Hey yall

I don’t know who’s more excited about summer – my students or me! I do like my job, most of the time, and I am constantly in awe of God’s hand in my adventure. But the cold excitement has worn down and the increasing sunlight is too nice, and I’m looking forward to the days when I don’t have to think about work for a while. The sun sets around 10:00 at night, and we’re gaining a few minutes every day.
The other day a couple of my students came to my house with the guys’ basketball coach (a guy from Louisiana) and asked if I wanted to go hunting rabid foxes. I jumped at the opportunity to get out and have some fun and was even more excited that they wanted to include me in their Yupik activities. So we all took off on our snow machines. We would ride to the top of a hill and look all around. When we spotted something moving in the distance we would take off, speeding off to get the fox. It’s common knowledge you don’t need a hunting license in the bush. At least, no one checks if you have one. I wasn’t aware of this until a couple of months ago, but Yupiks don’t eat the fox, they just use the fur. But for a long time (years now) the foxes (or many of them) are rabid, and spread it to the dogs in the village. So they are constantly killing dogs and killing foxes whenever they can. So anyway, we went looking for rapid foxes, and the fun is all in the chase. We got three that day. How it works is (if you’re a peta activist you may want to skip this section) you chase the fox and run over it with the snowmachine. You have to do this several times because they are pretty tough, and you need to slow them down in order to make the shot. When you shoot your gun your back has to be to the village, so it’s easier to do this when the fox is right at your feet. So anyway, we got 3 foxes and it was a lot of fun!
We finally got a new incinolet, and the water system at the school is working again. Instead of the big distillers they have they actually have CLEAN running water right out of the pipes, so they can finally use a drinking fountain. They removed the distillers, so teachers had to get water from the drinking fountain for a while (not cool! Spitting tobacco, little kids putting their mouths on it… and we’re suppose to get all our drinking water from that?) So anyway, after some protests they finally plugged a distiller back up so it’s back like it use to be for the teachers. We go to the school, get a key, go out the back way, down a ramp into an outside building, hope the lock is not frozen… if so, we have to pour boiling water in the lock… and finally, fill our empty jugs. This is the same room where we do our laundry. Yeah, it’s a lot of work but you get use to it and for sure, I don’t take our water supply for granted now!
I’m out for now. I hope yall have a blessed Easter, and lets don’t forget that Jesus was OUR sacrifice, and He is the risen Lord! That is something to be stoked about!