the eagle has landed

Arrived safe and sound in Norman Wells and finally beginning to settle in. Frequent panic attacks at the beginning as I was continually reminded of how isolated it is here, but as the days go on the panic flashes are less and less and i'm growing more and more comfortable with this new arctic mentality. So far the strangest thing is how SLOW everything is here. When you do actually see another human being it takes twenty minutes just to get a five seconds conversation over with which has been quite difficult to get the hang of as my mind is racing as quick as the cars on the 401 and my mouth is moving like roadrunner. Luckily Ben still speaks at my tempo so when I'm going crazy from the slowness I can chat with him. Another thing is the lack of shower water. I never thought I would be complaining about that seeing as I used to compete to see how long I could go without showering at camp but it's dusty and trailerpark-y here and showering would make me as happy as a baby with cake. We spent easter sunday having dinner with some of Ben's work friends (one of his friends bottles his own champagne which i may try and do myself this summer, i've already started thinking up names for it but nothing too fabulous yet). It stays bright out here until past 11pm which is pretty wacky but luckily our blinds are darker than darth vader. we went out for dinner last night to "the cabin" to celebrate our 4 year anniversary and we were more or less the only ones in the restaurant, this apparently is EXTREMELY common. Our waitress does work at the school and she was saying they always need extra help there so I'll being putting my name on the substitute teacher list to try and pick up some shifts and make some extra money. I'm spending my first three days working with the mayor (yes the mayor of norman wells is my first friend here haha) he's this wildly eccentric old man with a cane and incredible taste in ties. Anyways he needs helping managing his store so I'm store manager haha, if only promotions were this easy to come by in Toronto. It's super relaxing and slow (as is everything in this town) I've only had 3 customers so far and the day is half over. Tonight is 'wing night' which apparently is a big deal here so i'll be sure to let you all know how that goes. it's been surprisingly warm here and the days are getting longer and longer which is exciting. Okay, I'm off to pretend to have something to do and by that i mean go back to the insane snails pace of the wells. tell the streetcars i miss them. still yet to be devoured.