My first Thanksgiving away from home

Monday was not welcomed this morning.

I had a great Thanksgiving weekend, but I fell into "Eskimo Time". I don't know if it is all the villages or just Shishmaref, but people stay up super late and then sleep super late. Whenever I want to go to bed before midnight, everyone always says that I need to adjust to native time. So, we had 4 days with no school. Colleen and I went to bed around 2 most night, and I still got 12 hours of sleep. So I was dragging this morning, for sure.

Thursday evening, most of the village met in the gym for a feast. There were huge pots of reindeer soup all over. Esther, one of my para-pros and the parent of one of my students, invited me to sit with her family. I had soup and homemade rolls. Then some ladies came around with bowls of berries. I usually don't like the berries that are picked locally, but I had some anyway, and they are growing on me. But they were just berries with sugar, not Eskimo Ice Cream.

After the feast, the gym was cleaned up and then there were basketball games. A women's game and a men's game. So that was fun.

On Friday, we had the "Orphan's Thanksgiving". Basically the teachers without families here in town got together and had a big turkey dinner. We also invited the Stenek clan (Ken, Lisa, and the 5 munchkins), Melinda and her kiddos, and Helen brought her twin granddaughters. So it was really nice. And we had the usual Thanksgiving food. So it was nice.

Either than that, I just laid around all weekend. Played cards, watched 3 movies, moved into Season 3 of House. And I found my checkbook! It had been missing for a few weeks. I knew it was somewhere. Ha Ha!

Three week until I go home for Christmas! Time has flown by!

Blogspot is making me angry

Now that I have my own nice new BSSD computer, with pictures uploaded to it, Blogspot is being funny and doesn't show the photo uploading option. Colleen is having the same problem. Everything on the posting page looks weird and it doesn't have the options, like changing the font and uploading a picture. This has been going on for like a month and a half. It has frustrated me and made me not want to post. Sorry.

So, last Thursday, well into November, the famous "October Storms" hit. Global Warming is the cause of the delay. My mom had been telling me for a couple of months that I needed to order my snow pants and snow boots, but I had been putting it off - not wanting to spend the extra money. Needless to say, the waist deep snow on my porch last Thursday forced me to suck it up and make an order.

A view of the storm from the elementary entrance. My house is the greenish one straight ahead.

 

My porch as the snow fell down.

 My footprints walking to the porch. All of these photos were taken at about 5PM. The storm has been going on a few hours. It continued through the night, so there was considerably more snow in the morning.

On Friday night, I was at Rec and Fred Charlie asked if on Saturday I wanted to go fishing with him and Matt. Of course I wanted to go! I want to see as much of the life of a villager as I can. So, he told me to see if I could find some warm clothes and they would call before they came by on Saturday. So I asked a couple of people, and everyone was using there winter gear. So, I wore Under Armor leggings, jeans, three pairs of socks, and my rubber boots. And my coat of course. I had a hat and a big hood on my coat, and some gloves. I thought I would be fine. Fred Charlie saw what I was wearing and wasn't convinced. I said I would be fine, and we headed out. Matt drove the snow machine and Fred Charlie and I rode in the sled being pulled behind. Fred Charlie's dog, Little Crust, ran beside us. We headed out to the frozen lagoon and stopped a little ways out. Matt and Fred Charlie used a big pointy stick tool to dig a hole in the ice. They handed me a fishing stick and made themselves holes. Matt caught a tiny fish, then Fred Charlie caught a tiny fish. I didn't catch anything for a long time, and man, I was getting cold!!! It was cold and windy, so it wasn't so pleasant. I was getting ready to say that I gave up, because I thought I would be warmer if I could just stand and cuddle with myself. Then I caught a nice size smelt!! Tom Brad showed up then, so I gave him my stick. Rachel Stasenko, Kate's mom, showed up too. She was appalled by my choice of clothes. Tom Brad wasn't dressed appropriately either, so he was only there for a few minutes, and I left with him. I was getting a little bit worried for my toes. After I left, Matt and Fred Charlie only caught a few fish each.

Fred Charlie digging the hole.

Matt working on the hole.

 

First hole made!! Pretty sure someone stole that spoon from the kitchen to get the slush out of the hole.

 

Matt and me. I'm obviously inappropriately dressed.

 

I look happy, but I'm freezing.

 

Matt focused on his fishing.

Later, Kate called me and told me that she had heard that I had been fishing in inappropriate clothes. She told me to to come to her house and get some snow pants and boots to borrow until mine arrived. So, Sunday morning, I went and got the gear from Kate and then went fishing with Matt and Fred Charlie again. I also wore my Mad Bomber hat, compliments of the Weeks family from swim team. I was much warmer! But the fish still weren't biting very much. Between the three of us, and two days, we only got like 15 smelt.

On Monday, I saw Matt with his kiddos at Rec, and he said that he had gone fishing and got 90 fish! They said maybe there were seals in the area or the fish just hadn't came down yet, which is why we struggled. But it was a fun experience!

Oh, my boots got here Tuesday, and my snow pants on Thursday, so I am set now. :)

On Thursday and Friday, my preschoolers made Buckeye necklaces! And Ohio State beat Michigan today, so my kiddos gave them some good luck! :)

(Photos added on 01/18/2010)

Catching up...

So, I went to St. Michael for district in-service. It was good, and it was nice to see some friends from other villages. And I made some new friends too.

My friend Shawn and me. He teaching in Unalakleet.

Typical Amy and Amanda face. She teaching in Golovin.

In the evenings, they had some activities planned so that they wouldn't have 200 disgruntled teachers and paraprofessionals. One night they brought over Native Dancers from Stebbins. That was really fun. It was the first time that I had seen Eskimo dancing. It is a little bit different than what I will see in Shishmaref because Shishmaref is Inupiaq and Stebbins and St. Michael are Yupik. But I still enjoyed it. A lot of people joined in too. I got some videos and pictures.

"Common Dance" - Native Dancers and teachers who have learned it joined in.

A dance about a boy making his first big kill. 

So then, back to school this week. We were preparing for Halloween, which was busy. Party in the class, parade in the school, and the Juniors were holding a dance at the Friendship Center. So I was getting ready for all of that stuff. It went well, but I am glad that it is over!!

On Thursday night, there were some great Northern Lights. I was still at the school at 11PM, doing laundry, and Colleen came to get me to show me a surprise. We went down to the beach where there aren't as many lights, and it was really cool. Later, Ken the science teacher, who is our neighbor, came to get us to look at them again. Ken got some cool pictures.

Northern Lights above the village.

The Aurora above the water.

Dancing Lights.

Ken with the Northern Lights.

I am trying to get the photos uploaded on this post, but it doesn't seem to be working. I will try to add them later.

(Photos Added on 01/17/2010)