A Busy Weekend...

We will be riding together this weekend for the first time in a while...the lady and me are off to Bethel, first for another Saturday Market (keep your fingers crossed, Steve!), and then back later for an evening get-together with actual adults. We are gathering, I suspect, as a Christmas celebration of sorts before the big migration starts later this week. Some sites have already released for the holiday, but the big movement will come this week, by the sounds of it.

In the meantime, the necessities of teacher life have not faded-there are still emergency lesson plans and sub plans and data boards to submit and grades to enter. The deadline for grades comes upon our return, so I would just as soon enter and have done with it. There is also preparation necessary for Christmas around the world on Monday morning, and the pageant on Tuesday night. Finally, we need to put some things away. The snowmachine needs to go back into storage, and our electronics need to get safely stored, in case anyone decides to stop by for an unannounced visit while we are gone.

Assuming that we can get this all together and are not stopped from exiting the village because our work is not done, we can get on a plane on Wednesday night and fly for a few hours and be magically transported to the madness that will be O'Hare airport two days before Christmas.

The only complicating factors then will be traffic and weather.

Assuming a favorable coordination of the stars, we will be home in Cadillac by that afternoon. Home is becoming a much more nebulous concept as I spend more time here. I think that my home now is simply where I am, whether it is Napaskiak or Cadillac. And that strikes me as a good thing. I am not sure that I would choose to lose the people here as a part of my life. The struggle to learn and get better is a hard one, often. It is discouraging a great deal of the time, because it seems as if the goal is constantly moving. But this place is now a large part of me, good and bad together.

I do not think that I could remove it now anymore than I could cut out my heart.