifty meters away. As we approached we were introduced to the "local comedian" after a few quips from him we had joined into the riotous laughter ourselves. All my days here thus far have been filled with laughter and warmth, the community has rapidly made us feel at home. We have been starting to get a sense of what our exact role here in the community will be from our conversations as well as by sitting in on a couple of planning meetings. The details of my work for the summer are still somewhat ambiguous but are coming into focus. I am assuredly missing events and interesting anecdotes from our time here thus far but they are too numerous to put down all of them, hopefully this gives a sense though of my first days and the positivity with which they have been filled. The first few days of this new experience have confirmed my hopes that this will be a wonderful summer.
