Day 53

Great news! I didn't get eaten by a bear last night! We didn't see any bears or bear tracks, that's probably a good thing. We also were fortunate not to wash away in the tide.

There were 8 of us that ended up going:
That's Justin, Brenda, Lisa, Me, Andrea, Jamie, Jodi, and Tim. Yep, Brenda brought a tripod. We camped on the beach right near a babbling brook. We took 6 4-wheelers and 3 tents. Me and Lisa shared the little blue one.

We built a fire, cooked some hotdogs and marshmallows, and took to our sleeping bags. I was pretty warm in my 2 pairs of wool socks, parka, snowpants, 3 hats, and sleeping bag rated for 0 degrees. But my nose was still cold. When we woke up this morning there was a layer of ice on the outside of our tents. Here's Brenda, she's pretty happy looking for just waking up.
Then you turn around and see the most amazing sunrise ever:
I love this picture of Jamie, pancakes can change your life. This is proof:Andrea, Lisa and Brenda wait patiently for the most delicious food they will ever taste:
We had pancakes, eggs and coffee for breakfast. We packed up all the tents and gear and took to beach trail. On the way back I quickly stopped to take a shot of this waterfall, pretty impressive, right?
The trip went off without a hitch, but not without a few humorous moments:
-me, falling down trying to get Brenda's 4-wheeler to pull start.
-Lisa, falling on me when she was trying to get into the tent.
-the bunch of us jumping like spiderman to cross the creek
-Lisa, almost floating away in the river when we were crossing on our 4-wheelers
-me, my snowpants getting a giant hole burnt in them from standing right behind Andrea's 4-wheeler when it backfired. (I'm fine)

So there you have it, group camping trip that worked out great. No one died and everyone was pretty happy.

Now back to reality, I get to work for the next 5 days. Bleh.

Day 52

Sha-Zam! I'm still alive and feeling awesome! Life is good (besides the whole, I have to go to work everyday). I guess work is not that bad.

My neighbors got a Wee, so we had a party last weekend, pretty fun stuff. Then it was the week, which lasted 3 years. I've been practically living at the school, I think I should just start sleeping up there, for real.

The sunsets are really beautiful here, so are the sunrises, for that matter. Here's a picture of the sunset the other day.
Last night I went to steam again, I forgot to drink a bunch of water before I went, so I started feeling a little strange. My heart was beating a little fast and it was a little hard to keep my eyes open. Brenda saved me by letting me have some of her water. I'm just not very good at steaming yet, I guess. Anyway, one of the ladies said that last summer she picked 74 gallons of berries. I was very impressed.

Today I went to the store, and paid $5.50 for a half gallon of milk and $5.50 for 4 apples. They actually get some pretty good Gala apples in. Crisp. Juicy.

I went to the post office, I was very excited to get a box from my mom, it had a bunch of food in it! Life cereal, my favorite, and probably about 5 or 6 pounds of nuts. Now I think my diet is complete: berries, salmon, chocolate and nuts.I guess we're going to have fresh salad greens in a couple weeks too. This is my roommate's neat plant growing contraption.
Justin Olson is working on trying to build a shed, he's going to use all this wood from the old school that's full of nails, so I've been helping pull nails this weekend. Fun stuff. It's really good weather today, so I'm happy that there is a project to work on that's outside. Though I should be at the school planning for next week.

Today I learned the Yup'ik word for white person, gosuk.

I saw the most beautiful bird today, it was huge, and all black with a big white V on it's back. I have no idea what it was.

Tonight we're going camping up the beach! I'm very excited. I borrowed a tent from Jon Sharp, who apparently has better things to do than sleep outside on the beach, in weather that might get down in the 20s where bears might eat us. Psh, yeah right. We're going to drive all the way up to 3rd creek, which evidently is passed 2nd creek, which is the farthest I've ever been up the beach. There might end up being like 10 or so of us going. About half of the school staff.

I'll leave you with yet another picture of the tundra at dusk. You can never really get enough of the tundra.
So, unless I get eaten by a bear tonight, I'll be posting more excited enthralling Togiak news later.

yo yo peace out G 5

Day 45

More bad news, Sirius radio doesn't get a signal up here. For real. What the heck. We're way the heck out here with no radio and we can't even get SATELLITE radio. Another reaffirmation that I really am at the end of the world, in case somehow I was starting to think I was still connected to the world in any way. What a silly idea. So, I guess radio will just be added to the list of things that I will live without. I am roughing it, I'm telling you. No car, no coffee shops, no book stores, no sidewalks, no tv, no radio, no restaurants, no movie theaters (though I just found out we can rent movies at the store, which is pretty cool!), no alcohol, no TREES, and pretty soon no daylight! But, instead of having all of that, we have lots of tundra, berries, 4-wheelers, dirt roads, ponds, little houses, steam shacks, and stray dogs. Not to mention the huge bay and the awesome river, FULL of salmon. And supposedly moose and bears, though I haven't seen any yet. So whatever, I guess it balances out.

I didn't do much this week besides work. Lots of work. Physics is killing me. There's no books, no curriculum, no materials to do all these "awesome" labs with, nothing. So, you tell me what I'm supposed to do... I've asked some of my colleagues and mentors and stuff, the first thing they always say is, "dude, just wing it" I love it. To which I reply "well, if I knew enough about physics I would, but I don't, so what's the next solution?" Whatever, something will be decided.

My biology class spent the week trying to learn the organelles, so they made these sweet models from clay, they were totally into it. Here's Damien's model.

My family is all having their annual family reunion in Michigan right now. Makes me sad that I can't be there. Why can't it still be in July? Hm? It's a load, that's what I say.

Last night we had homemade pizza and watched the movie 21, great movie. It made me want to go to Vegas.

I ran all the way to the village today. It's like 4 miles. I didn't know I could run that far, but turns out it's not that hard.

Oh, so I got in my first (and hopefully last) 4-wheel "accident" today. Jon Sharp was at the post office when got there and he let me drive his 4-wheeler back because he felt like walking it. Then I ran into the apartment building because his breaks don't work. Yep. I was screaming and Theo was outside with her cat watching me and Dale came running outside asking if everything was ok. I was going pretty slow by the time I hit the building, maybe 5 mph, I don't know, Jon's 4-wheel doesn't have a speedometer. It dented the metal siding. Whoops. The 4-wheeler wasn't hurt and I was fine, didn't even budge. The main result was me feeling like a ding bat for not down shifting when the breaks obviously weren't going to work. Instead I put my foot on the ground trying to slow down like that. Yeah, pretty awesome, I know.

After all that, Andrea and Brenda called me up and asked if I wanted to go to 2nd creek with them, so we drove out there, pretty fun. Did you know that beach grass grows in Alaska?

Then on the way back, instead of going down the beach and back up in the road, we went through the tundra, which was really fun! It was all muddy and we were sinking in everywhere, I think we were pretty lucky not to get stuck. Supposedly there's mud around here that just sucks things in like quick sand. There have been at least a couple 4-wheelers completely eaten by the mud here. But not today! Woo!

Well, I hope you've all enjoyed this installment of "well, I've got a 4-wheeler, what kinds of stupid crap can I do?"

Day 39

It's been a while, let me tell you, not a lot has happened. Ha. Well, ok, that's not entirely true. But I am enjoying the slower pace of life. Not always having to rush around everywhere.

I guess I can start by telling you about the steaming experience last weekend. Steaming is pretty crazy up here, people have these little shacks for steaming. There are two rooms, one is really hot and small where the stove is, the other is cooler, there's more room to sit and relax. In Togiak the men and women go at separate times, I heard that in other places they have co-ed steaming, no thanks. The hot room is really hot, they really cook you in there, I heard that sometimes they get it up to 350 degrees. When I went we had it at about 260, not too bad. But then they splash water on the rocks-wooo! Hot! Anyway, it's a cleansing thing, it's also very social. You hang out for a couple hours, at least. Good time.

So, this week went by pretty good. I did lots of teaching. The kids did a little learning. Fun times. It's been raining A LOT, so I haven't gotten out a ton. Let me just tell you, it sucks riding a 4-wheeler in the rain without sunglasses. Your eye balls feel like they're going to burn right out of your head. Unless you just close them. which is always exciting too. Went to a teacher's house down in the village last night for some cajun food, that was fun. I also convinced Jon Sharp to help me make a mancala board.

I spent a lot of time sanding yesterday.

Also, in my spare time, I learned how to juggle scarves. Except my scarves are too heavy, so I'm not very good at it. Whatever. In Alaska you gotta have hobbies.

In tribute to the hurricane season, my current issues class made some models of cities which have been hit by different level hurricanes. This was a really fun project that got all the kids involved. Here they are, in order from 1 to 5





Hit by category 1 hurricane, this is supposedly somewhere in Africa?








Hit but category 2 hurricane, those are the twin towers, I think this group was a little confused.








Hit by category 3 hurricane, I think they named it hurricane Ling Ling







Hit by category 4 hurricane, they named it hurricane katrina, even though katrina was actually level 5.










Hit by category 5 hurricane, named hurricane Yo Momma (the blue stuff is water.)



Yep, this was a good project.

Thanks for tuning in to this week's edition of, "Well I'm out in the middle of nowhere Alaska... what am I going to do now?" Have a good day!

Day 31

I've been in Alaska for a month! And I'm still alive! I would say that's quite the accomplishment. So I've taught another week, it was a long week, even though it was actually only 4 days. I won't go into detail about my students and so forth, but I'll just tell you it's different from Michigan.

My physics curriculum finally came (2 and a half weeks into school) so it's going to be fun trying to find all the materials that I will need for all the freaking labs. But I guess the kids will like it because of how labby it is. I haven't looked at it closely enough to figure out if these labs are actually going to teach them anything about physics. We'll see.

Other exciting news, we just had a Step Up marathon, consisting of Step Up on Thursday night, and Step Up Two, The Streets, Friday night. Both excellent movies, I recommend them to anyone.

Oh, Thursday was also Parent night at school, so several of the families came to the school to meet teachers and stuff. It was sweet because these cool Yupik dancers played and danced a few traditional songs, that was awesome. Sorry I didn't have my camera with me, but I can tell you that it was neat.

Today I hiked out past the dump up Two Hill with Mark Snell, middle and high school special ed teacher, and Maddy, an energetic dalmatian. My feet are pretty tired, but my new hiking boots worked great and my feet don't feel as bad as they could after hiking about 8 miles. In this picture you can kind of see the village, waaaaay out there, then the bay just past it. So, the first row of buildings is the school, my apartment and some other newer housing, that's called Togiak Heights, then all the way down to the water is where Togiak proper is.

Look at all those lakes! If you like lakes, Togiak might be the place for you! It was very windy on top of the hill. You could see pretty far, even though it was kind of cloudy.

Well, um, still haven't decided to buy sirius. I got a gas can. I'm about to go steam for the first time. I'll let you guys know how it goes!

Chow!