Arctic Adventures

I did something I usually never do--I took a sick day.  I was at the school yesterday, miserable with a head cold, so I got stuff ready for a sub for today and took the day off.  It was just what I needed-a day of REST, no work involved!  It's days like today that I am reminded about how truly lucky and blessed we were to end up here, in Noatak.  I got a call that got me out of bed at about 11:30 from a friend in town asking if she could bring me chicken noodle soup and lemon tea.  She stayed for about an hour and made sure I didn't need anything else before she left.  Then, at 3:00 I got another call.  This one from a guy who made an atikluk for me.  (Brett just dropped off the material this morning and he had it made up already!)   He came over to drop it off and then said, "I'll be right back."  He ran to his house and came back with a jar full of....something.  It looked a little suspicious; it was a thick cream but full of little green leaves.  It was his ...

Daylight (before Christmas break) This was as light as it got before we left home for Christmas. Oftentimes the ice fog pretty much blotted out the sun. The sunrise, sunset, and everything in between in about an hour and a half. The sun barely peeks over the horizon and then immediately begins its descent. Hoar Frost Trail to Kotz Down on the River Mountains through the Fog Panoramic It did in fact get cold like predicted. I was talking to the maintenance operator at the school and he said that he always likes when it gets cold so then he knows that the sea ice will be in good shape when it is time to hunt in the spring. If it doesn't get really cold then the ice doesn't freeze up really good and it gets dangerous. You can see in the pictures what they call ice fog. When it gets really cold and stays calm like it is the moisture just sits in a low cloud to about 30 or 40 feet off the groundIt is really hard to describe what -40 feels like. You don't really feel any differen...

I have been trying to get on here for WEEKS with no luck.  It seems that every single moment of the day is used up.  We're back in the groove of things after a wonderful Christmas Break.  Basketball is taking up a lot of time.  Practice is every week night plus the weekends.  One thing you probably don't think of often is how kids in the "lower 48" can just get on a bus every Tuesday and Thursday, drive a short ways, play a game, and come home.  Here, of course, everything is done by plane, so all the games must be played on the weekends.  Fly out Friday, play Friday night, sleep in the school, play Saturday, fly back Saturday night or Sunday.  I am taking the girls to a tournament in Buckland next month.  We will be gone Thursday-Sunday.  I work with a great group of girls-they are fun, respectful, and hardworking.  They are 8-2 so far.  I told the kids that we are expecting a baby this summer and they were hilarious.  They had so many questions and comments: "D...

It hasn't happened yet but looking at the forecast for this week the temperatures are going to drop by about 20 degrees to -40 by Tuesday. After a very nice (by nice I mean above zero, but stormy because it is warm) couple of weeks the temperatures have plummeted again. Negative 20 is the low but warming up a little when the sun comes out. The sun is quickly returning and now it is still pretty light until about 5 pm. This weekend Noatak hosted basketball games. The varsity girls played two games against Kivalina and the middle school boys hosted Kotzebue. On Friday Kayla coached the girls game because the other coach was sick with a sore throat. It was a close game but they ended up losing when their tall girl fouled out and then to compound matters another girl fouled out to have them finish the final 3 minutes with only four players on the floor. They won on Saturday in another close game. The tall girl had 38 points 27 rebounds. On Monday of this past week a few elders came to ...

Finally! We got out and did some ice fishing yesterday. It really felt like its been quite some time since the last time that I went fishing. We went out with Tina and Hilda. They took us to a couple of different spots to try but we didn't get anything :( Kayla headed back home at around 3:00 but I went to another spot with Hilda's husband Thurston. We didn't end up fishing for too much longer because the weather started to get nasty. It was pretty windy and snowing heavily. My hole filled in with snow every five minutes. Even with the fishing extremely slow it was fun to bs with him about fishing and his hunting stories. He liked my homemade gepppu's and was surprised that you could ice fish in Michigan. I told him that is what they did to fish in Lake Superior about 200 feet deep. He thought that was pretty funny to fish in that deep of water. Thurston had a couple of jigging spoons that he made from the handle end of a fork. He said he was fishing with one day with s...

We made it back to Noatak safe and sound. Even with all of the bad weather around we were not delayed anywhere. We got started on our return journey at about 4 pm on Friday the 31st. We decided that we would spend the night at Chad and Adena's and ring in the New Year with them since we didn't get to see much of them because the beginning of our trip was delayed. We rang in the New Year in quiet style to a phenomenal pot roast dinner and the new monopoly card game. It was very nice to be able to visit them for a while. It was also nice to stay there and not have to drive all the way through the night to make our 9 am flight. We had a direct flight to Anchorage from Chicago which was really nice to have even though the flight was long. We arrived in Anchorage around 2pm local time and rented a car so we could do our 2nd half of the year shopping. After getting our outrageous rental car bill from Budget I was a little bit skeptical about renting another car. You would think with...