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.

Life Is Good

This quarter is flying by - okay, so I didn't have to teach at all last week - but still, a month has passed, it's moose hunting season already, and the air is getting cold. Fall is my favorite time of year - I love the weather change, and although there are no trees around to see the beautifully color-changing leaves, I look forward to the upcoming seasonal festivities.

Last week the teachers flew to Bethel for the district-wide inservice. All 300-something teachers around western Alaska in the Lower Kuskokwim School District gathered for various training sessions. Cool news for Newtok - Paula was named Teacher of the Year for the whole district! (I therefore dubbed her TOTY). I always knew she was amazing, I'm just glad she was publicly recognized for it. I've said before she is the backbone of this school - without her I imagine it would be a very different place.

We left Bethel with our luggage full of food, thankful to come back to the quiet, peaceful village. It's nice to see grocery stores and roads every now and then, but getting back to the middle of nowhere feels good, and as we landed in Newtok on our 8-seater plane, there was a palpable sense of serenity, even among the new teachers, who were experiencing their first "coming back home" episode.

Kevin and I helped move Naomi into her new house, the trailer right beside the school. Matt and Matthew are moving in the red house that I lived in my first three years. It's crazy to see how much stuff you can accumulate up here, so after I helped her move tons of boxes/furniture, I came home and condensed my belongings to a considerable lower quantity. It always feels good to simplify.

After getting everyone settled in their new houses the power went out. The generator for the village was "being worked on" - not exactly sure what the deal was. The new teachers were worried about the meat they recently bought in Bethel, but after 8 hours we had power again and no harm done. We often go without power throughout the school year, and although it can be annoying, I'd rather have no light than no heat when it's negative 50 outside. That's happened several times, and even jumping jacks (my cure-all) can't keep me warm enough during those spells. Anyway, after carrying Naomi's boxes down the twisting boardwalks, and with no stove or microwave, me and Betsy enjoyed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before dropping by Paula's to play a game of Spinner Dominoes. Life is good.

August Adventures

     The beginning of year five in living in Alaska's bush has been nothing short of awesome! Me and my roommate Betsy spent a few days in Anchorage to stock up on meat for the semester (although we lost it all in when we realized our freezer went out... hopefully we can get some moose soon!) We met up with the new teacher Emily (5th and 6th grade) and her husband Josh. Then, at the airport in Bethel, we met Matt, the new 7th-12th science and social studies teacher. We finally made it to the village and hung out at school while they took all the boards off our houses. It was nice getting back a few days before work actually starts, because we had time to take care of some much needed household chores - refill our water tank with a hose from school, pack drinking and cooking water, rearrange furniture, hang a hammock swing I ordered, and de-stink the place in general. 

   

 Every Friday is poker/board game night at Paula's, and we've played volleyball at the school every Saturday. Kevin held his annual back-to-the-bush BBQ, and we watched football around their brand new flat screen TV! Me and Betsy often plan sneak prank attacks on our fellow colleagues throughout the year for the fun of it, so over the summer I bought a big water gun and Betsy bought water balloons, and we came up with a great plan to get Kevin while he was working outside - the logistics were beautifully organized. We went on the attack and drenched him good. He then joined in the offensive side and we lured Emily and Josh out of their house, and they got hosed down too! We had a blast, and I'm just glad they are all good sports to play along!

         

salmon berries

exposed permafrost

Saturday I went berry picking and had to walk a few miles to find enough to actually make something with them. I got to cross a few streams, walk through mushy fields, and lay in waist-high tundra grass. The beauty of this place draws me in closer every year. Grant always tells the new teachers some of my more extreme adventures, so Josh and Emily said they wanted to go exploring with me. We invited Matt along, and it was very exciting! I'm glad others are willing to go hiking with me! Kevin came along too, and we probably walked 3 miles down the river... we found all kinds of berries, tundra parsley, and tundra tea. We hopped down on the bank and watched big hunks of mud fall off, and literally saw the HUGE slab of permafrost exposed. It was icy cold, and although we know it's always there, something about actually seeing it and touching the ice that's been in the ground forever was seriously cool. We trudged through a field of sticky “quick-mud” and had to pull each other out. We crossed streams, wove through the endless fields of tundra grass, and watched ducks fly around us. It was a great day of exploration!

The newbies: Emily, Josh, and Matt

    That evening Grant texted Betsy a weird message about how he cleared out the gym so me and Betsy could exercise. Finding this really odd, we had a feeling he was filled in on the water-gun prank we pulled on them, so we got a bit suspicious, wondering if this was their payback. We called Kevin to go check it out, and then I snuck in the back of the school to peek in the gym, but all the lights were out. I ran back to our house and me, Betsy, and Kevin were officially on the defense... we had to come up with a strategy! So we grabbed the water gun and a bowl of flour, and we hysterically threw together a plan of action. It was the funniest thing... we had our secret knock worked out, created our home base, and went out in complete stealth mode. We snuck all around the outside of the school, and then into the school, crawling down the hallways and jumping at the slightest sounds. When we couldn't find the couple, we went back to our home base to regroup with a Plan B. After a long and tense search around the east side of the village around the teachers' houses, we retreated to the house and dropped our weapons, and Josh and Emily jumped out of our utility room and scared the living daylights out of us! Kevin was in on it the whole time, that traitor! Haha... he played his part well, convincing us to leave our house unlocked in case we had to run back to safety and didn't have time to mess with the keys. We should have known better! So that just means we need to come up with another plan to get back at Kevin. Good times lay ahead!

Year 4, Down.

I’m wrapping up my 4th year in the bush! Thinking back to my first and second years, I could barely wait to go back to Texas. It was bad! As things have settled down and I’ve gotten more accustomed to life and work here, I’m not in as much desperation to leave, even though I am really, really, really looking forward to it. The snow is finally melting and it’s very slushy to walk through - you sink up to her knees or waist in some areas, and you have to crawl (or pull yourself) out of the heavy slush. So there isn’t much you can do outside this time of year. I was eating dinner one night at Paula’s house, and me and Kevin had a bright idea to race against the sun and get some exercise. So after a delicious pork roast meal, we decided to shovel a path from their front porch to the steps of the school. The sun sets around midnight, so we grabbed our shovels and started the process... digging for 2 straight hours through 6 feet of blinding snow. We would have made it but we didn’t have a snow pick, and our shovels are mere shovels, not spades. So when we hit the solid ice wall that was all we could do for the day. The next day it was melted enough to finish the job.

Betsy was in a plane crash, and thank goodness everyone was okay. It was a foggy day and the pilot never should have attempted to land. They crashed on the frozen river and fortunately it didn’t go through the ice. When Paula called and told me I ran out to see if I could help, and half way to the site the kids said they took them to the clinic. So I ran over to the clinic and they were pretty shaken up, to say the least. There were lots of bruises and blood, and one person had a broken wrist. But they were all alive. A couple of days later Betsy flew to Bethel to see a doctor and it was pretty quiet at the house, as she passed her dog off to her mom in Ohio. So Kevin came over and said I should have a sleepover with Thane (their 4 year old)... he loves sleepovers! So after I finished shoveling the rest of the path, I went over and we played some games, cooked some popcorn, watched a movie, and camped out on the air mattress in the living room. I don’t know what I would do without that family... they make Newtok home!

This past weekend we spent all of Thursday decorating for prom, building this giant castle. There are French reporters in the village and they have never been in America before. They didn’t know what a prom was and they were fascinated by our traditions. They are reporting on the erosion and upcoming move. Prom was Friday night, and we were all so tired that after the dance we just left the school and all it’s mess to come home and sleep. We came to clean it up 8am on Saturday and got ready for the graduation ceremony at 2:00. Phew, what a weekend. Saturday night we ended it by playing 5 hours of poker, in preparation for our upcoming Vegas trip. We fly out on Friday and will be in Vegas Saturday night; I’ll come to to Texas the following Thursday night. Won’t be long!