Rain Rain....






I finally got the importance of "getting out" into the village today.  
The day did not start well.  The kids were pills this morning, and after lunch I had them practicing how to walk in the hallways.  The afternoon improved a little.  In science, we were making models of backbones with wagon wheel pasta, lifesavers, and pipe cleaners.  The kids really enjoyed it, and when I asked the kids how our models were like our backbones and how it helps us move, one boy (who usually isn't 'with' us) raised his hand and said, "the lifeavers FLEX so we can move!"  YAY!!!
Then, Doris and Stan (high school teacher originally from MI has lived up here forever...all his kids have been raised in Noatak) invited me and Alision over to their house for dinner.  We left at 5:00 from the school and started to walk.  They live all the way at the end of town (like a 30 minute walk).  On the way from the school a guy with a truck offered us a ride, so we jumped in :) Then we had a delicious dinner and wonderful visit at Stan's.  They have a gorgeous two story house.  It is the last house in town and set up on a hill over looking the river.  The view is breath taking!
It has been raining way more lately than it has in the last many many years.  The river is SUPER HIGH.  On the way back from Stan's I stopped to take some pictures of the boats.  They are docked right along the side of the river, farther up river than usual because it is so high.  As I was snapping pictures of the beautiful landscape, one of the elders in the village pulled up and introduced herself.  She was all excited to tell me that she just saw two caribou, so we sat and watched for some more.  In the meantime John (teacher) and some more people from the village pulled up.  They had heard over the VHF that there were caribou.  One of the ladies I was talking to was telling me that she was mad that everyone was scaring the caribou.  She said that you have to let the first ones by so that they next ones will follow.  If the first ones never cross, then the ones that come after probably won't either.  Visiting with everyone made the evening very nice! I forgot about the tough morning!
Then a guy was making me an atluks (totally did not spell that correctly), and he finished it today.  He brought it over tonight.  It is like a traditional dress-wear, kinda like a long coat type thing that you wear inside.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Girls Head to Anchorage

Image
The week before Easter, Anya had some appointments scheduled in Anchorage. Around that time gas went up to 15.99 in town. Yep. That's not a typo. $15.99/gallon. Gas is still $5.50/gal in Kotzebue, so we decided we could drive to Kotz and the girls would hop on the jet while the boys filled drums of gas and drove back to town. Our friend is a trooper in Kotzebue so we were able to stop in there to warm up and regroup. Brett went out to get gas and NONE of the pumps were working! It was such a bummer. He didn't even have enough gas to get home, but thankfully we have such kind generous friends that had some jerry jugs he used to fill the machines. Of course Oren ended up driving my machine back and was an absolute champ. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get down there and about that for them to get home too. The Borough was working on making an ice road from Kotz to Noatak. We heard they didn't make it past this tricky spot and stopped to check it out. (The oper...
Read more

Uvlalautaq!

 "Good Morning."  Not really appropriate, considering its 800 pm, but its the only greeting I know :) Guess what I get to (have to) do this weekend?  REFEREE volleyball games!!!  Only here would I even be thought of for that.  In no way do I qualify, for I hardly know the rules!  Apparently, last year Timm, the volleyball coach, had to ref because no one else knew how to.  I guess better me than him... It's been around 10 degrees for the last week, but we still don't have snow!  The frost on the tundra sure looks like snow, but its just thick frost. With the time change, the sun is setting at about 5 now, so it's quite dark by the time I walk home. One of the girls in my class hurt her knee last week and was on crutches for a while.  Finally, today she came in without crutches, so I was talking with her about it and how excited I was to see her walking on her own.  She replied, "I sure pray last night for my knee to get better and I wake up this morning and w...
Read more

A new respect

I have a new respect for all officials.   I think that every coach should have to officiate a game, just to realize how difficult it is.  I had to referee volleyball games this weekend.  That's just one clue to how laid back everything is up here :)  The opposing coach was very loud and outspoken... she definitely made her complaints heard!  It did get a little bit easier with the more games that went on.   This was the only home weekend for the volleyball team, and on Friday the gym was packed.  Everyone was early, just waiting for the game to start.  Saturday was another story.  The games began at 12:30 and at 12:15 the gym was still EMPTY.  Everyone here really likes their sleep.  Community members and students trickled in through out the first match, but there was still only about 1/5 the number of fans as the day before.  They played two matches and a few more people came in for the 2nd.   Another funny story about being laid back:  with two minutes left of warm-ups, we still ...
Read more