Our Trip Home!

I hope that everyone is having a great holiday season so far! Jimmy and I enjoyed our trip to Bethel, but we were fried after it. After checking papers for three days straight the last thing I wanted to do was write or read anything!

The past two weeks have been pretty good here. Jimmy went back to Bethel the next week to take his Video Production students to an Apple Multi-Media Conference. He had a lot of fun while he was there. During this time I ended up getting a nice dose of pink eye. The doctor said that it should clear up within in a few days. I ended up getting rid of it 10 days later. It was horrible! I had to miss one day of school because of it. I had a hard time seeing and light was too painful for me. Thankfully, it is all gone now!

The last week has just flown by. We only went to school Monday thru Wednesday. On Monday we had a bit of a scare. Jimmy and I both fell asleep with the TV on (we have only one channel). At around 12:40 the emergency broadcast went off and the beeping woke us up. I though it was just a test but then someone's voice came up and said that there was a large earthquake (7.2 on the Richter Scale) somewhere in the Aleutian Islands in Anchorage. They put out a statewide tsunami warning for the state. The bordering areas (us) were at more of a risk. Thankfully they canceled the warning around 1:30 AM.

On Tuesday we had a Christmas party and Jimmy had the pleasure of being a certain big man in a suit with a nice long beard. It was pretty humorous and he did an excellent job with the kids. My kids sang, “Away In A Manager” to the parents and relatives that came. It was nice to see all the students performing and singing to the community. Nobody seems to mind that it was a religious song in a public school. The line between religion and school is more than blurred. It just isn't an issue here I guess.

We headed out of Toksook on Wednesday night and stayed in Bethel. We then flew to Anchorage the next day. Thankfully we got on the mid-afternoon flight because apparently the evening flight had some maintenance problems and didn’t get off until after midnight. We then have been staying in Anchorage for he past two nights. It has been so nice to shop in stores and the malls here. We rented a nice large SUV and have been driving that around the city. We went around to all the stores to get food for the next semester. It is amazing how much cheaper it is to shop for the food and then ship it to yourself. The other companies that charge you usually have quite a bit of charges for their services.

Today Jimmy and I stopped at a place for a quick pizza lunch. When we pulled up there was no parking and it was completely packed. It is called the Moose's Tooth. It was seriously the best pizza each of us has ever had! This is amazing to say because you know how much Jimmy and I both love and have tasted our share of pizza.

Tomorrow we will fly out of Anchorage at 9:42 pm and head to Minneapolis. Here we will have about a 4 hour delay and then we fly to Milwaukee. We are both hoping that we will make it safely and hopefully we won’t have any layovers.

The pictures that you see are of a sunset on our last weekend in Toksook. The other picture is of our plane ride to Bethel on Wednesday.

Break!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Jimmy and I went to a potluck dinner at another teacher’s house and had some amazing turkey. Jimmy didn't try any of course, because he doesn't like turkey. It sure was a nice break off from school for awhile.

Speaking of breaks, Jimmy and I are currently in Bethel right now. We flew out after school today to go to a writing conference. Here we will be grading 1,000 writing tests that the students wrote from all of the villages. It is a much-needed break for Jimmy and me. We have not been off the island since we got here in early August! We will be in Bethel until Friday afternoon and then we will fly back to Toksook. We were very worried today because there was a lot of wind, and they were wondering if he planes would even get out. A lot of times planes don't land in the village because of the danger of such a small plane and strong winds. Thankfully we saw it land and were able to get on when there was a break in the snow. We were surprised to see it was a larger plane than we had come to the village in. It had a total of 9 seats in it!

After we got on the plane with two other teachers from Toksook they told us that we would be stopping at Mekoryuk to drop off some passengers. I looked over at Jimmy and said who do we know from Mekoryuk? He mentioned that Kale, another first-year teacher lived there. When we landed I looked out the window and Kale was waiting to get on the plane. He is going to the writing conference as well. It was nice to see him and hear about his first year experiences in another village.

As I am typing this I feel so happy! Jimmy and I ate hot pizza for dinner tonight from a restaurant. We then went back to our hotel and watched TV and were amazed at the choices (we only have one channel at home), and that we could have Internet in our room! Not to mention the fact that there are people everywhere and we got to ride in an Chevy Avalanche on our way to the hotel. What simple pleasures that you didn’t think you would ever miss.

As we were in the pizza place I kept thinking about home and how much I missed it. Jimmy then looked up and said hey look at that picture. I looked up and there was a picture from Tahquamenon Falls framed on top of the cooler! How bizarre that we were in Bethel, Alaska and they have a picture from my hometown! I asked the owner where he got the picture and he said it was a pretty picture he got at the local gas station up the road to decorate his restaurant. What a small world!

Update!

The past few weeks have flown by! We have had a lot going on. We were both surprised when we realized that it is almost Thanksgiving. The past few weeks have been spent planning, teaching, and relaxing when we have the time. It has gotten bitter cold here and the snow seems to blow all day! Jimmy and I are both looking forward to purchasing some snow goggles so that we can get to school and not feel like our faces are going to fall off. They say that they are a necessity here because the wind blows so much that there are mornings when you will walk out and not be able to see anything. It will be white-out conditions to the point where you can't see where you're walking because you can't open your eyes with the intensity of the wind.

Last weekend was a busy one for Jimmy and me. There was a death in the village, and out of respect all after school events were cancelled. Therefore, they cancelled Halloween and it was rescheduled for Saturday morning. Then on Sunday Jimmy and I both supervised the After School Program's (ASP's) pizza party gym time for three hours. After this we were both busily trying to get prepared for the week.

This week has also been a busy one filled with school events. I had two meetings during school time that I had to go to, as well as ASP. This Friday we had training all day. I think that it was a great break for our students and the teachers alike! We learned about PBS (Positive Behavior Support) and what it would look like in the classroom. It is something that is going to be implemented in the school after Christmas and I think it will alleviate some of the discipline issues that we have been having. I am actually on the committee, which is a really great experience for me. Today (Saturday) Jimmy and I both have our culture class again from 8:30-3:30. Here we are learning about the important stories that are in the Yupik culture.

We are both really looking forward to Thanksgiving. The school puts on a village Thanksgiving dinner the day before Thanksgiving. Then on Thanksgiving we are going to go to the Dean of Students' house to celebrate as a staff. I am looking forward to a short break and some great food! Another adventure that Jimmy and I just learned about is that we will be leaving for Bethel in December for a writing workshop training. Here we will be learning how to score the writing tests that each school has been working on. There are over 2,000 tests that the group of us will have to score over a three-day period.

The picture on top is actually taken today outside of the school. As you can see the snow-machines are already being used. You can even see our yellow house in the background on the left hand side. I hope that everyone had a wonderful Halloween and that you have a great Thanksgiving!

NYO

Well it has sure been another couple of busy weeks here. We thought winter was here to stay. The temperature turned very cold and we had around 5 inches of snow. However, this week the sun came out and mixed with some showers, melted all our snow away. It is now a huge mud pit again; but we are happy to be putting our winter coats away for at least the time being and have gladly replaced them with our stylish mud boots!

Due to the nice weather we decided to take a walk the past two days. The pictures that you see here are from our walk out by the Bering Sea. We walked with a student from my class. While we were down there we met up with Dirk, the 7th grade teacher and his dog. These are pictures of his dog chasing birds on the water/mud because it was low tide.

School has been going well, but it is busy of course. We are getting ready for another round of parent teacher conferences this coming week. This time around they will be student led, which I have never seen before so it will be a new experience for me. We also have Halloween this week and all of the kids are really hyper and excited about it!

This past weekend we went to a NYO (Native Youth Olympics) meet that was held in our school. All the kids from the surrounding villages that are in NYO flew out to our school. The kids then camped in our classrooms for the night and performed in such events as the Alaskan High kick, Seal Hopping, and other various events. It was amazing to see these kids perform and the strength that they had. The one event that we stayed for the longest had two of Jimmy’s students performing in it. The kids could only use one arm to hold themselves up and kick a soft ball with their feet. The ball was then raised and if you couldn’t touch is with three chances then you were out (similar format to high jump in Track & Field). Jimmy’s students both did awesome, and came in 1st and 2nd place overall in the event. Our school took 1st place out of all of the other schools.

Other than that not too much has been happening out here. Jimmy had quite and experience the last two weeks teaching his physical education class how to square dance. He himself doesn’t know how to square dance, but took on the mission. This week his kids got to teach the 3rd graders through the 5th graders how to do it. It was quite chaotic, but it was funny to watch my kids bowing to their partners and joining hands with a member of the opposite sex. They were totally grossed out and tried to be the farthest they could from one another.

In less than eight weeks we will be traveling on four different planes and driving 5 hours to get back to Newberry. We are very excited to see our friends and family again! I hope that all the readers are doing well and that you are enjoying your fall weather! Get outside and enjoy the trees and nice weather for me. They are both something that we don’t have around here!

Our First Snow!

It sure has been awhile since I last posted but the same ole same ole has been happening. The picture you see here is our first snow outside of our yellow house! It has snowed here a couple of times already, but this is the first time that it has stayed. We woke up today and this is what we saw. We keep hearing how warm it is back in Michigan and think about how nice a sunny day would feel like again. We keep wishing we weren't already in our winter coats buttoned up as we are still freezing when we are walking to school in the mornings. However, I am sure that it will get much much worse before it gets any better. I hear that we are in for a rough winter with cold wind.

Jimmy and I have been keeping busy. We have been at school a lot these days working on lesson plans and getting things organized. We are also in the After School Program (ASP) here. It is designed to help students improve their scores on the state test. Many of the students here have failed the state reading, writing, and math tests. To help them improve, and pass the test next time, they are required to come to the ASP for two hours a week. I have it on Mondays with the elementary and Thursdays with the high school. Jimmy has it on Tuesdays with the middle school and with me on Thursdays. This takes up a lot of our time and we don't usually end up getting home until after 6:00. The weeks are starting to fly by because they are so packed. I can’t believe its already October and Halloween will be here before we know it. The kids and staff are really into Halloween and that is all my kids talk about these days. After Halloween it will only be a short while before Christmas is here. We finally were able to purchase our tickets to fly home and we are looking forward to seeing our families and Michigan again!

When it is not weekends we mainly lesson plan and have a chance to relax and watch a couple of our Netflix movies. We have been working hard on trying to get satellite TV. We have spent over 15 hours on trying to get it hooked up. A couple of teachers even volunteered their time to give us a hand and try and fix it. However, after much frustration and disappointment we cancelled our service. We decided that we could live without TV for one year. We do feel very disconnected from the outside world though, and rarely know what is happening outside of our small village. To try and make up for this, we ordered a bunch of magazines to try and get ourselves up to date on what happens outside of Toksook.

This past Thursday something unfortunate happened to us. We came home from school after a busy day at around 10:00 and our house had been broken into. The front door was wide open. We were lucky, and only some money and personal items were taken. However, it did make us feel really uncomfortable and we are taking extra precautions to ensure that it doesn't happen again. The people have been really understanding about it and have offered us many kind words. We were ok though, and nothing too valuable was taken from us.

Other than that nothing much has been happening. Jimmy and I don’t go outside much now that the cold weather has set in because it has just been too muddy. Every time we go somewhere we have to bundle up and wear our mud boots. With the ground freezing we are hoping that we will be able to get out and get some fresh air soon. I hope that when you read this that things are going well in all of your lives. It has been so nice to receive support from all of you. We enjoy and thank you for the messages that you leave on here, notes that you send, and packages!

Rain, Rain, Rain

It has been a good couple of weeks here. We both finally feel like we are getting used to the way things are around here. For one thing we sure are learning to be patient. We got our phone hooked up so we feel like we now have contact back to the world but we are still waiting on Internet and satellite TV. School has been going pretty well here. It’s busy of course, but we are getting used to the routines and the students are getting used to our ways of doing things. There have been rough moments, but for the most part things are looking up.

The rain here has finally begun to stop for a while. Although, right now when I am writing this, is of course raining again. I asked some local residents and they said that there has been a lot more rain this year than in the past few years. We both feel blessed that we get to experience it! We head out in the morning with our light winter jackets and our rubber boots ready for school.

We have also noticed a huge difference in the sun. We used to wake up and the sun would beat us up in the mornings. Now, it has not even started to rise when we are walking to school at 7:00. I am starting to realize that I am going to really start to miss that sun in the wintertime. Marty, one of the other teachers was showing me some pictures of how much snow they get here in the wintertime. I was shocked at the amount that was there! He had to dig out his house in order to get out of it. Now I am used to the snow and all, but this seemed like a crazy amount of it! I liked the pictures that people have shown me with their doors open and all you can see is the snow piled up the whole way up the door. They said that this is the way that you are welcomed to the day in the morning before school. I sure can't wait.

The pictures that you see above are of Jimmy and I. We decided to take a walk out on the Tundra on the big hill area. We never made it however, because the rain started but as you can tell we were prepared as usual. The other picture is of some of the landscape around Toksook. It sure is beautiful around here when it isn't raining!

Berry Festival

It has been a long a busy two weeks here. We are busy trying to plan interesting interactive lessons for our students. Jimmy enjoyed his trip to Umkimuit. He had a chance to bond with his students and joke around with them. It did rain a lot in the mornings when they were there but overall it was nice weather and a fun trip.

The Blackberry Festival was a lot of fun. I (Kerri) was surprised at how many people from other villages were here. Jimmy and I went and helped out at the cross-country race. I was a director to tell students were to go and Jimmy did the scoring for the teams. It sure is a grueling course. I have been on my fair share of rough courses but this one takes the cake. It has a small stream in the middle of two large hills that you have to go up. There is no way you can run up these hills and from where I was standing I got to watch the kids on hands and knees trying to get up. Once they get up that large hill there is another one. They then head back (this is where I was standing). Thankfully the rain held off for awhile while the kids ran. Other than that Jimmy and I just enjoyed our long weekend and relaxed. I have been sick for a while so it was nice to catch up on some sleep and just relax for a while.

Not too much exciting has been happening here. We have parent teacher conferences this coming week so we are trying to gear up for them. We also both have class this Saturday morning for our Alaska certification.

I have not figured out how to add captions yet, so the top picture is of my classroom. The second picture is of Jimmy’s classroom. The third picture is the outside of our school. Notice all the mud? We also added some pictures to our first post one of a whale that we got to see and the other is Jimmy and I in front of a Exit glacier that is receding.

***The pictures that were just added were from Jimmy's trip to Umkimuit with his kids. The other 3 were the ones from the cross country race. In the back of one of the pictures you can see a small figure going up a hill and then on one. This is actually a runner. You can see how tough the course really is now!

Our First Week!

It’s been a very busy first week for the both of us. Sorry to all of the readers that we have not gotten a post out yet. We have both experienced many firsts this past week: our first day of school, our first class, and our first discipline with our new class. It has been an exhausting, but fun week for the both of us. I (Kerri) learned how to Yupik dance with my students on Friday and during the week I took my class out berry picking. They picked raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. My aide then made Eskimo ice cream for the students. It was quite the process, and if you have never seen it before, then you will have to have me make it for you sometime. However, I am not going to tell you what is in it besides berries. The kids loved it! Most of our week has been spent being busy planning exciting lesson plans for the students. Many of the students miss the outdoors during the day, so it is a much happier class if you can get them up and moving. This is quite a struggle for me sometimes but I am beginning to learn the ropes. I also cut Jimmy's hair for the first time this week. There are no barbers in our town, so when we were in Anchorage we purchased a hair cutter so I could cut his hair. I was very nervous about messing it up but was surprised to find that it wasn't that hard and I didn't make it look too bad.

The weather is beautiful up here. It sure makes the kids not want to be in the classroom when it is sunny and beautiful. I begin to wonder, how many more days are there going to be like this before the long winter days start to come. Although it is beautiful today, most days it rains at least once. This past weekend we had hail and a thunderstorm. This is something that is not seen by the island very often. On the clear nights there are beautiful sunsets. They are all sorts of colors and overlooking the sea it is breathtaking. We should take a picture the next time we see one and post it.

Although this past week was very busy we have both been fortunate for the teachers that have reached out to help us at school to learn how things are run. We have spent a lot of time with these people. Last weekend we went over to Nicole and Marty's house for dinner. We ate amazing food (Jimmy and I are still stuck on the Raman and Mac and Cheese college phase) so that we refreshing. After dinner we played a really fun card game called down the river up the river. It is a cross between hearts and euchre.

Other than that not too much has been happening around here. We seem to spend most of our time here at school. At home there isn't too much to do. We don't have any TV yet; no phone, no Internet, and we are working on getting our oven fixed. Thankfully because of my brother, we received Netflix as a wedding gift that has been a fun thing for us to do every time one comes in. This weekend will be a nice break because we have a three-day weekend. It will be a busy one though because it is the Blackberry festival. Many people from the surrounding villages come and celebrate the festivities with us. We both plan on helping out with the cross-country run which is the hardest trail that I HAVE EVER seen! It is through a stream, up a few MAJOR hills, and rough terrain. It will be interesting to see the kids run it!

Jimmy will be leaving on Wednesday with all of the high school to go to a local fishing camp until Friday. Here they will hold their regular classes outside and the elders will come in and make the event even more special for all of them. It will be interesting to see how he handles it considering there will be no showers, or running water. I am sure he will do fine, but I am going to miss him when he is gone.

We Made It!

We finally made it to Toksook Bay, Alaska. We have both accepted jobs here. Jimmy will be teaching Physical Education, Health, Personal Life Skills, Government, Weight Training and Conditioning, and Video Production. Kerri is going to be teaching 15 5th graders. In order to get here it was quite a trip. My brother Chris drove us down to Chicago where we flew to Anchorage (a 6 1/2 hour flight) and we stayed in Anchorage area for our honeymoon. We also visited Mt. McKinley and a few glaciers. We took a crusie and saw whales, sea lions, sea otters, and seals. From Anchorage we flew to Bethel (1 hour flight) where we had new teacher orientation for 3 days. We then got on a 7 seater plane last Friday (the biggest one they have) and flew to Toksook Bay (about an hour flight).

One of the first things that we noticed is that people are really friendly here! We then noticed how muddy it gets! Thankfully we were given some rubber boots as a wedding gift that we have used everyday since we got here. We have been out blueberry picking 3 times now! Dirk Martin, another teacher, was nice enough to show us some of the good spots on the tundra to pick. We have frozen two bags so far for the long winter when we won't have any fresh fruit.

We have been very busy with school training and getting our rooms ready for school that will start on Monday. We are pretty excited about starting the year and getting to meet all of our students!