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!