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.

Imagination

“Everything you can imagine is real.” … Pablo Picasso

Sarah: Mom, you left your grape jui-, I mean you left your wine sitting over there.

Me: I know. I’m waiting to drink it when I finish on the computer, because it will make me sleepy. Oh, and I also like it better room temperature.

Sarah: (rolls her eyes)

That conversation took place moments ago. Kwethluk is a dry village, meaning that it is illegal to buy, sell, or possess alcohol. Those of you who know me well are probably wondering how I’m doing. Let me just say that the imagination is a powerful tool! I regularly enjoy a glass or two of Welch’s Grape Juice in a wine glass and I call it wine. It is my wine. Believe it or not, sometimes I even fool myself – it actually tastes like wine to me. And, get this – I get sleepy after my second glass! Crazy? I know, right!?

I have definitely come to realize that the relaxation associated with imbibing alcohol is largely psychological, at least for me. I swear I even thought I had a hangover one morning after having 4 or 5 glasses of “wine.” I actually had to take a Tylenol!

On another interesting note, the teachers all got together tonight at Rachel and Kristin’s house (HS Social Studies teacher and 6th Grade teacher). It was a pot-luck. I brought Smoked Halibut and Cream Cheese on crackers. There were also beef enchiladas, guacamole, mashed potatoes, dried salmon, and Akutaq in addition to many other items. It was a feast! Akutaq (pronounced a-Goo-duk), in case you’re wondering, is also known as Eskimo Ice Cream. It is the orange stuff in the white bowl in the picture. It is made by mixing together salmon berries, whipped shortening, and sugar. Before you say, “Ew!” you should try it! It is surprisingly good – I had three servings!

I’m pretty sure I could live out the rest of my days eating dried salmon and akutaq and be quite content.

Journalism

\ˈjər-nə-ˌli-zəm\ the collection and editing of news for presentation through the media

One of the classes I am assigned to teach is Journalism. The school is excited at the prospect of actually having a school newspaper… for the first time in a long time, maybe the first time ever. “What an exciting opportunity!” one might exclaim. Well, yes… and no. You see, there are no newspapers available in Kwethluk other than the Delta Discovery, a locally owned and operated newspaper out of Bethel. The DD comes out once each week, is distributed free in the villages, and has only been in operation for about 3 ½ years. It has been making its way to Kwethluk for less time than that. Therefore, most of my Journalism students have had very little contact with an actual newspaper. Most have NEVER seen a large newspaper.

Add to that the fact that even though the school has one-to-one laptops (a laptop for every student), we are two weeks into the school year and the district has yet to assign the students login IDs. Therefore, there are no, zero, zip, nada computers for the students to use.

Try to teach Journalism to a group of 9th graders in a remote Alaskan village without a newspaper or a computer. Believe it or not, it can be done! I’m doing it!

The most interesting part of class right now is when we do our Journal writing. I (having a computer and projector for teacher use) project an image on the screen and have the students write about it. I tell them to pretend that they are a news reporter (some of them do have TVs and have seen news reports on television) and have just come across this scene. What’s the story? What’s going on? Answer the 5Ws and H (who, what, when, where, why, how). I tell them nothing about the picture until after they have had 10 minutes to write. Then, we discuss. These discussions have been my most teachable moments in Kwethluk thus far. Our first picture was of the new-age bus system that China is building in Beijing. It had been at the top of the Yahoo! news feed over the weekend and provided ample discussion in class Tuesday afternoon.

The next photo for class was of the Running of the Bulls in Spain. It was actually an image of a poster, but the message was the same. While the kids were writing, I had one girl ask me what kind of animal that was. She had never seen a bull. She had never seen a cow, for that matter. When we discussed, I discovered that not one student in the entire class had ever heard of the Running of the Bulls in Spain. Wow! What a teachable moment! They wanted to know what a bull was (a male cow). They wanted to know why only bulls run down the streets. They wanted to know why, why why. It was great. They were interested in class and wanted to know more.

Because of being on a block schedule, we only have class three times each week. So, when we had class on Friday, the picture that I displayed was this one of a community in an area with lots of water around it. The kids wrote furiously for 10 minutes and then when we discussed, they were all certain that it was Napaskiak (a neighboring tundra village). When I asked why, they answered that they could see the tundra and a few of them even identified relatives’ houses. I had to laugh. It was, in fact, a picture of Grand Bayou, Louisiana. Their mouths literally fell open. I explained to them that the "tundra" was actually swampland. I then displayed a map of the United States and showed them exactly where this picture was taken… down at the very southernmost tip of Louisiana – about as far away from Napaskiak as you can get and still be in the United States! Again, they were filled with questions and the discussion was exciting. I explained that the swamp was filled with alligators and people even ate alligator there. The kids all said, “Ew,” in unison and I quickly informed them that the people of South Louisiana would also say, “Ew,” at the prospect of eating seal. The students laughed wildly at this, finding it hard to imagine that people would have never eaten seal before. They loved the fact that where they live looks so much like South Louisiana and want to plan a trip there. Whew! We’ll have to see about that…

Those pictures have motivated my class to see newsworthy items where there was only blank space before. It has brought the outside world to them. It has opened their eyes to the possibilities outside of Kwethluk. Above all, it has motivated them to begin to ask questions. As for me, I've learned that there's more to teaching Journalism than meets the eye!

Mail

Moving to a bush village definitely has its challenges. Something you might not think much about is how your mail gets to you every day. Here, I’ve had a chance to give this considerable thought since I’ve received over 40 boxes here. Some were boxes that I packed and shipped to myself. Some were boxes that came from Amazon.com – I’ve taken great advantage of their free Super-Saver Shipping policy to get things like dishes, glasses, microwave, furniture slip covers, bedding, etc. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ve seen the size of the planes that come in and out of Kwethluk. Sometimes, getting the boxes on those planes is not an easy task because of the size of the cargo holds. Therefore, many boxes get smashed in order to fit – kind of like when I sit on my suitcase to get it to zip shut. I have probably had 7-8 hard plastic tubs destroyed this way – simply crushed – they come to me with holes in the sides or bottom. One tub was apparently so destroyed in transit that the post office repackaged the entire thing in a cardboard box and sent it on to me. Keep in mind that these boxes only had to travel 450 miles within the same state! That’s Alaska for ya!

If I’m lucky, the boxes don’t get shoved into a bush plane for the ride from Bethel to Kwethluk, but rather take a luxurious ride aboard the USPS Hovercraft down the Kuskokwim and Kwethluk Rivers. Yes, folks, this is the only USPS Hovercraft in North America!

It brings in shipments of supplies to our little village twice each week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, every week of the year. Now, that’s really saying something in this part of the country, where the river (it’s highway of choice) turns to solid ice in the winter.

The Hovercraft floats into the village right in front of my house and “docks” about 35 yards from my front door. I use the word “dock” loosely because there is no structure there, simply a mud embankment that has been cleared of brush.

A makeshift, man-powered conveyor belt is quickly assembled and a pick-up truck arrives to be loaded with boxes to take to the local Post Office. It took three trips with a full truck bed yesterday – lots of food supplies coming in for the school year, I suspect.

On my daily trips to the Post Office, which sits right across the road from the school, Ted is always there to greet me. He’s a super-friendly 45ish Yupik gentleman who speaks broken English, practically lives at the Post Office, and always wears a smile. I guess you would call Ted the Postmaster in Kwethluk. When I first got my Post Office box keys (the boxes are free because there is no home delivery here), I didn’t have to fill out anything – just told him my name and he gave me the keys, which are not necessary to pick up my mail – Ted will just hand it to me across the counter.

When I have boxes at the Post Office (which have arrived either by bush plane or Hovercraft), I borrow my neighbors’ 4-wheeler to bring them home. I can fit 4-5 large boxes on it in one trip and, as usual, there are always plenty of kids around to help me load and unload.

That is how I get my mail.

Welcome to My Home

As you walk up to my front door, which faces the river, you’ll see a refrigerator in the yard. I’m not sure why it ended up there or how long it’s been there. However, I think it may find a second life as a fish smoker! The house is built about four feet off the ground to account for the permafrost and occasional flooding from the river. To the right is the home of Kevin and Gina McCalla (principal and his wife) and to the left is a house that has been converted into the 6th grade classroom. The big orange building behind our house is the main school building.

As you approach the front steps and get a closer look up under the house, you will notice all sorts of treasures – mostly there are sleds for pulling behind snowgos (snowmobiles). You can see the exposed pipe because nothing is buried under ground – too wet and too frozen. There is also an abundance of driftwood up under the house from previous floods.

Here is the view from my front door – that’s the Kwethluk River, a tributary of the Kuskokwim River.

Welcome to the Mud Room. This is the first room you walk in to when entering my house – not my idea of a good first impression, but it definitely has its purpose… to contain the mud. I put the rugs down, hoping that would help, but it turns out they are only a hindrance – the rugs are coming up and we will just have a muddy floor that I’ll clean once a week. You can see our boots there, too – standard footwear here – I’ll be carrying my “cute” shoes to school in my backpack. The highlight of the Mud Room is the huge chest freezer that I intend to fill with a bush order of frozen food in the next couple of weeks.

We’re pretty well moved in, now. It took a lot of cleaning and a lot of elbow grease, but we are managing to make this house our home. The pictures in this blog were taken after much of the work was done. However, we do have slip covers coming for the living room furniture, which is very worn, fairly dirty, and horribly dated.

The TV doesn’t seem nearly as small as it looks in this picture – some sort of entertainment center to put the TV on (it’s sitting on one of my bedroom tables right now) would help, but that’s definitely not a priority around here… maybe I can find a local carpenter to make one for me.

The kitchen is great – nice and big with a large dining table, gas stove, and lots of counter and cabinet space.

We even have a stand-up freezer in addition to a large refrigerator/freezer in the kitchen! (yes, freezer #2)

My bedroom is comfortable. However, I still need to clean the dried, dead mosquitoes off the walls and ceiling before I hang pictures – thanks to the bachelors that lived here before us! LOL

I have a big walk-in closet and a large dresser. Noticeably absent is a mirror. The only mirror in the entire house is in the bathroom – about a 12x18 inch mirror over the sink. Now, I don’t consider myself vain, but I do have a mirror on order from Amazon.com to hang over my dresser. Again, no mirrors might have worked just fine for those bachelors, but Sarah and I need something more.

Our bathroom is tiny, but functional. Notice the mirror is so close to the right wall that one has to lean against the bathroom door (or the towel rack that’s on the wall behind the door) to get a full view. Oh, and a special touch is the duct tape on the toilet seat. The second time I sat on that toilet seat, it cracked in half – nice. But, thankfully, duct tape fixes everything from window screens to toilet seats.

The laundry room is a complete luxury to have in the bush and I am SOOOO thankful for mine!

So, there you have it – our new home in Kwethluk, Alaska… Yupik village of 750.

Visitors

Well, it appears that the 4th grade boys in the village have adopted us! They helped us get all moved in and unpacked during our first couple of days in Kwethluk and continue to make daily visits to see us. The actually asked to help us clean, wiping out cabinets and vacuuming the floor. We had between two and eight boys in the house at any given time during those first 48 hours.




… knock knock knock… “May we visit?” They’d call from the front door. We have to be sure to keep the door locked or else they just walk right in, as is okay in their culture. We had to lay some ground rules, especially after the knocking started at 9am after a particularly long night of unpacking. #1 – Not before noon. #2 – Not more than four kids in the house at a time. #3 – Only for two hours once each day. They are actually pretty respectful of the new rules… and I found out later that most teachers only allow the kids over for a couple of hours one day a week. However, April loves playing with the little boys, so here they come!

These quiet little Yupik boys are polite and considerate and very funny. The Yupik culture is a teasing one. When someone teases you, jokes around with you, it means they like you – sarcasm abounds. I love it!

They are also more incredibly helpful than you can ever imagine an eleven-year-old boy to be. Since they are always playing around the school, and we live right behind the school, they are always near our house. I don’t walk to the dumpster with a box of trash (the dumpster is quite a hike to get to) that a small boy doesn’t come up and insist to carry it for me. I don’t bring a load of boxes from the Post Office that I don’t have several boys helping to unload and carry them up the steps to the house.

And quiet. These boys are softspoken, seldom get rowdy in the house, and don’t argue. Wow!

Curious. As they unloaded my frozen meat cooler into the freezer that first night, Vosley asked me, “What’s this?” while holding up chopped rhubarb and Halibut filets. He had never heard of or eaten either one. Unpacking was an adventure, especially when they discovered my hockey equipment, which they promptly put on and began a game on the kitchen floor. We promised to play hockey with them as soon as “freeze-up” occurs.

Now that we're pretty well done unpacking, the kids come over to watch a movie, usually. But, often, they get distracted early on and want to draw. James is a particularly talented artist and I was surprised to see that the first picture he ever drew for us was of a very traditional-looking eskimo. That picture now has a place of prominence on my refrigerator.

“Where are the girls?” you may be asking. Well, it appears that boys dominate the gene pool in this village!


All photo credits go to April D'Water!