Colds...

Are the bane of my existence. Maybe a little strong, but I don't like 'em. Not one bit. Of course, I have one. Hard to say from whence it came, because there are so many possibilities. Nothing to be too cranky about, because there is nothing to do except get some sleep and try to tamp the thing down before I fly down to Anchorage Friday night. I would rather not wander around for the evening with my head all stuffed up.

Today was pretty much like the day after a long Easter weekend was likely to be, which is to say a little crappy. I probably was not in much of a mood for it, either. We will chalk it up to experience and start back at it again tomorrow. More testing, by the way, although this one is a short one in the scheme of things.

Wish me well with my sinuses-I am going to try to get them under control...

Beautiful Easter

I don't recall what the weather forecast was for yesterday, but I think that it was wrong. The day was beautiful and warm, and melting was taking place everywhere. We had great intentions about getting needed things done, but text messages and phone calls came in inviting us to Paschal feasts. We hit two, had a great walk across the muddy, melting tundra, and took a nap. We did ultimately find ourselves at school, but it was pretty late by that time. Some salvage was done.

While walking back from the second feast, we saw a flock of geese flying in the sky. People had been running excitedly to the windows at the feasts to point out flock after flock. I heard reports last week of swan sightings. Folks here eat them all. This is a community based in part on subsistence lifestyles. There are a lot of hunters and fishers. As one example, I had a bowl of either walrus or seal soup at the first feast that we attended. There was some confusion on my part about which it was. I did certainly season it with a soupcon of seal oil.

Anyway, the return of the birds marks a very important turn in the seasons. Soon, immense flocks of birds, especially waterfowl, will return to their summer breeding grounds in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. The sound of the occasional raven will be replaced by a cacophony of bird calls. This will happen very quickly, and it will signal the end of winter and the beginning of the season of hunting and gathering. The first signs clearly excite the local people. And I was surprised to noticed how much they excited me.

We are nominally off work today, but that is a relative thing. I have two loads of laundry to deal with, and there is an Easter potluck and egg hunt later today at the school. Much to be done in the next 3 1/2 weeks, but it is joyful work...

A Lovely Easter Thus Far...

Stayed up too late, and got up too early, but naps will help...Easter service was a marvel..all of the kids in their finery, Alexei in his tux and bowtie...the shouts of "Christ Is Risen!" Definitely a spirit-lifter if ever you needed such a thing. It is noon and I am hearing stirrings of life outside in the village. I suspect that many people did not hit their beds until 6 am or so...I am sure that the priests did not make it until at least then.

Today will be low-keyed and productive in a quiet way. We need to start packing this place up for moving at the end of the school year. This year, it will be real, not a false alarm as it was for the past two years. Three and a half weeks, roughly to go before that is a necessity. Time to get after it...

Easter Is Nearly Upon Us

10:20 at night looks like 4 pm on a winter afternoon. We are trying to get in a little last minute napping before the services start at 11:30. The Pascha bread has been frosted and decorated and transported to the church several hours ago. I need to shave and shower. I think that I will even put on a tie, seeing how people dress up for the holiday. It is good to contemplate the new spring and the resurrection of life in the North. I read reports on Facebook of swan sightings around here, which means that spring is certainly arriving. It is especially pleasant to contemplate the fact that we have two more days off in which to enjoy the holiday.

Easter this year is much later than it was last, and the path to the church seems to demand mud boots. Many deep puddles exist. Ah, the traditional Easter mud boot-I sure do love the good old Muck Boot Company! They are a great thing to have at this time of year.

We plan on making tomorrow a "work" day. I have some forms to fill out for the senior trip that need to be done, and I need to finish my submissions for AKT2-most of my compatriots have done with it already, and I need to join them.

I hope that all of my readers have a very happy Easter!

Friday!

And a three day weekend, too! How much fun is that?? And Easter tomorrow night! We will have to do some serious napping tomorrow if we are to make it through the entire vigil. We punked out last year at about 3:45 am. There were still a solid couple of hours left. This year will be different-we are going to try to qualify as honorary Yup'ik, and we are determined, as well. Pascha bread has been made and will be transported to the church. I am told that there is a feast on Sunday and that there will be seal available...

I have lesson plans whipped into shape, and I will spend a little time with submissions. Monday will be a quiet day of laundry and taking care of business, then we will start a shortened week on Tuesday.

All of that is far into the future. For now, I am going to enjoy my favorite night of the week...

Better, Much Better...

And not bad, either...I actually managed to have some kind of fun today at this job. Those moments have been in short supply lately. Today was different, and I was glad for it. We talked about topics as diverse as anger management and population growth, and it went pretty well. Nice day, if I must offer an opinion.

Tomorrow marks four weeks from the end of the school year. Not much time at all. We still have a lot to get done, but I hope to enjoy myself between now and then. The weather is sunny, and getting warmer. Spring, and an end to my time here, is likely coming soon. It has been an interesting year, but I will say more about that as I come closer to leaving.

Monday on Tuesday...

Kind of, anyway...kids had been out of structured classes for two weeks due to testing and cultural week, and there was a long weekend to boot. They kind of felt that way, although I wonder if it had more to do with my idea that I had to impose structure on them. I wonder if i aggravated the situation by coming on too strong. By the end of the day, we had a bunch of unhappy kids and a p.o.'ed teacher. Not a great combination. I hope that we all knocked a little rust off and can get back at it in a better fashion tomorrow. I would like a nicer day.

Hmmmm...

An in-service day today, so nothing especially interesting. We scored writing papers, which is always when I listen to the explanations of those who do not grade writing papers about how they arrived at their conclusions. We are provided with a fairly detailed set of criteria for grading, but those who do not regularly teach writing seem to be confused by them. I actually think that they are pretty clear. Anyway, it got done.

The evening should be uneventful from here on out, and that is about all I have to say about it. The sunshine is beautiful, and I am thinking more and more about getting back to Michigan for some rest and relaxation. Period. Only a few more weeks until then. This theme will be sounded repeatedly between now and then.

Let's See...What Else Happened?

So...after I left the performance, I walked back to the Long House hotel, where my trusty snowmachine was parked. It was a lovely day for riding, and I proceeded to do exactly that, getting my heinie back down the river in time to take care of some dogs that were very happy to see me (thanks Eric and Sara), and hitch up Eric's big sled so that I could go out to the airport and pick up the kids and there bags as they returned from Bethel.

Once all of the children had been delivered by the delivery man to their homes all safe and sound, we repaired to the nap room to catch up on neglected sleep duties. Upon awakening, we inventoried the situation and concluded that a trip back to Bethel was necessary for both dinner and groceries. Back on the sled we went, flying back up the river that I had come down only a few hours previously. Dinner was at Dimitri's, a fine Greek food establishment that is closed for the winter. We got in contact with Sara Jung, who happened to still be in town, and she joined us for both groceries and dinner.

Once all was packed in the sled, we zipped over to the gas station and back to PKA. As we came into the village, we could see a beautiful sunset. It was a great conclusion to a very nice day spent mostly out of doors. A few hours later, we turned in for a good night's sleep.

In other news, due to some personnel changes here, I will be teaching junior high by myself next year. It should make for a lively day. I am up for it, but it will be challenging. The new teacher housing is coming along, but will not be ready in time for us to move belongings into it before we leave for the summer. We peeked in the windows tonight, and were speculating about the layout from what we could see. It sounds as if the units will be very nice, and that will be a welcome change from the current housing situation. In other construction news, the state Senate has approved funding to build a new school here, but the entire budget is tied up in an argument between the Senate, the House, and the governor. All three are controlled by Republicans. Can't blame it on the tax-and-spend liberals for a change.

Tomorrow is another day off for my tykes. We teachers, on the other hand, are imprisoned in grading something called the district writing assessment. Fun. I am going to try and spend a little time in the morning getting with the district travel coordinator and setting up reservations for the senior trip. That assumes that I can get a straight handle on who exactly is going, which may prove to be a challenge.

The rest of the school year promises to be fast and furious. In the next five weeks, we will have prom, graduation, grades for everyone else, and we will need to get our stuff out of this house so that we can move it again in August. Much to be done, and AKT2 and my Alaska Studies course as well as senior trip. Fasten your safety belts, it's going to be a wild ride!

Things That Have Happened Lately...(pt. 2)

A good night's sleep, and I am still sleepy. Maybe the second cup of coffee will get it done. For reasons that are unclear, I awoke with a stuffy head and nose this morning. Hope that doesn't stick around.

Back to cultural week...as I explained, my posting was that of manaq stick carving. I was supposed to be working with a local person who would actually guide the students in the process of making the sticks. That person was not there on Monday, or any other day for the rest of the week. I am not sure what happened. That person might have had a conflict that I did not know about. Anyway, the process was pretty simple-cut sticks, whittle them down, cut a notch in the top of the stick, and wind on some fishing line, a swivel, and a lure with a hook. Just kids, knives, and hooks. Nothing could be simpler.

And it was, for the most part. The only casualty was me. I managed to cut my thumb with a freshly sharpened blade while carving a drumstick. Dumb. Not fatal, and it didn't need a stitch. All good. By Thursday, most of the kids were done with their projects, and were anxious to go out and check snares, or to go manaqing. That turned out to be a quiet day on which I actually got some much needed work done.

Some of the other projects were complicated by weather. No one went out fishing on Monday or Tuesday, because the windchill was in the -25 range. Long exposure=frostbite. There were some stircrazy folks walking around, and that was not limited to kids. It is interesting to see how many of the staff find this week stressful. By the end of the week, a lot of kids were doing an extended wander, and I suspect that this will not exist in its current fashion in the future. We will keep the cultural focus, but it may be cut down or dispersed in some way. The current administration does not approve of it in this form all that much, and it will probably look different next year.

We topped off the week with a celebration in the gym, honoring kids that had made an effort during testing week. There were games, prizes, pizza, and ice cream. After lunch, we met to work on our assigned Site Improvement Plan, and then I ran a movie fundraiser with the seniors and the City of Napaskiak. We had a decent crowd for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. After that, I was off to Bethel for an evening of visiting and fun.

My wife had taken a group of kids to Bethel for the culmination of an art grant that the district has had for the past five years. Students from around the district met with elders in their villages to learn traditional stories, songs, and dances. They then worked together to make backdrops and short films to help to tell those stories. The result was a multimedia show called "This Is Who We Are." They performed Friday night and Saturday afternoon. I was able to catch the Saturday show. It was very special, and it was being filmed for a DVD that will be available for sale in about six weeks or so. Above and beyond that, a crew for the Discovery channel show "Flying Wild Alaska" was there with their cameras as well. That bunch has been showing up in various locations around the Delta for the past several days, judging by the Facebook entries that I have seen recently. Apparently the TeeVee can't get enough shows about Alaska these days.

More adventures to follow later today...

Things That Have Happened Lately...

My wife is scandalized by the fact that I failed to post here for nearly a week. I must point out that much of it is her fault. She decided to go off and leave me alone to deal with the stresses of culture week on my own, and now she is surprised that I spent a good deal of it sulking. She clearly does not understand my petulant nature.

It was all in a good cause, and now she is back home, so I can stop pouting and get back to posting. Snappy, huh? It was a week full of things happening of various sorts. With any luck, I can remember them all.

Monday was the first day of cultural week, and I was originally assigned to be in several different places at the same time. I was not sure how to make this work, but it did seem as if it would be a challenge that would be fun. The upshot of it all was that I ended up in the room where manaq stick making was being done, and that ended up being where I stayed for the week. Manaqing is ice fishing-jigging for pike, and it is especially popular at this time of the year. Manaq-ers use a carved stick to move the lure, and pull in the fish. Manaq sticks were going to be especially important, considering the fact that groups of students were scheduled to be going out fishing as part of the cultural week activities.

But now, the telling of the complete story will have to wait for a few more hours. I have been playing out in the sunshine for most of the day, and cannot keep my eyes open anymore. The tale will be told further in the morning...

I've Been Naughty...

Very negligent of this space lately, and I must catch up. It has been an eventful week, and I need to bring the news up to date. But first, we must off to Bethel to get a little dinner and groceries. More later this evening!

Hiding Out...

That's kind of what I have been doing for the weekend. We did not go much of anywhere. We did host roller skating with little kids on Saturday. Other than that, it has been kind of a lazy weekend. We were going to go grocery shopping, but decided not to. It has been windy and cold, and it might be that I am just tired of windy and cold. When we were looking at Google maps on my new phone the other day, we decided that we would see if we could find the house in Cadillac. My wife got excited just looking. I think that we are getting ready to be done with the school year.
The school year may not be ready to be done with us, but there you have it.

I just made plane reservations to fly down to Anchorage on the weekend of April 29, when my bride is attending meetings for the Rose Urban-Rural Exchange. It will be nice to get out of town for a couple of days, and when I return it will be the first of May. Between now and then, we have cultural week, two short weeks, and Easter (which accounts for the second short week). After that, we have three weeks in May, and the last week of school is usually kind of flaky, with kids taking care of last minute stuff, and teachers making sure that grades are entered.

We are short-timers to summer, and it is beginning to be enticing...

Not Sure...

...what to say about it. My masters in Juneau have left a Friday present of sorts on my doorstep, much like the classic flaming bag, and I am trying to figure out how to extinguish it without too much splatter. I want to express my heartfelt thanks for all of the support and love for the past couple of years. It just wouldn't have been the same without that.

We are doing fundraising again this weekend-juniors yesterday, and seniors this afternoon. More "I (heart) PKA t-shirts have been ordered, and now is the time to place your orders, should you feel the desire to support our little senior trip project. I am wearing mine even as I type this to show my full-time devotion to the cause. They are actually nice shirts and pretty sharp looking to boot. If you want one, leave a message at blhicok@gmail.com. 20 bucks and you get to support the class of 2011.

So much for wanton hucksterism. The weather continues, and I have been hearing some conflicting reports concerning river travel. There are reports of 20' wide overflow pools between 2' and 5' feet deep, suggestions that taking a 4-wheeler up the ice was heart-stopping, and the suggestion from Joe yesterday that the ride was "good." I am confused, and I guess that we will try to sort this out today, I hope without swamping the family transportation. I suspect that some of the question will depend upon the tide levels when we go, and that suggests a topic for research...

Testing concluded yesterday, although I heard a suggestion that one more test may yet have to be administered to our unwilling victims. I have received my cultural week assignment, which apparently involves the shop and the construction of ulu knives. Somewhere my dad is laughing at the idea of me in a shop, but I think that it will be fun, and I hope to actually maybe make one of my own. We will see if the situation will allow for that. It will be a week of insulated overalls for me, which is just fine, because the things are handy. I might even consider picking up another pair this summer.

Finally, some of my kids ran in the K300 Junior Classic, a sled dog race for kids ages 13-17. I thought that it would be fun to post a picture that ran in the local paper showing the competitors. My goons are the second, fourth and fifth from the left, respectively. Congratulations, boys!

It Is Still Funky Out There...

...even though the high wind warning has been cancelled. It is windy just the same, and the house is still rattling in the gusts. I can see a lot of water in the slough, as the temperature came up in the last 24 hours or so, and I saw a suggestion that the ride to Bethel was kind of unnerving today. Bummer if it is, because we need to get up there to stock up on groceries this weekend. It could be challenging. I think that we will have a more complete read on things tomorrow, when Joe goes up to collect the vegetable boxes. There are a group of us that get vegetable deliveries from a co-op further down the Pacific coast in the state of Washington. They are reasonably priced, and a good alternative to the offerings in the stores in Bethel.

We have nearly made it through another year of the sacred testing ritual. Several of the classes will take a science test for part of the morning, and then it is done. We will be on to cultural week next week, and I am apparently going to be a bachelor. My bride is taking a group of kids over to a five day gathering sponsored by an arts grant that the district won a few years ago. They are going to be performing a new Yup'ik dance that they have written. The performances will be next Friday night, and I think that I might plan to spend the night in Bethel so that I can attend. I might also catch up with some friends while I am there.

I don't really know what this weekend holds in store, except that we will be doing fundraisers with both juniors and seniors Friday night and Saturday. No lesson plans for next week, so the weekend can be put to some actual good use. That silliness will resume next week, and I think that I will concentrate on it during the week so that I can spend a little time doing other things next weekend.

It doesn't matter, because the weekend is nearly here, and that is a good thing.

Whew!

The wind is rocking the house tonight, and the weather reports suggest that it is going to get more intense as the night and day goes on. I already see reports of snow drifts in arctic entryways. Earlier tonight, the school was nearly obscured by wind-driven snow despite the fact that it is about 100 yards away.

Tomorrow we will stagger through the last of the seventh-grade SBA tests, that for mathematics. It will be interesting to see how that goes. Today's crowd was a little less receptive than it was for the reading test yesterday. Another year, another test...

So, Let Me Tell You What We've Been Up To...

It was a quiet Sunday of the weekend before testing week. Not much was going on. I was thinking about making a few lesson plans, mostly for Monday and Friday. The testing tends to take up a good deal of the rest of the week. My bride had wandered in the direction of the school, ostensibly to get some wrapping paper for Michelle's birthday present. She had been gone kind of a long time for a trip for wrapping paper, but I am used to that. She tends to get stuck over there.

I heard quick steps on the stairs, and the door opened, and she said that I needed to get outside and see what I had done this time. She was laughing, which was a good thing, but I was a little curious about what I might have stepped into now, and how I might have stepped into it. I looked out of the window, and saw a pickup truck with a couple of young guys standing outside of it. They did not look much like locals, or the visitors that we might expect to get around here.

They turned out to be documentary filmmakers. From France. From French TV. A channel called France 3 has been running a show called Thalassa since 1975. The show documents the lives of people who live by and from the sea, or the water. One of them was the camera man and the other was the on-air reporter. The cameraman was named Laurent and the reporter was named Clement. The two of them have been working around the state of Alaska and the Northern Pacific in general, looking for material.

They had been out dog mushing, and had also been out on the river checking nets. They had been set up with a contact that had to drop out of whatever it was that was planned, and they ended up driving down the river from Bethel to see what was going on here. They recognized Chelsea from her picture. On my blog. The one that they had been reading. They thought that she wrote it, but she told them that I was the guilty party. We met and chatted for a while. The weather had warmed up a lot overnight, and it was a pleasant day for a visit. My wife the village dynamo set about to getting them connected with people and events that they could record. They set off to check out the village in more detail, and promised to return and visit the school on Monday. They did, and the kids seemed to find them very interesting. They did some more activities, and set off for other adventures on the evening jet from Bethel.

We also went over to Michelle's house for her birthday, and got invited over to Joe's later on for moose soup and a steam. We both had moose soup. I stayed around for the steam, which was a very pleasant one.

Today was the first day of testing, and my group was actually pretty good about the whole thing. Some of my friends out on the coast actually got work done, but my kids seem to require a little more watching. Maybe tomorrow. There are two more days of school-wide assessments, and then on Friday, a more limited group gets tested on science. Writing and math are next up in line. By Thursday, we will be down to six weeks of school left.

Tonight we bought our tickets to return to Michigan. We need to start packing up the house a little at a time so that we can get ready to move into the new housing in August. Summer is getting closer...

But I Digress...

Back to the subject of yesterday...the previous post was terminated due to its tendency to wander aimlessly...

After a yummy lunch at VIP (sushi, mmm...), we zipped back down the river to good old Napas, and hosted a roller-skating event that the seniors were hosting as a fundraising effort. We are working very hard to raise enough to take them for a nice senior trip. I saw several of my fifth grade students on the way over to the school and invited them. They declined on the basis that that was stuff for little kids, and they were not little kids...hilarious, but correct, as it turned out. The little kids (up to 4th grade) did turn out, and we managed to have a ball and make a little money.

In the middle of the roller skating, some folks showed up looking for t-shirts. My wife hit upon the idea of ordering t-shirts with the legend "I (heart) PKA" on them. PKA is the Federal Aviation Administration airport designation for Napaskiak. We ordered fifty of them and crossed our fingers. We received the shirts Thursday afternoon. By Saturday afternoon, there were seven left. We have had orders from former resident teachers on Facebook. We likely need to make another order. They have been a smashing success. If any readers have any interest in (hearting) PKA, feel free to contact me at blhicok@gmail.com.

In the evening, we had a hankering for ice cream, which is a rare commodity in these immediate parts. It was our "free day" on Game On, so I hopped on the snogo for a quick run back to Swanson's. On the way back, I ran into the uncle of one of my students, who happened to need a ride to Napas. No problem-we are glad to deliver. Ah, the life in the Bush-not for everyone by any means, but rich and varied (and weird) if you like that sort of thing. As I have said on more than one occasion, I can't explain it on esthetic principles, and it is sometimes a love-hate kind of relationship, but this place has grown on me over time more and more. We enjoy our return in the summer, but we are home here as well. Probably a good thing, given the fact that we live here for more than nine months out of the year...

Busy Saturday!

In a very good way. There was just a lot to do. I mailed off some more stuff to the AKT2 folks, so I hope that they will be happy, at least for the moment. We needed groceries, and it was a good excuse to stop in town for sushi, so we did. The maneuvering in Bethel is getting to be very tricky on a snowmachine, as much of the snow has melted from the shoulders. It is tougher to find any place to ride near the roads, and crossing them is an exercise in snogo abuse. I made another run up in the evening, after a brief snowfall, and things were a little better, but the season is quickly changing, and it won't be long before it is just time to park at the seawall and walk or call one of our many fine taxis in Bethel. I may have mentioned this before, but Bethel has one of the highest taxi-to-human ratios in the country. Not bad for a place with less than five miles or so of paved roads. This from the Bethel Chamber of Commerce:

" ROADS: The city of Bethel maintains 21 miles of mainly gravel roads within the city. The state of Alaska maintains approximately 5 miles of paved road, as well as an ice road on the Kuskokwim River that can exceed 100 miles in the winter months."

And there is this helpful offering from the Wikipedia entry for Bethel: "The town's single paved road—about 10 miles—supports a surprisingly large taxicab industry. With 93 taxi drivers, the town has more cab drivers per capita than any other city in the country, making it the unlikely taxicab capital of the United States. Just as surprising, most local cab drivers are Albanian or South Korean immigrants lured north by reports of good money.<sup>[12]

For anyone with an interest in what it looks like on the extensive road system, there is this offering from someone on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVFZAXDFwFU.</sup>

It's Thursday!

Not really. It's really Friday morning. But Thursday got done and so did the usual complement of laundry and dishes. I would tell some funny stories if they existed, but they are probably either not funny in the abstract, or they would take too much explanation. Things are going well, and the kids are good in my room for the most part. I suspect that there may be some changes in store for next year, but that will just have to play itself out.

We are running the pup dogs to the vet today to get their flying paperwork in order for the summer rush. I am looking forward to some time off, but not to paying out the cash to get back-the airfares are insane. We were going to take the seniors back to Michigan to visit, but there is no way to afford it after the airfares nearly doubled. We will go to Anchorage and have a good time there instead.

All else is normal It is April 1st, and it is zero degrees outside right now. It gives us a good track on the river for the next little while...