Teaching In Alaska

Mom: Ms. Adventurous

We like to live it up.

Saving the best for last!

It’s hard to work on classes with all this fun going on around!  Geesh, thank goodness for the rain today!

"Manaqing" with the Steve's (and LouAnn)

Last weekend was a blast.  Justin Steve and I had been talking about going “manaqing” for a few weeks so we finally set a date and time: Saturday at 11:00–he promised to come get me.  I woke early, boiled water for the thermos, made two peanut butter and honey sandwiches, a bag with nuts and choc chips, and also went to the A.C. quick for some yellow yard gloves for driving the Yamaha.  A bag of sour patch kids found their way into my cart, also for the upcoming adventure.  11:00 came around and rolled by into noon.  I decided to set out and find Mr. Steve to get this day started.  Hailey was biking down the street.  Upon seeing my pole, she inquired of my activities and informed me that Justin had been spotted with his brothers driving toward the other end of town.  I drove out in search of my fishing partner, found him and Mikey, Jason, and LouAnn, and we all zoomed back to his house to gather jig sticks.   Justin, Mikey, Jason, and LouAnn all clamored onto my ride and we drove off for a little bit of fishing and a lot of fun.

We tried fishing (very briefly) down the hill behind Bill’s, but then relocated to the boat beach closest to Standard Oil.  We parked and walked all along the beach, over the rocks, along the cliff side, atop the ocean ice (still thick), through the puddles to the barge docking beach.   There we shared our two sandwiches between the 5 of us, ate our snacks and, though I forgot to bring cider or cocoa or tea or anything, we even drank the plain hot water.  We found drift wood and tall dry grass and made a pretty fantastic fire.  Justin did practically all of the work and deserved the credit. Bunny (Elizabeth is Justin, Jason, and Mikey’s mom) came out with her sister, who is LouAnn’s mom and visited for a little bit and took some video of the kids.  Jason left with them to go hunting with his dad.  The fire just got better and better so we used an old board to roast our fish food (sliced hotdogs) for the full picnic atmosphere.

Later that night, shortly after returning the Steve’s and LouAnn to their homes, we all loaded up for a bonfire down at North Beach.  Mike went down early to collect a nice sized wood pile and Carrie and I hauled a couple loads of people to join in the fun: Krystin, Bert, Jessie, Cody, Sara, and Tim.  Jodi drove her own honda and brought noodle salad and cake to share.  The sun stayed shinning like it does in a good Alaska summer; the fire crackled warmly; life is so difficult.

THE OBJECTIVE:  Find your jelly-belly jelly bean

THE CHALLENGE:  It could be hidden a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e

THE RULES: Anything taken apart must be put back together CORRECTLY

THE TOOLS: ladder, screwdriver, hammer, can opener… ect. and clues from other participants

THE REWARD: a dusty old jelly-belly and feeling of personal accomplishment

PARTICIPANTS 2010:

• Dan – ceiling chandelier jack • Bonnie – baking flour container • Frank – hollowed out raw egg  • Leah – Dirty Dancing MV •  Tim- on top of coat closet • Bert- hollowed out law book • Carrie – hall fire hydrant • Mike – taped to cupboard above sink • Krystin- rolled up in paper towel roll • Jessie- zipped into couch cushion  • Jill – sealed in a black olive can (my favorite)  • Cody- toilet seat fish nose • Jodi- taped above coat closet door frame (inside) • Dale – inside crisco container • Bobby- inside thermostat • Tony- above bathroom ceiling trap door • AJ- sealed in yogurt container • Charlee- taped to the back of mom’s quilted wall hanging • Brian- inside sewing room door handle  • Robin – freezer pees • Linda- floor lamp light socket  • Jake- window blinds pull string  • Pauline- taped inside guitar  • Tristan – taped behind fridge  • JD- under dish drying rack • Scotty- behind light switch cover

Our second year hunt was even better than the first.  Three dining room tables were pulled out into the hall to fill with various hot dishes, desserts, and entrees.  Dan and Bonnie walked over and revealed an entire tray full of sushi (half filled with halibut, half with shrimp), and Frank and Leah prepared a scrumptious ham for the occasion surrounded by a moat of grapes.  Not to mention aguduct (eskimo ice cream) and salmon from Jodi and Dale, potato salad, green bean casserole, mac and cheese, straw berries, jello, cranberry nut bread, and on and on.  Needless to say, no one went hungry.   Hmmm!

My favorite hidden jelly-bean: I steamed a can of black olives above boiling water until the label pealed nicely from the can without tearing.  Setting aside the label to reapply later on, I carried the toasty metal can with me into our apartment shop conveniently next door and drilled a jelly-bean sized hole in the center of the can (3/8 in worked just fine).  At this point, it is important to remember to drain the liquid out of the can, because it does leak (even through duct tape) and ruin your reapplied label.  After draining the can, slip the jelly bean inside the hole, duct tape the entrance, and use a fast drying super glue to re-attach the label (I needed to use a steamed off corn label having learned the draining lesson the hard way).  Voila!  A sneakily concealed jelly-belly jelly bean!

Luckily she only needed to open two cans before finding her egg...

Suggestions are welcome for jelly bean hiding locations in the 2011 Ultimate Easter Egg Hunt.

After a misleading week of toasty 15 – 20 degree weather we were struck with a cold front that dropped the temperature from 11 above to 20 below zero within the school day.  I made the 5 minute walk to school today and reached the school with frosty eyelashes and a partially frozen nalgene of water.

-18 F, -33 with windchill

This past weekend I became the owner of a Yamaha 4-wheeler, paid in full: my first vehicle purchase ever.  I bought it from Dan Eide, our principal and family friend.  He gave me a tutorial on how to change the oil last Saturday laying on my back on the ice when it was much warmer than it is today.  The machine is too cold to start at the moment, but come next fall I plan to be all over the place camping and fishing and berry picking.  Watch out.

This is Bernelle and Kameon perched up on top.

I have a few pictures from the past three months to catch up on.  Christmas in Cook was a blast.  We played outside on the lake, stomped through the snow, ate tasty Christmas treats at big family celebrations, and rested up for the new year.  Mom and Dad were greatly missed, but we kept them involved by checking in and I was lucky enough to meet up with them on my return trip through Anchorage.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures to share.

This was on a few hour hike after a pretty nice snow fall.  The walk was only a couple of miles and on a perfect day.  We drank hot tea before heading back up the trail toward the car and home.

Outdoor adventures since returning to Saint Michael after Christmas have been minimal, but I did set up a walk to Whale Island at the end of January with some of the kids.  I couldn’t let a winter pass without visiting the island.  Last year my companions were Master Son and Trevor.  This year my company was much younger, but just as delightful.   Here they are:

I brought with us a thermos of hot water, a few cups to share among 7, a zip lock bag of trail mix, and two twix bars to break up into pieces.  We snacked on our treats in a stomped down pile of snow at the top of Whale Island surrounded by willows.  The rumble of an airplane broke the silence above and Gavin said, “We’re making the sky jealous; it’s stomach is grumbling.”

The following are some pictures that capture moments of pride and excitement in my easily pleased life.

Basil and parsley fresh from the garden.

My first crock pot chicken noodle experience... Success!

The last food meal picture is a dinner date I had with Charlee.  She admits now to being skeptical but the experimentation turned into a fantastic classy and fresh gourmet supper.  Charisa, a good friend from Tacoma, introduced the idea.  We stir-fried chicken on the stove with sliced chunks of carrot, steamed some rice, and pealed off leafs of lettuce.  The lettuce was used to roll up the chicken and carrots with the rice along with some homemade peanut sauce.  Hm-mm, good!  And Charlee made a salad with avocado, tomatoes and cucumber.  Try it!

Recently I have had some new comments to my blog.  Thanks for checking in!

Last year my Christmas present from B.J. and Erin was an ultra-cool aero garden.  Quite frankly I was intimidated to begin the process and set it all up, but three weeks ago I bit the bullet and decided to dive right in and GROW. (FYI: it is super easy to set up and I never should have delayed the process.)  And look at the results!

A closer look at these beauties….

I was itching to test out my fresh greens, so for breakfast yesterday I whipped up some scrambled eggs with frozen peppers (a prized purchase from labor day weekend visiting with mom), some mozzarella cheese, and ground pepper.  I carefully clipped two leaves worth of the Italian Basil and Purple Basil and tore the leaves over the meal.  Here is the result.

It looked good enough, but now the creation needed to be tested and tried.

Success!

Thanks a million to Erin and Bill for the amazing gift finally put to use!

The past few weeks have flown by.  I was filled with energy when half of the BSSD schools came to our site for the district October Inservice last week.  How fun it was to see friends and goof off and be social!  We watched Yup’ik dancing and drumming, had an evening of square dancing with live music from Nome, and learned how to play the rambunctious game of Field Crumpet (a person over in Stebbins earned three stitches playing this sport during the inservice!)  The weather has been beautiful: sunny and crisp out with a fresh layer of sparkling snow.  Tonight is our halloween carnival.  There were some side-splitting costumes walking through the halls today, hopefully I’ll snap some more shots tonight during the festivities.  Enjoy!

Here Shaun and Linsey are racing in for the final steps of the fun run wearing their hippie rainbow glasses: a gift from the infamous John Lindula out of Elim.

There is some media I would like to include, but until the technology starts to sort itself out.  I do have more on its way!

There are many great pictures to share; enjoy!

Mom: pre-Apollo ride at the Palmer State Fair

Mom: during Apollo ride at the State Fair

Doesn’t she look happy?  She keeps telling me, “Never again!” I don’t understand it.

Jaylyn shared his new puppies with me one afternoon after school.

Then we went and played on the beach…  

and in the water…

“Alap’aar!” they cried (cold!)~ my brave Yup’ik children.

My pant legs were rolled up right there with them.

What a perfect day in the sun.

Now, a few more pictures from camping with Charlee, Carrie, Mike, and Bronco

The wave of all waves.

Jodi’s baby…

Charlee’s baby…

This weekend Charlee invited me on a camping trip across the channel along with Mike and Carrie (Carrie is our new 5th grade teacher and Mike is her fiance).  Bo and Ursula, Charlee’s brother and sister-in-law, motored us across the wavy waters to a small island on the other side along with little Mikel, age 4 ( I think) supervising the journey.  We stayed at Charlee’s families fish camp where she grew up spending her entire summer months pulling in fish nets and enjoying the midnight sun.

Below we have Mike and Carrie on our journey out to camp.  The second picture is Charlee, our instigator for this camping trip, lounging in the sand.

On Saturday I woke up early–the light was just starting to poke through strands of clouds–and went for a walk around the island.  As  I neared my return to camp, Bronco (Carrie and Mike’s dog) greated me and I could see Mike and Carrie sitting out with their backs to me in front of the cabin.  I sneakily and stealthily tiptoed through the tall grass that led up to them taking a few pictures along the way.  Bronco lept ahead of me and I thought for sure my cover would be ruined.  With lightening speed I ducked down into the grass to not be seen and to hopefully capture the perfect picture of the two of them.  I crept forward a few feet more for a clearer shot, only to realize that the figures I had been hiding so stratigically from were in fact some old, rusted metal tanks.  You have to admit, they are a pretty convincing couple.

Oh no!  It seems I am running out of memory room for pictures?  I’ll get to the bottom of this!  More to come: pictures from playing out with kids and looking at puppies, also, Charlee’s Aaroe.

Hello all!  Kristina and I have been having an incredible time so far traveling the buses and trains across southern Europe.  We stepped off the plane a week and a half ago in Madrid, Spain.  After settling into our hotel we took to the streets, found a relaxing and beautiful park known as Retiro and paid 4,50 euro to rent a row boat and glide out onto a huge pond.  It was a glorious sunny day and we felt like the first day in Europe was already the best day.  Thus we decided that at the end of each day we needed to be able to say to one another, “This is the best day of our trip,” making each day better than the last. 

I have so much to say about each location we have been, but so little time and really pictures would make the explainations all the better.  So far we have visited Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, and are now in Venice, spending three nights in each location.  Each stay has been completely unique and marvelous.  We have had incredible luck in transitions and have met some great new friends at our hostels and sitting in parks or on trains. 

Well, I must be off, but until the next post: Cheers!

Tae Kwon Do has reached Saint Michael, and Master Son will be with us for the rest of the school year training children and adults every week day. It is an incredible program and I am hoping to see it really take off. They want for it to be a five year commitment with new Tae Kwon Do masters every six months. Master Son has won my approval, for whatever that is worth. he is so kind and patient with the kids. I want to know all about him but conversation is very limited. I asked him last weekend while teaching him how to play cribbage on our living room couch (which he picked up with impressive speed) how long he had been studying English, and in not so many words he said, “Since I came here.” You can imagine the exchange of charades that have flown back and forth, most “conversations” ending with a shrug and a smile.

Last night Dan came home with a moose, so this morning I was being trained as a moose carver. Dan had hauled the main parts and pieces in for the night and they were laying down the hall on a tarp between the two apartments (Scotty and Trevor’s, and Dan and Bonny’s) beyond all the junk that clutters the space — furniture and file cabinets, boxes and what not. Dan and I would grab one leg between the two of us (he would hook a rope around one ball from the hip socket and I would grasp the hooved end with all the fur still attached) and we would squeeze our way around the hall obstacles, through their front door, and heave the leg up onto the kitchen counter to be carved up into smaller chunks: roast, stew, or burger meat. One leg weighed as much as me: 150 lbs to be cleaned up and vacuum packed. With dry, sticky blood up to our elbows, we made it through three legs before calling it quits to head over to Jodi and Dale’s house for the super bowl party.

That is a picture overview of the process.  Pretty exciting.  And then we were all ready for the game!  Now I need to spend some quality time in my classroom getting ready for the week.