Alaska Time

Well, I am officially on "Alaska Time" or "Village Time."  My watch broke the other day, and I was freaking out about it when someone informed me, "It's okay.  There is no real time up here."  Which is definitely true.  No one is really in a rush.  The only thing that starts on time, it seems, is school.  In other words, the Ryynanens and Daavettilas would do well up here :)
I put in another full weekend of work, but I don't think I got ahead at all.  We are trying to figure out what works the best to meet the needs of the kids, so we keep trying different schedules and groupings to find what works.  Our principal is very helpful and laid back.  He wants us to tell him what we should do.  He figures we know the kids and their needs more and takes our input very seriously.
On Friday, Mark and Lori had a bunch of us over for dinner.  It was absolutely wonderful!  One of the guys they had over travels all over, working on things for the villages and schools (he was on the building crew for our new school).  He used to work on the pipeline and had some crazy stories.  Like, did you know that they have so much left over "natural gas" (even more than can be stored) that they have a big burn every 8 minutes.  They burn enough gas to power Manhatten for a day!  We also got to hear some pretty crazy boating and fishing stories from the mighty Noatak River.  Mark and Lori are from Wallace, MI, so we were making Yooper jokes all night-I felt right at home!

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