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My Birthday in the Bush

I move to the middle of nowhere right out of college when I was 22, and who would have thought I would still be up here for my 27th birthday! It’s not been completely perfect but these 5 years have still been blessed, and I’m thankful this adventure has made me a stronger person through the good and bad times. 

So what do you do to celebrate your birthday in the middle of nowhere? Here’s what made mine so special:

1. The weather was BEAUTIFUL. The skies were blue, the temperature ranged between 30 and 35, and the wind was relatively calm, which is rare. (Saturday, the day after my birthday, we had an awesome adventure because of the great weather that I will post about in my next blog.)

2. Paula and Brandi made peanut butter cupcakes for my first period class. If Paula makes it, it’s guaranteed to be delicious. 

3. My birthday fell on a Friday, which is a half day of classes. We also had an awards assembly for the upper hall, in which the students played games that revolved around piecing together birthday cards for me and singing for me. Also, they got the Yupik drums out and sang happy birthday to me in Yupik, their native language. I wish I had got this on video, but by the time I got my camera they moved on to other Yupik songs. If you haven’t heard/seen a traditional Yupik Eskimo Dance, here is a link to see one (these are people in our village dancing in our school gym): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Am3Ike2xJE  

4. Matt and I got the logistics figured out for our kayaking trip - mapped our route, he ordered his kayak, we made an equipment list, etc. It was SO exciting. Now all we need to do is figure out when school starts so we will know when the actual trip will be.

5. Grant offered me my contract to come back next year. (I know, right?) :)

6. After school I had a great leg/back workout. (Hey, I love the benefits of a great workout!)

7. Paula cooked me an awesome chicken/steak fajita dinner, complete with all the Mexican side dishes. They know how much I love and miss Mexican food! 

8. We played poker that night. I lost $15. But it was my time… I’ve won most every other time this year. I just love game nights! And really, a night out in the lower 48 would cost more than $15, so you can’t really complain.

9. I got awesome gifts mailed to me from Mom and Dad… packaged meat, great gift cards, lots of food, a coffee cup with mom’s picture on it so I can have coffee with mom :) … and several other goodies! I also received a package from Audrey that contained cute socks (which you can’t get enough of up here) and some great food.

10. I had tons of Facebook birthday wishes. I was grateful for all of them!

So needless to say, it was a great day! I barely had time to contemplate on the quandary of getting older. 

Class, Climbing, Freezing, and Food

Happy February!

I’ve been super busy lately but am loving every minute of it. Work is going great; even though I have to plan for 7 different classes I really enjoy (almost) all of them. Have I told yall I get to teach Health 2 times a day? One at the high school level and one at the junior high level. That really excites me because it’s my favorite subject and one I actually imagined myself teaching back when I was in college. The kids enjoy making fun of how health-conscious I am, but I think I may be rubbing off on some of them, too. :)

It’s been extremely cold lately. We are still drastically short on snow this year, but at least the temperatures are getting down into the negative 30s so it actually feels like Alaska again. The high school boys are hosting a basketball tournament now. It is long over-due, as we’ve had to cancel games for the past 3 weeks because of weather. They thought they wouldn’t be able to play this time because of the temperature; if the weather is negative 40 or colder we aren’t allowed to transport students. But thankfully it just stayed in the negative 30s. Betsy and Emily ran the kitchen at the tournament and Paula and I kept score for the first game. I hear them bouncing balls in the gym right now - they have one more game before the teams fly out and we resume our normal Saturday school schedule. 

Several of us went to Anchorage a few weeks ago for an RTI Conference. It was great being able to stock up on some groceries. Speaking of groceries, I finally decided to get on the Full Circle Farm orders - every 2 weeks they deliver fresh (yes, fresh!) food to the village, weather permitting. I haven’t done it in the past simply because it’s pricey, but I figured after 4 and a half years of eating canned vegetables I deserve the good stuff. The last box that came there were little green bugs in the lettuce. Paula had them too, so we asked Matt (the science teacher) what they are and he assured us they were harmless. Paula gave her lettuce supply to Matt, and I was okay with eating them. (Who  AM I!?!?) Hey, more protein. 

While we were in Anchorage Matt and I were really getting a lot figured out for our summer kayaking trip from Bethel to Newtok. We visited REI and he found the kayak he wants. I’m still going with the Oru kayak, and I hope I made the right decision. The only setback we’ve encountered is being able to find a map of that isolated region. No one has it! I can zoom in on google earth, at least, and print pieces off there and piece them together, but we’d like something water proof, too. I ordered a map kit from National Geographic, and if I understand it correctly, that will give us printable pages and a water-proof casing. We will see when it comes in!

Another fun thing we did while in Anchorage was rock climbing! Matt is an avid climber - I have only been climbing with that machine attached to ya, you know what I mean? Never legitimately climbing with someone belaying. So this is a funny story - I finally upgraded my phone and can get internet now. On the way to the rock climbing gym Matt was trying to tell me how to do it, because he said they are pretty picky about knowing your stuff before they let you climb. Sure enough, when we got there, they said we both had to pass a test to prove we can do it. So while we were filling out our paperwork, me acting like I knew what was going on, I quickly whipped out my new phone and you-tubed “how to belay” - trying to teach myself before the test. While the guy working was helping someone get supplies, Matt took me over to the wall and showed me how to tie the proper knots, how to stand, etc. Then the worker came back over and had us go through the procedure 3 or 4 times, closely watching our every move to make sure we were doing everything right. Somehow I passed the test! It was pretty wild - we had a great rest of the afternoon climbing. 

We have never before gone so long and so often without planes flying. For a few weeks we would only get a plane a week, if that. The bush pilots are apparently not taking as many chances, I’m assuming because of all the plane crashes that they had. One airline even changed their name. Haha.. well, we may be more shut off now but at least there are fewer crashes. 

Brandi, Kevin, and their kiddos comes back TODAY!!! We are all so very excited. We really like her sub, Henry, and he is doing a great job, but we miss them so much! They have a new little boy and we can’t wait to meet him. Paula and I have been cleaning out/putting together new stuff for the house, and rearranging bedrooms so they will be surprised when they get in. The students made a welcome home poster for them and we’ll go over after school today to hang it and begin the Welcome Home Party that will most likely last the rest of the day, even though they won’t get here until tonight. :) If it’s one thing we teachers know how to do, it’s have a good time. 

On my way to Anchorage

Right now I’m in Bethel spending the day at the district office. There are six teachers, including myself, on our way to an RTI Conference in Anchorage. For some reason, though, I was scheduled to be on tomorrow’s jet and they are all in the air right now on their way to Anchorage. Ah well, I figured I should take this time to write this long-overdue blog post.
We were really unsure whether the pilot would land yesterday in Newtok - the sky was foggy and we couldn’t even see the island across the river. Luckily we had all of our sub plans made and had packed either last night or this morning, because right after school, I over heard Henry telling Paula “Their plane is 15 minutes out.” Typical example of lack of communication! So I turned around and met Emily, who had also just found out our plane was about to land, and we went our separate ways to gather all our luggage. I ran home, changed into my snow pants, grabbed my luggage, and started the half a mile jog up to the airstrip. As I rummaged in my pockets for my gloves, I found my phone and realized I should probably tip off Matt, who as a first year shouldn’t have to be stressed out any more than he already is to have a missed his flight to civilization. So I called him and he hadn’t heard either. When I made it to the airport, with Emily and Grant not too far behind me, I could see a figure hauling it to try and beat the plane that was now over our heads on the descent. Anyway, They landed and we took off, and it was an incredibly bumpy flight. I looked out the window and saw the Bering Sea below, which means we would shortly be landing in Tununak to drop off the cargo sitting beside me. Soon we were forming an assembly line, passing the boxes of food out the plane to the villagers. The pilot clipped in extra chairs in the newly emptied space to take a few passengers to Bethel.
When we landed, we hailed a cab, checked in to our hotel rooms, grabbed some grub from a local favorite restaurant - VIP - and excitedly discussed what we could do in Anchorage.
This morning I headed on to the D.O. What does one do in Bethel, you might ask? Good question. This is my to-do list today: 1. Get ahead on lesson plans. 2. Walk to the store. 3. Maybe buy something from the store (my stomach still cringes at the high prices) 4. Eat lunch at Subway (yay!!) 5. Return to the D.O. and find an air mattress to sleep on tonight. Yep, that’s about it. Actually, I might get lucky and stay at a friend’s house - I haven’t ran into her yet, but if so, she’ll probably house me for tonight and maybe even tote me to the airport tomorrow!

Loving Life

Ahhh, Saturday mornings. I woke up early today after falling asleep in my newly remodeled loft to a beautiful snowfall. I made coffee and went to the school to put my load of laundry in and pack water, then came home to do a few other household chores: sweep, mop, do the dishes, empty the incinolet, take out the trash, and straighten up. I love it all, except for the incinolet job. I love staying busy and love our little house in the middle of nowhere.

Last night we played board games and charades at Paula and Brandi’s house, and afterwards Josh and I were itching to go on an adventure. He is leaving for Seward next week to take a job, so even though it was 10:30 at night, we decided to go for a hike. We suited up in our winter gear and strapped on our headlamps and started walking in the waist-deep snow out past the airport. He is a really knowledgeable outdoorsman, especially when it comes to animals. We tracked animal prints and hunted their hide outs, laid in the snow and star-gazed, rolled down hills, dug snow pits and buried ourselves in them... you know, the usual stuff. :) We came back around 12:30 am. I went out with him a few weeks ago to check his traps, and although he didn’t have any animals that time, he has caught several muskrats. He showed me how to skin them and that was a fun learning process.

I am planning on visiting Josh and Emily over the summer when I come back next year, and we are stoked about it - you can just walk outside and climb a mountain or hop in a kayak and paddle down a river, set up camp, catch a salmon and cook it over a fire... we were just talking about how perfect that kind of life is and how lucky we are to get to experience this whole Alaskan adventure. I’m also planning on coming back to Bethel earlier with Matt and kayaking and camping along the way from Bethel to Newtok. I hope that will happen - seriously, how cool would that be!? It would also save me a plane ticket. I made all my flights for the holidays, and the total cost of getting to Texas and back to the village is $2,600. Is that crazy or what? But it is worth every penny to see my family for a few weeks over the holidays and take a break from the village life to enjoy the pleasures of normal civilization.

We had a late start on winter, but it changed in the snap of a finger last Wednesday, dropping down to negative 20 with windchill and negative 30 the next day. I went out to take some pictures of the gorgeous sunset and steamy river, and for the sake of a good picture suffered mild frostbite on my fingers. I can’t tell you how many times that happens!

So I mentioned the loft... In my bedroom there is a loft that has been out of reach, and while Matt was over one day working out, he said it would be cool to have that as a reading/hang out area... and I couldn’t believe I’ve never thought of that before! So I ordered a ladder from Amazon and some other goodies and set to work cleaning it up, painting, and turning it into a really cool place. When all the materials get here I will take pictures and post them on facebook.

Only three more weeks until I fly back - looking forward to it, and I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Nonstop in Newtok

First off, I can't believe how fast this semester is going. With that said, I apologize for not updating my blog more often! The time got away from me! Everything is going smoothly. I love, love, love my class schedule - I'm teaching more of my content area (health) and less language arts, which I've always felt inadequate to teach. Also, my planning period is right by my lunch period, which means my boss doesn't mind if I go home and actually get planning done there, as we all spend too much time working at the school outside of contract hours. We don't have a teacher's break room, and all classes are full on your planning period. So in past years you would just have to sit in the hall and try to get some work done while stationed next to students who have been pulled from class for behavioral reasons.

The weather is acting crazy. It snows, rains, warms up, then repeats the cycle. The boardwalks are often icy in the morning which makes it a dangerous walk to work. I should have long ago invested in a pair of slip on spikes, but I've made it this far. Kevin's birthday was Sunday, and we  (Him and his 2 little ones, me, Josh, Emily, and Matt) went out to look at the river finally freezing up. The ice chunks were floating from the Bering Sea down to the Ninglick, and although it was below freezing, it was pretty warm since the wind that day was non-existent. A day without wind here is few and far in between.

After work my days are packed full with exercise. I'm on the last few weeks of the P90X workout, and Matt, the new teacher, has been coming over to workout with me. It's always nice to have someone to push you! I also try to get in at least an hour of jogging every day, but not enough to where I start using muscle for energy. I have a goal in mind - in the next 3 or 4 years, I want to hike the entire Appalachian trail, all 2,180 miles of it. So with every pull up I do, I'm thinking "you'll have to carry a 30 pound backpack for 5 months!" Actually, hopefully I can go ultralight. One step at a time, and when I finally start down the trail, I will be ready. As Eskimo wisdom goes, "You don't swallow the whole moose, you take small bites of it."

Josh is having the time of his life, and he is enjoying trapping animals. I've enjoyed learning how to skin a muskrat, and I've been out to see his traps, partly because I don't want to walk into one while I'm hiking solo. He is excited to start trapping foxes.

Halloween was fun... we had the Carnival, where the teachers ran different booths. I set up a ping pong booth, thanks to Audrey's gift of a ping pong net on the go. It was a lot of fun! The Haunted House was a hit, but Kevin and Josh, who were both scaring the kids, got punched in the face a couple of times from the youngsters.

In honor of the scary holiday, Betsy, Emily, Brandi, Paula and I decided to watch The Purge. It wasn't as scary as I thought, but it did make us jump a few times. Kevin and Josh of course had to sneak in the back of the house and jump out at us. Guys.

On Sunday I will be traveling to Bethel to attend a website training for our school. The plan is to take 2 students and come back Tuesday afternoon. I haven't been to the bush hub since late August.

September

I went on a long hike a few weeks ago, knowing the warm(ish) weather would soon be nothing more than a distant memory for the next 9 months. I was in a giddy, adventurous mood, so I frolicked on, hopping streams and meandering through the mud. About three miles out, however, I came across a stream too wide to cross (about 100 feet long). I decided to keep walking until it narrowed enough to jump over, but it eventually spit into a fork, and I had to make a decision: go back to the village or swim across. You guessed it! I crossed it. Knowing full well that I had a quiz to make for the next day’s literature class, I cautiously (yes, it’s a new concept to me) waded out into the water, got stuck in the mud, and fell down, having to swim across in the freezing, salty mud water. Once I made it to the other side, but the wind was unceasing and as I was drenched and freezing, and the village was three miles away, I made the wise decision to return to Newtok and found another route that kept me having to swim. It was a great day, I got my quiz made, and no harm was done!

I went to women’s night for the fist time in a long time the other night. Emily wanted to try it out, so I said I’d go with her. I’ve been pretty active, but this was the first time I actually played a sport with only one working eye, and it was a bit frustrating not being able to see a defender coming on to me. I did alright, but I need to practice turning my head more.

One Friday as we were waiting to travel to Nightmute on Nelson Island for cross country, Grant came and told us the trip was off - confused because the weather was so nice, we asked why - he said he was sworn to secrecy as to why, but there was a manhunt going on, and we were on lockdown as well as the entire Island. We learned later that a man shot and killed his 2 year old son in the village of Tununak, and they found the man in his father’s house. They found the little boy’s body out by the coast of the Bering Sea. Crazy horrible.

We wound up making up the trip the following week, and the morning of the race, it started snowing! Me and Kevin went to the store and bought a pack of hot chocolate to enjoy while the kids ran. No one was prepared for it to snow, and we weren’t dressed properly. We climbed steep hills, walked down rocky paths, and traveled a good 2 miles just to watch the race, and we were outside over 2 hours with nothing but a sweatshirt to guard us from the cold. I got a stone bruise in my foot and couldn’t put pressure on it for a few days after that, but it’s getting better.

When we got home from Nightmute our new refrigerator finally arrived! Our old one was barely cool, so we don’t have to worry about food going bad anymore.