As of lately

Hey everybody, I thought it was about time for another update... I guess it's probably a little over due. Well, here you go!

A sweet picture of the mudflats and the bay today... just another beautiful day...


Everybody loves rocks... or is it just me?

Caribou skull... just chillin.

Up close on the caribou skull.

This is Teddy's drying shed, where he is drying a whole bunch of red salmon

Me and the fishies

I have a strange fascination with drying fish...

This is the backyard of Jeremiah Steck, his neighbors have a lot of old equipment.

Here's a picture of the mudflats outside my apartment today, we had some pretty impressive wind and waves a couple days ago, so the mud is especially awesome looking.

A cake that I helped Michelle make for Andrea's sister, brother in-law and nephew. It was awesome having visitors from the outside!

Here's some pictures from a long time ago... Lida visited and we all camped out at second creek. We set up our tents and cooked dinner over a fire. Fun!

Night time is coming. Camping on the beach, another beautiful night. Check out the size of the moon!


Some bear prints that we found on the beach the morning after camping....

When Lida visited we climbed two hill for some serious berry picking.

Here's Andrea, resting after our intense climb!

And me, enjoying the beauty of Alaska.

Things are going pretty good. School is pretty awesome, I love my job. Home is great, friends are super, and everything is just good. I hope you are all doing good. I miss you all...

Ohh Togiak... How I love Thee.

So, I haven't posted any pictures yet this year and I figured you guys were due for some updated photos. So here you go, in no particular order.

We went out net fishing in the river, that's our net out in the water, catching delicious silver salmon


Andrea and I have been doing lots of berry picking. This one is taken on the top of Two Hill, there were lots of big blue berries :)

When I went up river with Lenny we saw 4 grizzley bears!! Thankfully we were in the boat and they were on land! This is one of the smaller ones we saw.

Here's the counselor Robin, with her prized catch from the day we went up river with Lenny.

This is Lenny, he's awesome. He took a couple of us up the river in his boat for fishing and stuff.


Here's me and my first silver salmon of the season. I was very excited!

This is what it looks like up river. There are mountains and stuff too. It's really beautiful.

Ahh fishing... very fun!!

This is what I see when I look out of my window in my house. It's the bay!

This is my house and my 4-wheeler. Not too shabby.


This is a picture of some houses in the village. Pretty nice truck eh?

This was taken when we went out to second creek, that's Andrea and Michelle chillin by the creek. We picked lots of berries that day.

That's the end of my picture reel for now. School is awesome, life is good, and I'm happy to be alive. I hope all of you are good as well!

Back in Togiak!

Ok, I don't want to jinx myself, but so far, this year is amazing. I'm not kidding. I feel like a new person. I have a new place to live, I have a new job, new principal, 6 new staff members, and so far everyone has been great! Here's some stuff that's making me feel great:

• Today I walked on the beach, watching seagulls hang out. It's sunny and warm with big puffy clouds.
  
• Today I gave an older gentleman a ride from the village up the hill, he spoke no english, but was able to use his hands to gesture his great appreciation.
• This week, 95% of my high school math students turned in quality homework everyday.
• This week I heard students say "wow, I'm actually learning something!" and "math is actually kind of fun" and "this is going to be a great year!" and "your class always goes by so fast!"
• This week students actively engaged in discussion about how math problems can be solved.
• Yesterday, my new principal told me that I'm doing a good job.
• Yesterday I hiked to the top of 2 hill with some friends, picked blue berries and admired the view.
  

If things keep up, my blog could get pretty boring because I'll just brag about how happy I am all the time. That is a risk I am willing to take. By the way, my summer was freaking awesome, thanks to all the great people I saw. You should call me and tell me how you're doing.

Last week in Togiak

I'm Done!!!!! I'm on my way out of Alaska as I type this. The last week of school was great, I got my room all cleaned out and stuff. Thanks to Justin, I got to go out on the boat and see big gray whales!

Here's Captain Justin

Here's Dennis and Michelle out on the boat!

We also saw Summit Island, Crooked Island, Round Island, and Black Rock. Also, herring fishing season is about to begin so we got to see lots of huge fishing boats.Here's a boat called the Maverick, I guess it's been on Deadliest Catch. The Time Bandit is also in our bay.

The Bering Sea... and some islands and stuff out there.

Michelle took some pictures of the whales, those may come later.

After the boat ride, Jon and I finished up our painting project. Andrea and Justin thought it would be nice if we painted their son's room for next year. So we painted Joel's room, he is 2, so we thought we'd decorate with some animals and an arctic water theme. Here's Jon Sharp, painting some geese

Here's a Walrus that I painted and a puffin

And here's Jon's whale. I hope Joel enjoys his new room!

Now that I am leaving I know I will miss Togiak. I already can't wait to see all of my friends I've met there again next year. I think about my students and hope that they don't forget everything they learned this year. I'm sad that some of my favorite people are not returning next year. I'm also excited about all the changes next year, new apartment, no roommate, teaching math instead of science, a bunch of new teachers, new principal, new teacher steam house (called a maki) and new adventures lay await.

Now I'm heading back to Michigan. This summer I will visit many places, among them, North Carolina, Nebraska, Montana and Colorado.

I hope everyone has a great summer!!

Spring Flood

I've spoken with many people and they all agree that this is the most snow that Togiak has seen in many years. Everyone here loves snow, so they were all very happy. The only problem is in the spring, the snow melts and the water has no where to go, thus, flood.
Where's the sign indicating a flood?

Hey, look, there's a bunch of water in the street...

Driving in the "street" on my 4-wheeler. I asked Sam, the water has to be up over your tailpipe before your ride will die. Good thing! That's the AC store in the back by the way. Around the corner, kids were paddling around with shovels in a little boat. Who needs Venice when you've got Togiak?

So far, no one's houses have flooded, so hopefully it won't get too much worse before the bay melts and the water will have somewhere to go.

We also made our way over to the airport...Here's my new plane.... ok, not really.

And here's the sign at the airport, basically saying how all alcohol is illegal, as of 1982.

That concludes my fun for the day. Just two more weeks and I'll be on my way back to civilization. See you soon!

Porcupine Stew!

Well, today is a great day, not only is it Saturday, but I also got to see a porcupine, which is always a good time. Justin and Tim set out to get a bear, but since they didn't find any, they settled for porcupine instead.

Here is Justin, posing with his porcupine.

Here are the quills of the porcupine, very impressive!

The porcupine was very heavy to hold.

I was stuck by the quills! Ok, not really, I put them there and did not sustain any bodily harm. Though, they are very sharp!

Here's some quills, they're about as long as my finger!

So, that was fun. In other news, we dissected a shark in biology, the kids were very excited about it. I'm completely recovered from my life threatening flu. I'm going to Dillingham this week WOOHOO! Only 4 more weeks until I get to come home!!! Yay!!

One last thing

I forgot to mention, my last event before falling ill was Joel's 2nd birthday party last weekend. Michelle and I were the cake makers, so we had our own special shot here.

Joel's favorite is fish, so we made him a fish cake, actually we made two fish cakes and a regular cake. No fish were harmed in the creation of these cakes.

We were also celebrating the birthday of Kinka, Theo, Lisa, and Gala.

Alaskans eat cake and ice cream too. Sorry if that's too "boring" for you.

We played Eskimo Bingo and I won a little plastic container full of gum with $3 inside. Someone won a 3 lb bag of rice. I was jealous (you know how much rice costs!?)

ok, back to being sick. peace...

Memories of being healthy...

So first thing my mom says on the phone, "why don't you put more pictures on your blog?" Didn't you read my last entry!? I'm DYING!*** But, dying or not, I aim to please. So here's some crappy pictures. No, I'm serious, they're not very good pictures.

In my fragile and decrepit state, close to the brink, I sit and remember all of the fun things you can do when you're not sick... like snowshoe up mountains.

It was March 23, 2009. Unfortunately, it was doing that stupid snow/fog thing, so you can't tell really that we're on a mountain. So let me give you some perspective.

This picture is from the day at the Gull, but you can see 2 hill and 3 hill in the distance. Brenda, her brother Brad, and I snowshoed to the top of 3 hill. Yes, it's called a hill, but trust me, if you snowshoed to the top of it, you would call it a mountain. It's only 1200 ft tall, but we're at sea level and anyway, I'd like to see you climb it!

Brad and Brenda taking a breather about 3/4 up the mountain.

It was a lot of work!

When we got to the top we noticed there were lots of little bumps, so we picked one and deemed it the official top, here's Brenda celebrating our victory! We climbed all the other bumps too, just in case.

Here are my climbing buddies, Brad and Brenda, chillin with some cool rock formations.

I will always look back in this day with regret... how could I forget to bring a SLED?!


As a parting gift, I will give you a picture from my grocery store. You think your toothpaste is expensive?

Just imagine thinking that you're saving $0.29 by paying $7.10!

ok, well everything is getting cold and dark now... I must go... farewell my healthy friends... may you live to enjoy my blog, long after I am gone.***

***Disclaimer: I might not really be dying. It's probably just a really bad flu bug. I apologize if this dramatization offended you. Also, my mom does care about me. Word.