Repulse Bay (Mar 15/06) - A group of youth from Fergus, Ont., are eagerly awaiting their first visit to the Arctic Circle.

The 16 students in grades 10 to 12 are from Centre Wellington district high school and will be accompanied to Repulse Bay by two teachers.

The group will arrive on April 14, and spend six days in the community as part of an exchange program with Tusarvik school.

Teacher Jack Frimeth is almost as excited as the students.

He has looked forward to visiting Nunavut for years.

"We have many trips at our school for students to go to Europe and New York City, but it's important for them to also go somewhere in Canada," says Frimeth. "We need more dialogue with the North and there's no better place to start than at the student level."

The journey began when Frimeth became aware of the YMCA's Youth Exchanges program.

After learning about the program, he realized his best chance for acceptance was to find a school to twin with.

Frimeth started working the phones and was led to Tusarvik principal Leonie Aissaoui and teacher Brent Urie. The rest, as they say, is history.

Once accepted, the students started preparing for their trip. They meet every second week for two students to make a presentation on Repulse.

"We started out with a history of Naujat, and we've covered a bit on geography and wildlife in the area. We've also had a presentation on Inuit culture and the Arctic Winter Games.

"We don't want to be totally ignorant when we get there, so we've learned a bit about the area and, most importantly, its people and their culture."

Frimeth says the students are growing more excited as the day of their departure draws nearer.

They've held fundraisers to help with the costs and are counting down the days to their visit.

"We can't wait to build and sleep in an iglu and try other traditional activities. We're going to try to use a satellite phone, digital camera, laptop, video camera and MSN Messenger to transmit live feeds to our high school from Repulse.