In the six days since Hussein and Fatima Arafat and their nine children arrived in the territory, the family has been learning some of the ins and outs of life in the territory’s capital.

The family of Syrian refugees is being sponsored by Yukon Cares, a local group that has been working to fundraise and assist the family to come to Whitehorse.

After months of work to get the family to the Yukon, they arrived last Saturday evening and were greeted by dignitaries, volunteers and a large crowd anxious to welcome them.

In an interview late this week, Yukon Cares’ head Raquel de Queiroz said the family is doing well after their first few days in town.

“They’re very thankful to the community,” de Queiroz said.

Their journey saw them travel from Damascus to Montreal, where they stayed for three days, and then on to Whitehorse.

Given their exhaustion and jet leg, Yukon Cares thought it would be best to give them a week to take it easy and learn a bit about the community before they start looking at more formal education and work.

As the volunteers soon learned after their arrival though, the family is anxious to get nearly all the kids back to school after having been out of any kind of education system for four years after the civil war in Syria broke out. That left the oldest child, now 21, unable to obtain his high school diploma.

“The kids just want to go to school,” de Queiroz said. “It’s one of the main things they want to do.”

Work is underway with the Department of Education to place each of the Arafat children, (with the exception of the two youngest ages three and 16 months) in the school system or possibly Yukon College for the oldest.

As de Queiroz said, the “experts” can best determine how the new students can transition into their new school communities.

The kids have a little bit of English, with the older children able to read some basic text.

The kids won’t be the only members of the family getting back into study mode. Both Hussein and Fatima will be taking English classes as well.

de Queiroz noted that while Hussein is “super-eager” to get back into the working world, having last worked as truck driver, it will take some time for him to gain the basic English skills needed to work.

While officials have started the effort to get each member of the family in the necessary classes, de Queiroz said as volunteers with Yukon Cares have been visiting the family over the last few days, they have been using the English skills they have.

Volunteers have been informally teaching them some English, while they teach the volunteers a little Arabic, she said with a laugh.

Much of the past few days for the family have been spent with Yukon Cares volunteers learning and navigating their way through many every day things Whitehorse residents take for granted – using the bus system to get to the grocery store, for example.

Then after getting some groceries, there’s the matter of using a bank card (which means they will also have to learn about dealing with banks and accounts), something members of the family had never done before.

There was also a trip to the doctor when one of the younger members of the family became sick.

As well, given the wood stove in the house they’re occupying, they were also shown how to chop wood and use the stove safely, among a slew of other instructions they will likely need everyday.

In the midst of all those lessons, the family and volunteers are also getting to know one another.

de Queiroz said she recently found out Hussein had himself hosted refugees from Lebanon who had fled civil unrest there to go to Syria in the early 1980s.

Now, as he and his family are themselves refugees, he told de Queiroz one of the big reasons they wanted to come to Canada was because of its reputation as a tolerant country.

As the family continues to settle into their new lives, Yukon Cares will keep up its efforts to help the family transition into the community.