Lazing Around...

It is 3:57 am...but not where I am sitting. It is time for a leisurely cup of morning coffee with my wife and three dogs all asnoozing. Ah, the vacation life...

It has been a little on the less busy side during the last few days. I have been focusing on taking care of late year business, including ordering a new bike to replace the stolen one. I am excited, and I hope that the store can deliver on the promise to have it in my hot little hands by the end of next week. I just want to touch it-there is no place to ride it now. I know it is silly, but it gets me looking forward to summer and the riding season. I could use the motivation to get myself back on the spin bike when I get back to Napaskiak.

On this last day of the year, I am taking a minute to be thankful for all of the people who make my life good. I hope that they know who they are, because they are too numerous to mention. To all my friends and family, in PKA and Cadillac and points in between, thanks for your support in 2010, and I hope to make 2011 nearly as memorable. You make this silly effort at self-expression worthwhile, and you make the world a little easier to deal with. The top prize, of course, has to go to my loving and supportive wife, who puts up with all of my crap every day of the year, and somehow manages to wear a smile (at least most of the time). Honey-you are the best, and I am a very lucky man.

Happy New Year to everyone!

A Quick Update

We made it back through the air transit system and back to Cadillac with a minimum of fuss...it is nice to be back, and we have been running at a rapid pace since then. We have ensconced ourselves at the decidedly cushy J.W. Marriott hotel in Grand Rapids for a couple of days. Christmas with all of the kiddies was a blast, and we are currently visiting with more family in West Michigan. The necessary appointments all come up this week, and I anticipate a trip to Southeastern Michigan to visit with my family next weekend. It is all a whirl. I will try to post a few photos as soon as I can figure out how to go and find them. For now, it is off to visit some more this afternoon, and then dinner with our friends Ella and Don. There is a steam room here, and I intend to use it this evening and tomorrow morning.

Holidays!!

The Last Monday...

Gone in a flash-the day, the Christmas pageant, the clean-up afterwards. There is just tomorrow and the rush to the airport in Bethel tomorrow night. We are heading to the east coast and what I might have thought of as civilization, and I again have some mixed emotions. I know that we will both be glad for the break, and there are so many people that we want to see back in Michigan. There are all kind of necessities to take care of, such as dentist appointments and dog haircuts. Just the same, it is going to feel slightly alien after four and a half months out here. Maybe even more than slightly alien. I may even be a little intimidated by the thought...weird. I will never understand some things about life, and my reaction to it.

I am going to miss it here.

Wooosh...

Many tasks have been accomplished, some are still left to be done...we have the Christmas pageant tonight. We washed two totes full of laundry yesterday in preparation, and I think that the emergency lesson planning is complete. I even turned in three assignments for my multicultural course. Hell, I even got the responses back from the instructors already!

Today is the day to put away the snow machine-I will have the chance to do it before it gets dark. I don't believe that the lights in the storage building work. Of course, I can always use the nifty little headlamp that my sweetie got me after the "no flashlight" goof-up of a few weeks ago. I believe that we have the electronics just about squared away-some of them are going into secure storage-I do not feel like supplying thieves with them as we did a year ago. I am hopeful that the presence of neighbors here will discourage that sort of activity in our absence.

There is a full day of class today and a half tomorrow. That is all. Of course, sometimes those can seem to be very long. The kids are a little unfocused and antsy. All that any of us want to be is on holiday break. I am sure that we will get through it.

I am very happy with several of my kids, who have been helping with preparing the backdrops for the Christmas pageant. They are showing me some nice signs of maturity.

If I must sum up, and it seems to be a human failing, I would say that I am pleased overall with the way things have gone in the first semester. There is, of course, room for improvement and growth. But I am at a much different place than I was last year at this time.

Sunday Labors

It is time to get it together. We have about 72 hours before we leave for the Eastern Time Zone. We have our list of things that we must accomplish. We just need to get it done.

Changed Plans

We went up to Saturday Market as planned. The visibility was tricky for me, so I left the driving to my better half. I cannot ride with my glasses on, because they fog (or ice)up, and I cannot see the difference between the snow and fog very well without them. On our way back, the fog had increased, and my goggles iced up entirely. Getting back was a challenge.

We had intended to return this afternoon, and things had gotten briefly clearer. However, the fog came back, perhaps even thicker, in the past half hour. We decided that a party, however pleasant, was simply not worth the peril. It will be a quiet evening, with a little local visiting thrown in, for good effect. Fun is nice, but safety is important, and things can get tricky quickly out here. Our best wishes to all our friends in Bethel tonight.

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.