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!