I know I'm in Alaska when...

It's 35 degrees on September 27 and I’m putting together a dog house with no instructions, 5 inch nails, and a hammer while a crowd of Yupik boys gathers around in amazement that a woman can make a dog house all by herself. Yep, I was racin’ daylight this evening after school, trying to get the dog house ready for Nali to use tomorrow. The weather is turning fast and snow is in the forecast. Winds have been averaging 20mph but may hit 35 again tomorrow – just too cold for a dog to be out in the wind with no shelter to escape it.

While I was working, Nali disappeared for about 10 minutes and came prancing home with a big moose leg bone in her mouth. She was in doggie heaven!

I did make a few boo-boos, but with those super-long-honkin’ nails, it was bound to happen! All in all, I think it turned out pretty good. When I was done with the building, I pulled it up under the house and situated it just so, hoping that the door will be out of the main wind. Then, I gathered dried grass from around the house to make a bed inside. It looks nice a cozy to me!

The huge nails!

Just getting started.

Oops!

Ta dah!

Dried grass for the inside.

It's Time for a Smoke



Cold morning on the river

 Winter is so close that I can feel it, literally! The wind the past few days has been voracious, devouring the leaves from the trees and making its howling presence known. Because of that, my attempt at smoking fish has been a trying one. I’ve smoked fish before, mind you. However, this is my first try in the tundra. There is no place that is completely out of the wind other than inside the house. I started with the smoker underneath a corner of the house but came out to check on it a couple of hours later and the lid had blown off. So, I moved it into our back door mud room but it wasn’t long before our kitchen smelled like a smokehouse. Then, I moved it to the back steps, and bungee chorded it down to keep it from shifting with the wind. It has now been there for 28 hours and the fish is still smoking, slowly smoking.



The Salmon has been brined and prepared for the smoker.

The temps didn’t get out of the 30’s today and with those 30mph winds, it felt like winter… at least it felt like winter in Homer. I took Nali out for a walk and my ears hurt and my jaw was frozen by the time we came in 15 minutes later – a hat is in order for my next venture outdoors, that’s for sure. Locals here tell me that it isn’t unusual for it to be 60 below in the winter. I’m a believer now with this cold wind in September.

I do like winter better than all the other seasons put together. I love the snowy blanket covering everything in its path. I love the howl of the wind. I love the comfort of a warm house after spending too long outside. I love the deceptively sunny days… deceiving you into going outside to enjoy the sun’s warmth, but the frigid air snaps at you the moment you open the door. I love the long nights, giving sloth a reason to come in and bed with you.

The final resting place for the smoker.

However, will I love 60 below and the isolation that brings? Will I love the snow drifting in under the outside door in my classroom? Will I love the creeping cold air as it finds its way through the cracks in the classroom walls? Will I love the fact that the heaters are old and broken in my classroom? I may not love it, but I will savor it – I can promise you that. It is an experience that will mold my soul and shape my future. What’s not to love about that?

Surviving without Survivor

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. So, you can waste your lives drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them. But there are some lines... that are way too dangerous to cross. ... Meredith Grey

Those of you out there in civilization know that this week and last week were the weeks of series season premiers on all of the network channels. Survivor. The Amazing Race. The Office. Grey’s Anatomy. Chuck. Glee. … and my personal guilty favorite… The Jersey Shore. Well, as exciting as that may be for all of you, we don’t have any TV channels here. That’s right. Zip. Zero. Nada. It seems that because our house is located just on the north side of the school and within spitting distance of houses on either side, we can’t get any satellite reception here which means (drum roll please)… NO TV!

Sarah and I have been subsisting on movies, borrowed from friends and rented through Netflix and Blockbuster (both via mail delivery). It’s a hard life and very much a challenge. You see, I am a self-proclaimed Reality TV addict. (The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?) I was beginning to get the shakes.

Our Calendar



Sarah figured out early on that the major networks upload their TV shows online within a few days of the original airing, so she occasionally watches shows that way. However, internet is unreliable at our house and the computer screen is small. We tried hooking the computer up to the TV, but again the internet is unreliable and besides, we couldn’t figure out how to get the picture to show on the TV at all. Bummer, I know!

Last week, Sarah had had enough! She made it clear that on Friday (last night) we were going to have a “TV” night in my classroom – computer hooked up to the big screen projector – a night of all of our favorite shows. She’s even been keeping the calendar marked with the days of our shows so that we can keep track.


TV Night!

 So, last night we did it! We took over a load of snuggies, popcorn, chips, peach tea, and the space heater (just in case). Nali even went with us. We watched Survivor, Jersey Shore, and Grey’s Anatomy! There were times when buffering videos slowed things down a bit, but it was still a real treat! We came home at 10pm with smiles on our faces and a feeling of contentment that only a night of watching TV (with commercials!) can give you.

We are Survivors!

… oh, and it was pretty funny when Jim was locking up the school (there was a basketball tournament going on) and he came down the hall with his headlamp on to see what the noise was in my classroom. I believe he got a good laugh to see us all snuggled in with blankets and makeshift recliners, munching on popcorn, and watching Meredith try to get approved by the hospital psych guy to go back to surgery (Grey’s).

What makes Mother Earth cry?

The trash around the school.

The trash is everywhere. I find it hard to understand. Sarah and I spent 30 minutes picking up trash on the ground around our house after school today, filling 1 ½ garbage bags in that short time period. There will be trash in our yard again tomorrow. I’m not sure if it’s just the kids or if it’s the adults, too. The kids throw their gum wrappers, soda cans, chip bags, everything – it gets thrown on the ground, everywhere. Sarah and I feel like we live in the middle of a landfill.






 We couldn’t stand it any longer, so we went on a rage today, armed with rubber gloves and trash bags, we at least made the area around our house clean. But, the kids have no sense of ownership, of personal space, of taking care of the land. Therefore, the trash will be everywhere, again… soon.

I would think that the native people would take more pride in Mother Earth. I thought that they, above all others, would “leave no trace.” I was wrong. How can these people just use the land instead of care for it? It saddens my heart as it hurts my eyes to look around at the dump they have created.

Commonplace, in our "dry" village.

Other teachers have tried to pick up the trash, but it’s a never-ending process and they eventually give up. So the trash builds. When I asked a co-worker about it, their response was, “It’ll look better this winter when it’s covered with snow.” What?!

Our yard, clean at last!

Those of you who know me well know that I am a tree hugger, a recycler, a re-user. To be so helpless here is very hard on me.

Tundra Highlights

“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way.” … Dr. Seuss

Elementary Cross Country Racers

Another week has come and gone. The frost covers the grass in the wee hours and the tundra is donning its fall colors. As if that weren’t enough excitement, Kwethluk hosted a Cross Country meet last Friday. There were three races – elementary, junior high, and high school – with schools flying in from Akiak, Akiachuk, Oscarville, and Bethel. The races were from one to three miles long and there was even a community-wide Fun Run that evening. And, yes, the rain even abated for us. That brought out droves of people – it was quite an event!



High School Cross Country Racers

 Stefanie, Ashley, and I had to head to Bethel on a 7pm charter for a First-Year Teacher Inservice on Saturday. It feels pretty weird to be a first-year teacher… AGAIN! Anya, our itinerant school counselor, shared the plan ride back to Bethel with us. It was her Birthday! When our pilot found that out, he grinned and said to her, “I’ll give you a roller-coaster ride for your birthday!” To which Anya quickly replied, “And I’ll give you a present of Corn Dogs and Green Beans.” The pilot sheepishly responded, “This’ll be the smoothest ride you’ve ever had!” He certainly delivered.

Ashley (Science Teacher) with one
of the village pups



Anya's Birthday Flight



It was a beautiful flight – fall colors and clear skies. The four of us squeezed into exactly four seats on the plane, but not before announcing our weight to the pilot. This is certainly an anomaly in Alaska. Every time I fly anywhere, the pilot asks for everyone’s weight and documents it in a logbook of sorts. There is no room for vanity out here, that’s for sure! I’ve even had the guy at the ticket counter in Bethel call to me across the room before, “Hey, how much do you weigh?” No matter that there is 15 feet between us, I simply yell back, “One-eighty.” Everybody does it. Nobody cares.



Ashley and Anya departing the aircraft

When we arrived at the Yute airport terminal, baggage claim is a bit of a myth. Boxes and bags are just stacked and taken away – no security, no problem. Heck, there’s no boarding passes or seat assignments – what do they need security for?

Our "luggage" (coolers, boxes, backpacks)



Once we collected our bags and called the LKSD (Lower Kuskokwim School District) DO (District Office) to come pick us up, we collected our bags and headed out to the curb (actually, there are no curbs). Our chariot (named Desire, no doubt) arrived with Ross at the wheel. He seems to be the DO chauffer these days and he drove us the few miles into town.





It truly was a streetcar named Desire!
(or maybe a vanbus full of desirable ladies?!)



Our Bethel Chariot



The inside of our Bethel Chariot.

It was a quick trip, arriving in Bethel at 7:30pm Friday night and then attending the inservice 8am-3pm on Saturday. We had time for a quick trip to the grocery store before heading back to the airport for our 5pm flight back to Kwethluk. However, once at the airport, we were told that Yute had overbooked all the charters and so they were running late. We were 3rd in line for our plane that had to take a group to one village, come back and take another group to another village, and then come back and take us to our village. Those planes must log millions of miles! We finally got back to Kwethluk a little after 7pm Saturday evening.

Fireweed cotton



I spent five hours Sunday (morning until afternoon) working in my classroom. It was beautiful outside and Sarah and I took Nali for a long walk in the late afternoon. We made the loop through Uptown (we live uptown, upriver, as opposed to downtown, downriver) and then headed out Airport Road. On our walk, we noticed that the Fireweed has turned to cotton – a sure sign that summer is over. We walked far enough out toward the airport to see the Kuskokwim Mountains in the distance. That was my goal… to see the mountains.



I miss the mountains terribly. I knew I would, but it’s still hard. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had a 4-wheeler to get out on the tundra, to get out into nature. But, we don’t. All we have is our two feet and those don’t work well in this rain-soaked marshy land. I dream about having a snowmobile (aka snowmachine or snowgo) this winter so that we can have some freedom. There’s not very far one can walk around here and we’re feeling a little penned in. No endless beach to walk. No water taxi to take us across the bay to the mountains. Not even a 4-wheeler to take us to where the berries are, or were… we missed out on that. (sigh)





Updated Home on the Tundra (no range, here)

I thought I'd post some updated pics of our home now that all of our boxes have arrived and we've got the furniture slipcovered and have settled in.

Living Room

My room

Sarah's Room

More of Sarah's room - this is where she does her hair and makeup.

Bathroom (gotta love the ducktaped toilet seat)

Guest Room

Extra Pantry (in the Guest Room)

Odds and Ends

“Camping on the Colorado River was like DisneyLand… Bathrooms with toilet paper… it’s not real life.” – Pauline Morris (good friend and fellow teacher in Kwethluk)

Pauline is Yupik, born and raised in Kwethluk. She switches her language back and forth between Yupik and English as quickly and seamlessly as the river running outside my front door. Having traveled the world, even taken her children to Europe, she has an uncommon depth to her thoughts. Yet, she has the thick accent of a village elder with the native wisdom to match. She is funny (like the quote) and generous (sharing dried salmon every day at lunch). There are two high school Language Arts teachers here… Pauline and me. We have lunch together every day and I am learning about the true culture of the people here through her – the rhythm of the people versus the rhythm of the school. I am proud to call her my friend.

Where Nali spends her weekdays on the run line
(it's raining in this picture so she was staying up under the
house - usually she's running around - the line is 15 feet long)

The days are getting shorter and the weather is cooling off – lows in the mid-40’s and high’s in the low 50’s. But, the rain… the incessant rain. I had planned to go pick berries today – a 6 mile hike (round trip), but the rain may keep me homebound, again. I should have gone yesterday when the rain let up, but I wanted a lazy day at home – after all, it was Sunday. Today, I will pay for that – that ignoring of the rhythm of this place. Here, the seasons and the weather should dictate your schedule, not the calendar or the clock.

My Classroom

Nonetheless, still bound by the clock of western civilization, my schedule here is simple. Weekdays, I get up at 7am and am in my classroom by 7:30, after having put Nali on the run line attached to our house. I prepare for the day (after checking my personal e-mail and facebook – which is blocked 8am-5pm). I teach from 8:30-12:20, then have a 30 minute lunch break when I visit with Pauline, and sometimes Christina (Asst. Principal, Elementary), while I eat whatever the school cafeteria is serving that day – usually something homemade and tasty (meatloaf and mashed potatoes, ham and au gratin potatoes, homemade cobbler). Back to class I go from 12:50-3pm. My Planning Period is at the end of the day, 3-4pm. Students usually come in right after school with questions or to finish up the day’s work so that they won’t have homework. I try to leave the school by 5 and head home to make dinner. Sarah has already come home and brought Nali inside, having wiped her down with a beach towel if it was rainy and muddy outside. Nali is so excited to see me that I immediately take her for a walk along the river (she runs, I walk) while I make my daily phone call to my dad.

Homemade bread with homemade peach jam and a
homemade mocha - out here, everything is homemade!

It doesn’t matter how tired I am, there are no drive-thru’s or pizza deliveries to be had. Dinner must be created, from scratch, every night (unless it’s leftover night). Sarah and I put in a movie to watch while we eat dinner and usually watch another one after dinner (we borrow movies from other teachers and are signed up with Netflix and Blockbuster to receive movies by mail – our only consistent form of entertainment). One of us washes the dishes – we trade off – all having to be done by hand since there is not one dishwasher in the entire village. Then, it’s off to bed to start all over.

Our current stock of movies.

Weekends, I stay up a little later, sleep in a little later, and spend my days cooking (Chicken and Dumplings is cooking on the stove as I write this), cleaning house (the kitchen floor is currently calling my name), doing laundry (yeah, that’s calling my name, too), walking the dog, watching movies, working on lesson plans, writing my blog, and playing on the internet.

Our front steps

Our front steps are metal - and spiky (that took Nali some getting used to). I’m guessing that’s to keep me from having to shovel them too much this winter and to keep them from getting slippery. The entrances to the school are all the same way.

Nali leaps over the above ground pipe on her way to the ramp.

The only “handicapped” entrance to the school is the back door where there is a long ramp that weaves around like the waiting lines at DisneyLand. The interesting thing about this particular ramp is that it has wooden slats nailed across the middle of it every couple of feet which would make for a bumpy wheelchair ride. I’m guessing those also help keep the ramp from getting too slippery (giving your boot something to hold on to) in the winter. However, an even more interesting feature of this ramp is that it ends in the muddy grass, not too far from a large, above-ground pipe. It appears to be far from handicapped accessible in my estimation. But then, I’m not sure how this mysterious handicapped person would make it to the school in the first place – there’s no bus to pick them up. (things that make me go “hmmmm”)

The ramp (see the wooden slats).

This week, school is closed today, Monday, for Labor Day. Tuesday and Wednesday are teacher inservice days (we will participate with the rest of the district via video-teleconference), and then we have class on Thursday and Friday. They lumped teacher inservice days in with Labor Day because it’s Moose Season and attendance will be low at school. The season actually started last Thursday. Students can pick up “Subsistence Absence” forms in the office to have teachers sign if the students know they will be absent certain days for hunting, fishing, or even berry-picking.

Our inaugural issue!
(Pauline's the one dancing in the middle of the picture.)

It’s been interesting to note that even though the schools out here on the tundra have a hard time meeting AYP and the other state and federally mandated definitions for minimal education standards, the students here aren’t “low.” They’re “narrow.” Let me give an example. In my Journalism class, I started by talking with the students about the different departments of a newspaper and we brainstormed ideas for news articles for our own school newspaper. I assigned stories, set a deadline, and thought we were off on the right track. Wrong wrong wrong. The deadline came and went. I gave my class a stern talking to, set a new deadline and sent them off to do interviews.

Front and back pages of our first school newspaper.

The second deadline came and went. I talked to Pauline at lunch about it and she reminded me that these kids have almost no experience with a newspaper – don’t realize that there are even newspaper delivery people in most cities. Wow, talk about a lightbulb moment! Pauline gave me a video to show the class (History Channel Modern Marvels – the Newspaper). We watched the video, talked about it… a lot, and I explained to them about newspaper delivery boys (sexist, I know) throwing newspapers from their bicycles. My students marveled at how a newspaper could be delivered to your front door every day! Breakthrough. Now, they understood why the deadlines were important, why the news had to get out in a timely manner, that the newspaper couldn’t be delivered if there were no articles, and that most reporters have to write new stories every day for a Daily Paper. My students had never heard of such a thing.

Inside pages of our first issue.

I set a new deadline and about 1/3 of the class turned in articles. The paper (skimpy though it was) was printed and distributed. Now, the students understand, firsthand, the importance of meeting those deadlines.

Other examples of their “narrow” experience… We were reading a short story 10th grade Literature (The Open Window) and it described French doors that opened out onto a porch. The kids had never heard of, much less seen, French doors. Time to stop the lesson, find a picture on the internet and show them on the projector what a house like this might look like.

The view from my classroom window on Labor Day.

We were reading a play in Theatre Arts (The Necklace) about a woman who borrowed an expensive necklace to wear to a fancy party (necklace probably worth $100,000 by today’s standards). The students couldn’t understand why that was important, why someone would want expensive jewelry, why it was important to impress other people like that. One student, in particular, kept insisting that a necklace isn’t important. I had to agree, but still get them to understand it’s significance in the culture of the story – turn of the century, Paris.

puddles, puddles, everywhere -
thank goodness for rubber boots

Well, the rain sounds like it’s letting up. The window is open because even though it is cool outside (and we have yet to turn the heater on), the walls of our house are a good eight inches thick, providing much needed insulation for the winter, and that means that whenever I cook (which is very often), the house gets too warm and I have to open the window. Right now, I hear the rain trickling down the metal roof and splashing into puddles surrounded by 2 foot tall grass. There is a dog howling in the distance, beginning to set off other dogs (there are many dog teams here). A truck (I know it’s a truck because there are no cars here) just drove past the front of the school, bumping and splashing through the puddles on the road. Now, it is silent again, except for the dripping outside.

Quyana (thanks) for your patience with my longwinded entry today.