Howdy Folks

Moose hunting season ended a couple of weeks ago. When they go to hunt they take a boat to the island, about 7 miles away. My house is right on the edge of the village, where people park their boats, so we see the people walking by with their guns and carrying hunks of moose meat. One of my students walked by with a huge hunk of meat. I asked him whose moose it was, and he didn’t know. The Eskimos share their first hunted animal of the season so they will have more luck in the future.

We’ve been having a water problem. Something about the well is messed up, and they are in the process of fixing it. So we are trying to conserve water as much as possible to keep school open. Toilets aren’t to be flushed unless absolutely necessary and drinking water is scarce in the filters. Some of the students think it’s funny to vandalize the restrooms by messing with the toilets, and we keep having to let school out early due to flooding problems. I really hope they stop, because they are the only flushing toilets in the village and if we keep having problems we will change to honey buckets. Not good!

I had great plans before I got up here, thinking I would have lots time to workout and have plenty of down time. Boy, was I mistaken! Speech is taking off, student council is planning for a Halloween carnival, and open gym, computer lab, and study hall are consuming my afternoons, not to mention planning for classes! But I’m having a good time, and I feel much better about teaching and feel a bit more organized, which always helps.

The showers are nothing great – there are 2 that the certified and classified female teachers share (there are about 10 of us). For some reason the water is salty. Not as bad as ocean water but still salty! It takes a while to get hot, and sometimes you just have to take a cold shower. Eesh… but a shower is a shower. We can only take 2 showers a week in order to have enough through the winter and year, so I’m thankful for those 2 showers.

It’s getting COLD! To me, anyway – every time I say it’s cold the Natives just laugh. It’s in the 20s and frost covers everything in the mornings. They love this weather, but assure me this is nowhere near cold. They tell me stories of the snow getting up to the roofs, of how the wind chill will make it -90 degrees, how sometimes it’s so windy you have to crawl home from school (good thing it’s only a 3 minute walk). Last year a guy got snowed out of his house and had to crawl through his window. I’m really excited – I love physical challenges – we’ll see about having to crawl through a blizzard though!

Kids are getting better and the ones that were in the hospital with swine flu are making their way back to Newtok. Our neighbor had the swine flu and everyone at school has had colds. I’m finally getting over mine, I’m just thankful I didn’t get the flu.
That’s about it for now. Hope everyone reading this is having a great day! Happy fall :-)

Love from Alaska,
Kim