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!

February - March

I know it’s been a while since I last updated the blog. Life has been a little hectic to say the least! Hmm, where did I leave off? I came back from chaperoning the eJournalsim trip to Bethel and was pretty excited to start doing the Insanity program. Everything was going great - even work - last year I had a great idea to organize every Unit I taught for all 6 classes I taught. This is a lot of work, considering we had a brand new curriculum, but it has made this year 90% easier. I get teased because I tend to be over-the-top organized, but hey, when I get to go home after school, I’m not the one laughing!

Mid-February came along and I had a couple of days where I was just lethargic, dizzy, and had really bad headaches. I would wonder how on earth I could find the energy to workout when I could barely life my arms. It took all of my strength just to get through a workout. So I finally gave Insanity a rest and took two days off, but the dizziness didn’t stop. So I was planning a sick day, and when I woke up that morning my left eye had a gray line “stamped” across my line of vision. I kept expecting it to go away but it never did. It was pretty worrisome and disorienting, so I booked a flight to Anchorage to have it checked out, and of course the weather turned so I couldn’t go anywhere. I made the appointments and Brandi was able to save me a few hundred dollars with an air-fare program. After a few days when the weather cleared up, I went in and was impressed at how fast the doctors would refer me and get me in. I went to the eye doctor, who did some tests and sent me to a specialist. The specialist ran more tests and sent me to the hospital to have an MRI done. I went to do that, and within a couple of hours they read the results and ruled out a bunch of concerns they thought it might be. So I was pretty thankful that it wasn’t anything too serious, but all the same I wish they had an answer.

I had a few friends that are pretty active and they’ve broken blood vessels, and they say they lost vision and it returns in a couple of months. I didn’t break a blood vessel, but one doctor did say he would give it a couple of months to clear up. If it’s not better by then I should go back to Anchorage and figure out something else. It’s times like these that I wish I lived in a city, because it costs me around $1,000 just to make the trip.

What really aggravated me, though, was when I finally got to Anchorage, Paula called and said 2 eye doctors came were in Newtok! No one knew they were coming and in my four years here they have come only once. What are the odds?!? Kevin called a coach he knows back in Louisiana and picked his brain about the matter, and he said that sometimes happens when you strain your eye in physical activities. I personally don’t think it has anything to do with working out - my form is good and I don’t hold my breathe. I do a lot of jumping around, pushups, and things of that sort, but I’ve been through strenuous activities all my life. And like I reasoned, I took two days of rest before my eye actually got bad.

Anyway, about a month in the grayness went away and it was replaced by blurriness, but it’s still pretty much useless. A couple of days ago the headaches returned and the bad eye burned pretty bad, but I’m hoping it was just because I was cleaning my classroom and the dust or something irritated it. It was a little better the next day, and back to it’s normal blurriness the next. So anyway, I’m just hoping it doesn’t get any worse because I don’t want to spent a ton of money just to hear another doctor say he doesn’t know what’s wrong. Really I wish I could fly to Texas, but that would cost even more. I guess if I have to go in again, though, I’ll try doing that, because there are more doctors down there than up here.

I really appreciate all the prayers yall have said and continue to say; even though it’s pretty scary I know everything will be okay. I mean, it’s just an eye and there could be worse things wrong. But all the same, I’m hoping it won’t last much longer.

Other than that things have been good. We had a talent show in early March where I recruited Brandi, Boo, and Betsy to sing / play Fishin’ in the Dark with me. That was a lot of fun.. Boo’s uncle came to visit for a week and it’s always fun to see someone experiencing the Bush for the first time.

Muskox tags were sold last semester and villagers have been hunting a lot recently. I was asked if I’d like some meat, and I said I’d love some! So during my first period class, he comes in and hands me a big, white, frozen package that says “Muskox neck 2013” Haha.. so I had to carry it around with me until I had a chance to run it home and stick it in the freezer.

It’s getting that time of year where I want to make sure I use everything in the freezer so it doesn’t get ruined over the summer (every break the freezers inevitably go out and we lose all our food). I don’t have a lot, so it won’t be any trouble to finish it all off before summer gets here.

State tests are next week and I hope our students don’t stay up too late enjoying the increasing daylight. The sun sets about 10:00 now and it’s pretty nice!

Kuskokwim 300

I went into Bethel to chaperone several students from around the district for a week of eJournalism, and it was pretty epic! They were the reporters for covering the dog sled races, and we got some great interviews and experience getting to know what all goes on behind the scenes in a typical race.

They were reporters covering the world’s most premier mid-sized dog sled race (Kuskokwim 300 or K300) ... we had some great mushers, even Iditarod winners, and people came all the way from Russia and Norway to participate.

Teams getting ready before the race.

We were outside though, a lot. We had to warn the kids of the dangerous cold, and really respect the weather... exposed skin left for more than 2 minutes will get frostbite in that kind of cold. The temperature rarely lowered below negative 40. We were scrambling trying to come up with proper winter gear for the kids who weren’t prepared for this kind of cold. Some of the school staff were pretty generous in loaning hats, gloves, scarves, face masks, etc.

When the big race began out on the river I was a little shocked that they started at night. Those are some tough, tough people to be in that kind of cold for 3 or more straight days with no shelter. They sent the mushers out 2 by 2, and when everyone had begun, they had a great fireworks show, and seeing the kids reactions was better than the show itself - some of them had never seen fireworks.

Before the race started we fed the kids peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to hold them over till dinner, but also to give them some fuel to burn while trying to keep warm. It was rough because they were running around interviewing people/taking pictures/getting videos with all this high-tech equipment, and it was bitingly cold in the negative 50s.

Jeff King coming in to the finish line for first place

Really cold weather is not cool for Alaskan outdoor events, because if your equipment is not plugged in, your battery won’t last long. I don’t now why, but the cold has a way of sucking all the energy out of batteries. The kids were having to stash extra batteries inside their parkas as close to their body heat as possible. I myself took a small digital camera with a full battery, and it was dead within 15 minutes.

I thought I was tough, and I know I don’t have the top-of-the-line winter gear, but dang, that wind chill will put you in your place. I was wearing 2 pairs of wool socks with a big pair of polar boots and my toes were still hurting. My fingers had hand warmers in them, and while my camera was still working, I’d have to take my gloves off to snap pictures because they are too bulky to do much with them on. Let me just say, ouch. I got frost nip on the fingers, and my toes were swollen and numb all through the night. That was quite painful. The K300 staff were walking about handing out free hand warmers, and they were serving free hot dogs, hot chocolate, and (frozen) cookies. I was extremely grateful for the extra calories to keep warm!

King's dog team

The K300 headquarters, a board room in a hotel here in Bethel, was open 24 hours while the race was going on. The news stations along with the students’ news stories played on a big tv monitor, and you could get information about the race status.

One of the news teams I was working with to cover one of the shorter races (the Bogus Creek and Akiak Dash) had a secret spot to get some great footage. We drove out on the frozen river and climbed up this run-down barge by jumping on a tire hanging down and pulling ourselves up. It was actually kind of dangerous, because the barge was slanted and slick with ice. But hey, good reporters have to take some risks, right? We set up our tripods and cameras and caught some footage, including mushers getting tangled with other teams and them slipping and falling on the ice. To get off the barge we had to climb down a huge rope. The whole experience was a lot of fun.

Posing with King, 9th time winner and 4 time Iditarod winner

We were there for the end of the race (at least the first 3 hours) to see the 1st through 7th place winners. The sunrise was absolutely beautiful, and thankfully it was a bit warmer for the finish than the start. The next day we attended the post race banquet with all the mushers, sponsors, news teams, and the public who wanted to pay to get in. The students showed a few of their stories. We all had a great time!

Throughout the week we stayed in the district office board room and slept on cots, which was a step up from the usual floor. Also, every other trip we’ve had in Bethel, we’d sleep in the school, and every morning around 7 am we would have to pack up all your stuff and carry it half a mile outside to store it in the district office for a day, only to bring it back that evening and start over the next day. The room was quite chilly during the evenings, but after the evening out on the ice freezing our rear ends off, I vowed not to complain anymore about the cold room.

Normalcy in Newtok

Well I’m back in the bush and just finished up the first week of my 8th semester in Newtok. Of all the cruddy things that have happened up here, and as much as I want to get back to normal civilization sometimes, I can’t help feeling that I’m suppose to be here. Yes, people can be cruel and I often want to turn ninja on them, but I’ve come to call this place home. Most of you know that the village is in the slow-yet-desperate process of moving to Nelson Island across the Ninglick River. Apparently there has been some mismanagement of money and backstabbing going on over the years. I really don’t know the full story, but the Eskimo’s tempers are high and the place is full of tension. I guess even the smallest of places even in the middle of nowhere has politics. Anywho, you have to learn to be on constant lookout for.. how shall I say.. angry people with evil intentions. We were having a staff workday last week, and us gusuk teachers were all in one room. Grant comes in and says “Don’t leave this room, I’m locking you in. There are angry people outside the school with guns.” Four years ago I might have freaked out, but now I just take it in stride. We all agreed to stay put and wait until the madness settles down. Unfortunately, the Tribal Council (TC) is right next to the school, and there was some kind of problem going on over there. In a few hours we were able to go home without meeting trouble.

Naomi is still out sick, receiving cancer treatment. She says she is doing fine and is expected to come back towards the end of the year. In the meantime, we hired a new sub to fill in for her. Apparently this sub was not given sufficient information as to what she was getting into - she didn’t know the housing has no running water, plumbing, and is often out of propane and heat. She had to camp out in the school library for a good while because her house was too cold (not to mention moldy) to live in. So she is a little disgusted with how she is expected to live. She is an elderly woman, and I feel bad for her, but Newtok is known for being behind the times when it comes to modern-day living conditions, so I guess she’ll either learn to cope or move somewhere else.

Me and Betsy are having to pack more water than usual, too. The water in our pipes that we fill with a hose from the school isn’t good water, so we don’t use it to eat/drink, but we do use it to shower in and wash dishes. (Yes, this year I finally do not have to go to the school to shower!) I mean, okay, it burns my eyes and is sometimes freezing cold, but it serves its purpose. Anyway, it’s not working at all, so we are back to the old fashioned way of packing more water than we usually do. Especially after a blizzard it’s quite the challenge to carry 6 gallons of water every day through knee-deep fresh snow and over drifts, but it’s the norm.

Last semester was a cold one, but we didn’t get much snow. I was glad to come back over Christmas to see we got plenty more. We’ve had a couple of blizzards in the week that I’ve been back, and just to give you an idea of what that looks like, we received about four feet of snow in a span of 8 hours and the village power went off. Kevin, Boo, me, and a few other people had a lot of fun, though, chasing each other around the east side of the village and having an epic snowball war. I will have to put up a video of some of the action on facebook.

The basketball teams were looking forward to flying to Scammon Bay for a tournament, but they never were able to get out because of the weather. Next week we are hosting a tournament - hopefully teams are able to come in then. I am actually leaving Monday to spend over a week in Bethel with a few students for an ejournalism class. We are going to do some reporting “out on the ice” according to our corresponding teacher, so I’m looking forward to getting outside of the classroom for some fresh air. I hear we don’t have to sleep on the floor, either - they have cots for us! So I’m pretty excited that I might get a bit more sleep than my usual chaperoning trips.

Thanksgiving

Every time I stop to think about it, it amazes me how fast the school year is flying by. In just three short weeks I will be home for the holidays! I have a really great schedule and class list this year, along with a new house and roommate which has really helped the speediness.

Like the semester, the cold came on all of a sudden. We woke up one morning and it was 20 degrees, and it has steadily declined. It took a while to get snow, and for a couple of days the village was completely covered in ice. Brandi called me one morning and warned me about the conditions, because it was absurd how slippery it was. Every surface you touched - the handrails, the boardwalks, the steps, the ramps - had a half-inch of frozen ice. You couldn’t walk without sliding on it! It reminded me of Home Alone, when the kid hoses down the steps and the intruders slip on them. I met Paula half way to school and it took us a good 10 minutes just to climb up the ramp, it was that ridiculous! Too bad I don’t have ice skates. Alaska’s weather... it’s completely unpredictable. You know you live in a crazy place when you and your coworkers gather to tell their survival stories of getting to and from work. I can’t wait until blizzard season arrives!

Kevin’s birthday was in early November and he keeps track of the weather pretty earnestly; but Newtok, as small and isolated as it is, is not on weather.com. So Paula got him a weather kit, to track the snowfall, temperature, windchill, etc. We put it together, then Kevin and I went outside to nail it to the house. I was holding the ladder while he was attaching the device to the house, and we were saying it felt pretty darn cold. So when we went got it hooked up and checked the correct temperature, we weren’t surprised that it was negative 8.

Thanksgiving break was blissful. We got off Thursday and Friday, and we didn’t even have Saturday school. We always spend Thanksgiving day at Paula’s, Brandi’s and Kevin’s house.. we bring a dish over, eat, watch football, and play some poker. There is a guy that is working on the water tanks over the holiday and he is sleeping at the school, so he came over and hung out a while. It was great, and I must tell you a bit about the poker game. The pot, during one game, got up to over $600! When you bet the pot, depending on the next cards laid down, you could either win it, lose the amount in the pot, or pay double what’s in the pot. Sometimes the game gets really crazy and the odds are simply overwhelming to your advantage, but it goes against you anyway. I won the pot miraculously but I couldn’t take all that money, so we decided we wouldn’t play for real money this time. I know I would hate to lose that much money!

The tribal council hosted a basketball tournament over the weekend and it was fun cheering on Kevin and Boo. The Yupiks always give the gusuqs (white people) a really hard time, so me and Betsy decided to make posters and go all out cheering for them.

I’m looking forward to coming back to Texas and seeing everyone. I just have three more weeks, and thankfully most of my lesson plans are done. I’m teaching a computer applications course to the juniors and seniors, and there is no set curriculum for that, so that’s my biggest concern at the moment. Everything else is going very smooth, and we are all ready for Christmas vacation.