Catching Up...

I have been busy running around a lot lately. We had our big shindig on Wednesday to celebrate making AYP, which involved a lot of serving and carrying, two parts of my special skill set. On Friday, we began the first of our marathon professional development sessions of the year. These babies run on into Friday night, and then pick up again on Saturday morning. With the necessity for lesson planning and classroom organization, they effectively make for seven-day work weeks in the weeks in which they fall. Of course, the commute to work doesn't burn up all that much time, but it does kind of kill the private life effectively for that week. Keep in mind that it is not especially unusual for us to be involved in something or other at the school into the evening hours of any given day. Fortunately, I like most of the people with whom I work, and I enjoy what I am doing. The other nice thing is that we have front-loaded the school year with these activities, so that we are not stuck doing them late in the year, when burn-out is becoming epidemic.

Oddly enough, neither my bride nor I were actually around for the entire escapade. She had to go off to Anchorage for a meeting with the Rose Urban-Rural Exchange Program people. I may have mentioned this organization before. It sponsors exchange programs between the afore-mentioned categories of school, with the goal of promoting exposure and understanding. I believe that this will be the fourth year in which she has led our group in this program. Having the students from Ben Eielson AFB in Fairbanks was quite a bit of fun last year. Our students enjoy their trips there as well. Anyway, she will be there all weekend.

I, on the other hand, got to enjoy the somewhat more prosaic pleasures of an overnight trip to Bethel. As a second-year teacher with the district, I am required to spend three Saturdays in inservices in Bethel throughout the course of the year. We will be spending that time focusing on specific areas of study. I have chosen science, since I am the accidental science teacher for the junior high. I say accidental, because I found out about this kind of by accident. The teacher who was previously teaching that subject gave me her 8th-grade materials, saying, "you'll need these in the future." To say that I was not consulted was an understatement. It has turned out ok, because the district has a fine-looking new set of source materials from which I can work, but it would be nice to be asked. I found the sessions in our focus group enjoyable.

I got to Bethel by boat on Friday evening, which meant that I was strolling down the muddy expanse of Front Street (which runs along the Kuskokwim) in a pair of knee-high mud boots, a foul-weather jacket with a PFD over the top of that, carrying a knapsack. The simple pleasures of a teacher's life in the Bush. I like Bethel. It is variously called the "armpit" or even the "asshole" of Alaska, but I like it. I have to admit that my appreciation has little to do with its esthetic appeal. Ok, nothing to do with that. It is likely the weirdness of the place that works for me: the New York ratios of cabs to humans, the Korean-Chinese-sushi-Mexican fusion restaurants, the grocery stores that sell prom dresses, snow machines, and hamburger (in HUGE quantities). I like to go to Camai for the dancing and crafts. I like the multilingual bathroom signs at the airport. I remember coming back here the second time that I visited, and being drawn in by the Yup'ik-accented English (and Yup'ik) that I heard on the plane out here, and seeing that bare concrete floor in the baggage area and somehow feeling a warmth that I could not explain. When I see it now, I just know that I have come back home. Go figure...

I know that there are troubles galore out here-poverty, alcohol, suicide and assault. There are also many, many people who desperately want to preserve their traditional ways of life and also pass on a better life to their children, people who in that respect are no different than folks back in Cadillac, or anywhere else that I have been in the lower 48.

OK, enough preaching. Anyway, I hung out in Bethel last night after a fun boat ride up with Joe Bavilla. I went over to the Swanson's grocery store to get some cash from the money machine, and immediately ran into two families from Napaskiak, which made for a much more social occasion than the average trip to the bank. I saw a couple of the teachers with whom I came into the district last year there a little later, and we had a pleasant stroll back to the hotel where we were all staying.

After our session was done today, I hit the AC (Alaska Commercial-you can look up its history on Wikipedia) store for five dozen eggs, some potatos and a bag of onions. I was off to the Yute Air terminal in record time, and I even managed a little lesson planning while waiting for my plane (free wi-fi, natch). We took a Cessna 172 for the flight across the river, and it felt like a much livelier plane than the Cessna 207s on which I usually seem to end up. It started to make me think about studying for my pilot's license, but that is an expense which I will forego for the time being.

And now I am in the comfort of my tiny home, thinking about a better night's sleep than last night. I do not care that much for being alone any more, but it is tolerable for the night. A life shared, especially an adventure, seems better to me these days, and we will be back to doing that tomorrow...