Arctic Adventures

Happy Halloween!  Instead of celebrating Halloween here, they have "Hallelujah Night" at the school, hosted by the Friends Church.  The night starts off with a "picnic lunch"--sandwiches, chips, apples, and juice.  Next everyone sings some songs, hosted by the minister/priest.  There was also a costume contest.  We voted for "best costume"-- kids that dressed up as biblical characters filed around the gym and we cheered.  The finale of the night was games for the kids.  They divided the kids into age groups and had games with prizes.  Everyone was sent away with a bag of treats.  In Noatak, they have Hallelujah Night in place of Halloween activities, like trick or treating.   Today:  11 degrees... the sun peeked above the mountains at 11:00 am....dipped below mountains at 6:00 pm In other news... I ate "muktuk" the other day...whale meat!  It was oily and VERY fishy.  One of the teachers brought it in during lunch and I tried some.  Also, the ele...

Today was the coldest day so far.  I checked the weather and it says "feels like 12."  BRRR!  It is super windy, so that has to have something to do with it, too.  A few snowflakes in the afternoon, but mainly just COLD.   The sun is rising later and later too.  It's not peeking up until about 10:30 now. One of the 5th graders today jumped on my lap (after school).  "You should divorce your honey and come to me."  HAHA Never a dull moment.... We have a district inservice this week.  All of the schools that scored low on the state test last year are coming here for the inservice.  This means that they have to sleep on our school floor, but I still get to sleep in my comfy bed!  

I volunteered to chaperone the volleyball trip this weekend.  We traveled to Kivalina, the closest village which is right on the ocean.  We had to take a plane because there are no roads connecting any of the villages.  There are 13 volleyball players (co-ed), but only 7 get to travel.  The school charters a plane to bring them to the game.  There were 9 seats-7 players, a coach, and me. It was a super clear day, so I got a pretty sweet picture of Up-town and the school....It's not very good because my camera wasn't exactly ready :) We got to the school and the principal handed me a key and  asked me how you pronounce my name so she can announce before...apparently I had been promoted to assistant coach somewhere along the way.  Later she came running and asked if I knew how to keep score--no one in Kivalina knows how, so I ended up doing the scorebook for all of the games.   We had a few hours before the games started, so the kids were messing around in the gym and were doing ...

Recap of this week: We had a fire drill on Friday and it was FREEZING outside (or so I thought).  My students and I were huddled together staying warm.  I had goose-bumps on my arms, so they were all hugging me and trying to make me warm.  They couldn't believe I had goose-bumps.  "Ms. Kayla, it's because you are white.  You need Eskimo blood in you, then you would be warm."  (PS It was probably 35 degrees, maybe close to 40) Even Beeps (the cook who feeds me every morning, because she wants to "fatten me up") was giving me a hard time.  She was telling everyone to give me their jacket so I could be warm. We began writing biographies this week.  One the first day of a new writing assignment I always model what I expect and we write one together.  So, naturally, we were writing a biography about me to show what I expected out of their writing.  One thing they needed was a "hook" right at the beginning to grab the reader's attention.  So I said, ...

Well the snow is here!  It snowed all weekend, and it's not quite melting yet.   On Friday, the Juniors sponsored a volleyball tournament.   It was co-ed 4 on 4.  Timm (HS Social Studies teacher), Louisa (student teacher from Noatak, her mom teaches Kindergarden), Brent (Louisa's boyfriend), and I played on a team.  The tournament was pretty laid back, just like everything else here.  At 6:00 there were only 2 teams, by 6:30 there were 3, and at 8:00 there were 6 teams.  We didn't even play the championship game  because it got so late.  Timm and Brent worked hard to figure out a bracket that would work (see picture).   A lot of the community comes in to the gym just to hang out, especially the kids.  Here is a picture of me playing "Where's Toni?"  As we were sitting in the gym one of the girls' in my class told me she found my utt (someone with the same name).  "It's my sister.  My mom made her but gave her away."

Time is flying by so quickly!  The movie night with the kids went very well.  20 out of the 29 kids came, and it was fun to hang out with them outside of the school setting.  The team I was on won the mini basketball tournament last weekend.   I also went over to Tina's for caribou soup that her husband David made.  It was VERY good, except for the pieces of tongue stuck in there :)  I bolted before the Eskimo Ice cream came out--whale blubber and berries...Yum! The flu is going around.  On Monday I only had eight kids--apparently, it is pretty violent.  The dividends are coming out soon, too, so all of the kids are telling me their plans for Anchorage and what they are going to spend their money on :)