Taking on Alaska: Round Two!

I know, its been forever…

I know it has been close to forever since I have blogged…year two has easily been a lot crazier than year one. So, instead of filling you all in on everything since my last blog, I will fill you in on the past few weeks. We have had a teacher transfer to Kivalina from another village to be our Pre-K teacher until the end of the year. We have had an aide come from another village to help me out with one of my kiddos and she is living with me, normally I would not be fond of this, but, we are getting along wonderfully. But wait, there is more! This week we have had 17 military personnel at the school conducting sports physicals in the hallway, performing surgery on animals in our science classroom and doing dentistry in our pre-k classroom…with all of this we have also had ski instructors from NANANORDIC, there has been 9 ski instructors taking our students, community and teacher cross-country skiing during the day. With all of this going on I have captured some pictures for your viewing pleasure. With only 3 weeks of school left the kids are crazy and the teachers are even crazier. I will post pictures…

Spring Break started yesterday, and as you can tell (since I am writing this at 12:21am my hours are already messed up! BUT because of that Emma left my house tonight at midnight and saw some amazing norther lights, so her Fonger and I went out to capture them. Here are a few pictures, nothing special but at least you will get the feel :)

Well, I am sure some of you assume I have died…or at least given up on blogging. WRONG! I have been so busy since coming back from Christmas Break. Wait. Rewind. Christmas Break, ahhh yes, home sweet home. Where I ate all my favorite foods, visited all of my favorite people and got to relax. Now. Back to reality where I have a job to do. We are all under pressure because state testing for our kiddos is only 8 weeks away. Final formal observations have taken place and recommendations have been made to the district office for contract offers. Our principal will be returning on Monday after her second week the month of being out of the village for trainings, this meaning I have been filling in. When she is gone I have a whole new outlook on the school, she is an amazing person. Being “principal” is a large job to take on, and boy oh boy is it exhausting. I also have slowed down on the blogging due to the fact that our internet has been very temperamental since returning from Christmas. It sometimes works and sometimes does not work. We have gotten some snow, not nearly as much as this time last year, but its snow. I have totes of melted snow (water) for when we run out of water, whenever that may be. I have been sick the last week with some stomach issues, thinking its from the water, after process of elimination anyways. I feel like this blog was me just rambling, so I think I will sign off for now…as always, thank you for the continued thoughts and prayers, it keeps me going when its dark and cold! Stats: Daylight: around 4 hours a day Temp Lately: -8 (without windchill) Days until School is out: 109

Always Something…

This was the other morning before school, our kids were playing Eskimo Games, leg wrestling. 

Then there is Fonger, “hiding from the big kids, doing morning attendance”. Every morning we have cones out for each class and our Youth Leaders do the morning announcements and we all do the pledge together. 

We have our arrival and departure board in the office and this made my day :) I’M UP I’M UP!!!

And…our amazing principal got us new McQueen School Staff sweatshirts for Christmas, we all wore them today…and happened to have a professional photographer here from Alaska Dispatch (writing a book on barriers of education) who was nice enough to take our picture! 

There is always a funny one…this really captures our staff the best ;)

Here is our current weather…YIKES:

Make sure you take a look at the “feels like” and sunrise and sunset….oh yeah, 7 days until I am on my way to WASHINGTON! xoxox

12.2.12

Of course I had to take another breathtaking walk today. Breathtaking due the the fact that is was 0, feels like -21 with the windchill and breathtaking due to the sights I got to see. As always, seen through the eyes of my camera lens….

Home. 

Well, its coming quickly. Time for Christmas vacation, in 20 more days I will be headed to the lower 48. 

This is my home-made-cardboard-green-painted-chtirstmas-tree. :)

This past week we had an awesome full moon, I tried to capture it the best I could but the picture really does not do the moon justice. 

So, something I have not talked about on my blog yet, is the fact that Rojo was kind enough to put in the time and the love to make me a beautiful parka. My mom and dad were generous enough to buy the fur for my Christmas present. Here is the final product…

I am also standing next to a GIANT mountain of ice. This parka is my new favorite part of any wardrobe I will ever own. The beautiful silver fox makes the parka. I. Love. It. 

Now for walking pictures…

Meet Gizmo. 

Positive Attitudes All Around…

Yesterday we had our teacher-family Thanksgiving. There was WAY too much food, but, the company was great and we even played games afterwards! It was a great way to sped a long weekend. 

Today we took another walk out on the ice, in the past week the ice has spread further in to the ocean and even created an ice wall of sorts. It’s pretty amazing to watch all of this happen. We took our walk around 4:00pm, the sun had been down for 20 minutes at this point in time. Here our the pictures…

and…on another note. Please, click on this link and go read the article, it gives you great background on our village, and even has a few quotes from…me!

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/education-silver-lining-storm-ravaged-kivalina?page=0%2C0

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, we all know what last years Thanksgiving brought…lots of puking after my traditional Eskimo dinner. So, I did NOT partake in this years events…well, the eating part anyway. Today started off with a lovely breakfast with Scott, Emma, Fonger and Dana while we watched the parade. Then…Emma and I ventured to Gary and Rojo’s to help make Eskimo Ice Cream to celebrate Terrell’s first caught ptarmigan! Again, I am so much better at stories through the lens of my camera…

Step 1: Peel the skin off the fat of the caribou (tutu). 

Step 2: Chop the fat with an Ulu. 

Step 3: Put chopped fat in to the pan to melt.

Step 4: wait…wait…wait…wait…wait…wait…wait…

Step 5: Whip it, with it good, with your hand

Step 5 continued: keep going…

Step 6: Add seal oil and milk…while whipping with your hands

Step 7: Add fruit

Step 7: Try it…

Step 8: Walk home with it

That was the end of the eskimo ice cream making :) We then all headed to the school for the community Thanksgiving where they announced that in celebration of Terrell’s first caught ptarmigan there was eskimo ice cream made by “mom, and auntie Emma and Katie”. This is a tradition in the village, when anyone gets their first caught something the family makes food for the community Thanksgiving feats. 

The feast was great! Everyone ate and laughed and shared in prayer.

Then the eskimo dancing started..

What a wonderful, blessed Thanksgiving!