This week was a pretty good one.  It was mellow, which is never bad.  Tim and I worked as usual Monday through Thursday.  Friday we were blessed with teacher inservice.  Inservice is still a workday (it’s not a day off for teachers), but it is such a nice change of pace.  We still have to be at the school for our regular work hours, but since we don’t have students, we don’t have to spend hours the day before preparing lessons.  It’s also nice because it takes less energy to work when you’re not interacting with the students all day.  We always have some sort of assignment or meetings dictated by our school or the district.  This particular inservice was set aside for grading writing assessments that the students had taken previously.  Each essay had to be graded by two teachers and every student in the school (K-12) had participated in some way or another.  Tim and I partnered up and graded 20 essays between the two of us.  It actually wasn’t as time consuming or as painful as we were imagined.  (Although, Tim and I were the slowest pair of graders . . . I like to think that was because we were doing the most thorough job J)  The really nice thing about inservice, is that if you finish the school or district planned activities early, you get to spend the rest of the day lesson planning.  I love having the opportunity to lesson plan between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm on a weekday.  That means I don’t have to spend as much time lesson planning in the early morning, evening, or on the weekend.

    Last week, I ran out of yarn for the current project I have been working on.  Instead of just waiting to get more ordered in, I decided to make Tim some slippers.  However, when I was searching for a pattern on the internet I came across a pattern for crocheted mukluks.  I was pretty excited, since I’ve been trying to find someone to make me mukluks for months.  I know crocheted mukluks are nothing like real, fur mukluks, but it would be a fun project anyway.  I thought it appropriate to use my ivory crochet hook to make a native item like mukluks.  (Thank you Tim)  As requested by Cynthia, I have included a picture of those crochet hooks.  The mukluks were pretty easy and quick to make.  I don’t think they have a lot of functionality, but I can at least wear them around the house.   If I really wanted to, I could put leather on the bottom, but I didn’t really feel like taking it that far.
    I have now regularly exercised for 3 whole weeks.  Thank goodness for Gala for asking me to be her workout partner.  I don’t think I have the motivation to actually workout without a little bit of peer pressure.  It has been fun.  We work out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after school, and I usually try to grab whoever else is in the hallway and convince them to come join us.  We now have 2 or 3 other people who show up each time.  If anyone is interested in working out “together” long distance, we are doing Jillian Michael’s 30-day shred.  It really isn’t that bad and it only takes 25 minutes of your day.  Just be prepared to be tired and sweaty at the end of the 25 minutes.
    This weekend was pretty low key (other than, I almost killed Tim . . . read on), but very nice.  Friday evening, Tim and I stayed home.  I tried a new recipe from the Lee Family Recipe Book: Mexican casserole.  I was bracing myself for Tim not to like it and was pleasantly surprised that he did really like it.  (I love it when he loves easy meals.)  Saturday, we both worked for several hours.  I got my lesson plans done for next week.  I got my lesson plans done for next week!!  I GOT MY LESSON PLANS DONE FOR NEXT WEEK!!!!  Okay, so I may be a little excited about that.  It has been my goal for two years to get planned for the week (instead of just the next day) and it finally happened.  This makes the future week seem so doable and I am greatly looking forward to at least one week of a more balanced lifestyle.

    Okay, so about almost killing Tim . . . that might be an exaggeration.  I few years ago, I dropped a glass jar of pickles in our kitchen.  Tim and I didn’t want the whole jar of pickles to go to waste, so we salvaged what we could and found a different, plastic jar to put the pickles in.  Weeks later, I made us tuna fish sandwiches for lunch, complete with cheese and pickles.  As Tim bit into this delicious sandwich, there was a hard crunch.  Something wasn’t right.  From his mouth, he pulled a shard of glass.  We were both horrified.  If he had accidently eaten that it could have caused a lot of damage.  Needless to say, we threw out the rest of the pickles to avoid any other undetected glass bits.  What does this story have to do with this weekend?  Not much, except that this memory was brought to me when I was making smoothies.  Tim had this great idea that we should make strawberry smoothies.  We were so happy that we actually had ingredients to make a good strawberry smoothie and I personally had been looking forward to it for days.  Tim was in the other room while I was blending everything up.  Unfortunately, as I was blending, the center plastic piece of the blender lid fell into the blender.  Before I could shut the blender off, I heard the crunch between it and the blades.  I had a sick feeling, first, because I was worried I had ruined, not only the blender lid, but the blender motor, and two, I really, really wanted to eat that smoothie.  I decided to strain through the smoothie and find the plastic piece to the lid.  If I found the piece, than we would know that the smoothie was safe to eat.  Luckily, I found the piece.  Unluckily, it was only about two-thirds of the piece.  Memories of the glass-strewn tuna sandwich flooded my mind, but I wanted to eat the smoothie so badly.  I finally confessed to Tim what had happened and asked him what we should do.  We both agreed that shards of plastic are not nearly has deadly as shards of glass and it was worth the risk.  So we carefully ate our smoothies, thinking every seed was a piece of plastic.  Unfortunately for Tim, he had more pieces of plastic than seeds in his cup, and he gave up before finishing.  Our smoothies just weren’t nearly as satisfying with the plastic mixed in. My advice: never make smoothies with plastic or glass.
 
P.S.  It’s 15 degrees above 0 today!  It hasn’t been that warm since before Christmas.

     Kaitlyn and I were very excited for the weekend this week.  This past week at school we worked extra hard, staying late (between 8-9pm) trying to get ahead in lesson plans.  Staying late at school has it’s ups and downs.  On one side, if you can stay focused, you can get a lot planned and your week is a little easier.  However, on the other side, staying late always drains you of their energy.  Ironically, I never really felt prepared this past week.  I guess we stayed late for nothing. To spare you the boring details of daily work, I’ll just comment about our fun weekend.
     On a happy note, the parts to fix our big Can-Am 4-wheeler came in.  For those who don’t know the story let me give you the Reader’s Digest version.  We bought a really cool 4-wheeler and, because of unforeseen shipping complications, had to wait five weeks to get it.  After only three weeks of using it both of our keys broke within the same week.  That’s a story in itself.  Anyway, also because of some more unforeseen complications, we had to wait a few months to get more keys made.  Luckily, after 2+ months of waiting for a replacement key, we are back in business.  I just have to say that sometimes living in the bush is hard.  Most people in the world just don’t understand that one’s options are limited because of where we live.  I was probably in the shop within minutes of receiving my keys to see if they worked.  It was really exciting.  While there I installed a few other things to help both of our 4-wheelers run better out here (e.g. air filter & battery tender).  It’s nice to have two rides again.

     Saturday was a beautiful day, blue skies and a temperature in the positives, so a group of teachers got together and decided to go for a ride out to see “The Gull”. The Gull is an old fishing vessel that washed ashore during a flood/tsunami from years ago.  When the water receded, the boat laid stranded up on the tundra.  It’s been there ever since.  It lies about half way between Togiak and Twin Hills (a smaller village on the other side of the bay).  Our convoy consisted of three snowgo’s (village term for snow mobile) and four 4-wheelers.  It’s been really really cold for a really long time.  Temperatures that cold mean that the snow gets really hard, hard enough to drive on with a 4-wheeler.  Our little convoy did rather well until we got about ¼ mile from the Gull.  The snow was dry yet soft.  We’d forgotten, or rather ignored, that wind picks up dry snow and tosses it to and fro just like sand in a desert.  Once our heavy 4-wheelers hit the soft snow drifts we sank in and got stuck.  Luckily, however, none of the 4-wheelers got too stuck and were all easily dug out.  To be quite honest, the Can-Am two-seater, which we’ve nicknamed “The Beast”, didn’t actually get stuck on the way out.  It blazed a trail for everyone else and made it all the way to the Gull without too much of a problem.  While at the Gull, we all reverted back to our younger selves and began to climb on the Gull, try to get inside, and drive our machines really fast around it.  Kaitlyn and another teacher, Mike Tozzo, were able to make it up on the ship and explore inside, while the rest of us simply looked up and said, “I’m not climbing up on that; you’re crazy!”  We were only at the Gull for about 30 minutes when the wind started to pick up.  Unfortunately, the wind picked up rather quickly and began blowing the soft dry snow over our newly created trails.  Within 15 minutes or so, the wind picked up in speed so drastically that the blown snow was thick enough to obstruct our view of town (only two or so miles over flat terrain) away.  We decided to “go for it” and started to make a convoy back to town.  We were met with multiple situations where we had to get off of our 4-wheelers and push each 4-wheeler out of the snow.  After about an hour inching our way across the tundra (and frozen ocean) we made it back to town.  

     Saturday night we hosted a pizza party at the Phillips with our downstairs neighbor Mike.  We invited a bunch of teachers over and some came.  Any excuse to make pizzas and to have a party.  Anyway, we stayed up way too late and ended up sleeping in and missing part of church. Actually, only I (Tim) missed church because Priesthood Meeting is first on the phone on Sunday’s.  We woke up 6 minutes before Sacrament meeting.  This is one of those situations where it’s very nice to have your chapel in your living room.  Within minutes we were dressed and attending church in plenty of time for role call.  After attending church for 4 hours and talking to my parents, Kaitlyn and I decided to go for a walk.  In the fall we used to go for a Sunday afternoon walk every week, but haven’t done so for a while.  So, we got all suited up and went for a walk.  As we went out we realized that the storm we were trying to escape the day before on the tundra blew big drift on the road in front of our house.  One of the drifts of blown snow was six feet tall.  We were both quite impressed. After returning home we made chicken fajitas for dinner and strawberry milkshakes for desert.  We may be in the bush, but we still have a fun time!

    I told Tim earlier today that it was his turn to write the post, but he didn't really seem too excited about it being his turn.  He finally told me that if I wrote the post today, he would make sticky buns.  Sticky buns?! No brainer.  How does this affect our readers?  You get to hear from me twice in a row . . . and picture me eating sticky buns when I complete this post.
    I'm cheating just a bit with my "picture of the week".  The picture is not from this week at all, but I have no pictures from this week and I realized that I never posted this one in the past.  So, for those of you who have been wondering what in the world a kuspuq looks like, here you are: my first kuspuq, homemade by yours truly and construction overseen by a true blue eskimo.
    This week has been cold.  What's new, huh?  Monday the students were excused from school 10 minutes early.  A storm was coming in that was supposed to be pretty bad.  The secretary made an announcement the last 20 minutes of class to tell us that the buses were coming to get the students and as soon as they arrived everyone would be going home, no ifs ands or buts.  That meant the teacher's were strongly encouraged to go home too.  Tuesday, we were able to hold an entire day of school, but once the day was over the teachers were once again strongly encouraged to get home before the roads got worse.  The best part about Monday and Tuesday was that I actually was on top of my lesson planning enough that when I went home I actually "went home".  I didn't bring work with me.  That hasn't happened in a long time and it felt soooooo good.  However, it was short-lived.  Wednesday I was straight back to working before school, after school, and at home.
    Tim has been making the trek down to the post office every day this week despite the cold weather and the storms. About a week and a half ago, the Can-Am store in Anchorage finally called us to say that they had finished making the keys to our 4-wheeler and they were mailing the keys, our ignition switch, and computer back to us later that day.  You can imagine that we were kind of anxious to receive them. We have owned "the beast" for nearly 5 months now and have been able to drive it for less than 1.  Despite Tim's devotion to mail checking, the package never arrived.  Tim called the company on Friday to get a tracking number and found out the package was still sitting in their store.  (Is there a way to roll your eyes in text?)  Alas, we continue to wait. 
    Although, Tim never returned from the post office with our 4-wheeler keys, he did return on Thursday with frost bite.  He was completely dressed (snowpants, coat, boots, gloves, face mask, fur hat, and goggles), yet got frostbite during a 10 minute drive on his 4-wheeler.  He said it didn't really hurt that badly, but all of the sudden he could feel a sharp sting on his cheek.  When he came inside a piece of his cheek, about the size of a dime, was red and swollen and our coworkers informed him that it was frostbite.  Luckily, it wasn't a bad case of frost bite, so it looked pretty good by the next day.  According to the locals, Tim will now have a dime-sized spot on his check that gets colder faster than the rest of his body.  Several of our students have been coming to school the past couple of weeks with frost bite.  They don't seem too concerned about it, like it is a natural everyday occurrence.
    Thursday evening I flew to Dillingham with Evelyn and Michael (two other teachers).  We had to go to the district office for some science committee meetings on Friday.  Leaving is always bitter sweet.  It is so nice to have a change of pace and a break from the regular school day, but it is no fun preparing for or cleaning up after a substitute.  I was pretty glad to go though.  The science committee is aligning and creating all the curriculum for our K-12 science program.  It's a huge project, but it will be so good when it's finished.  I was told I'm on the committee because of my "strong views".  I'm not sure if I should be pleased by this statement or if I should stop voicing my opinion so loudly.
    I returned from Dillingham just 24 hours after leaving.  It was nice to get back just in time to enjoy my weekend.  Tim and I spent Friday night watching Gattaca.  I haven't seen that movie forever, but I've been considering using clips from it in my Biology class, so it was a good excuse to have a movie night. 
    Saturday Tim and I spent 7 hours at the school. Tim was kind enough to spend about half that time working on my 4-wheeler, which we are no calling "the champ" in stark contrast to "the beast".  We needed a new starter brush and we've known we needed a new starter brush for a year and a half now.  It just took us this long to actually get one ordered.  Without the new starter brush we've had to pull start the 4-wheeler rather than push the button to electrically start it.  My 4-wheeler will now start without having to pull!  Wow, that's cool.  I will never take electric starts for granted again. 
    Today was a busy day!  Tim and I went to church as normal and then in addition attended presidency meetings and a baptism.  In some ways our church meetings are shorter than normal and in other ways they are longer.  A typical day of church in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lasts 3 hours: Sacrament meeting, Sunday School, and Relief Society/Priesthood.  (Also, typically, meetings are physically attended . . . not here though :) ) Because we don't have to take time to move from room to room in between meetings, we shave off about 20 minutes.  However, relief society and priesthood can't meet at the same time in our branch since we only have one phone line.  I also teach primary.  Normally, primary happens at the same time as Sunday school and relief society, so those who teach primary don't attend sunday school and relief society.  Instead of attending church for the regular 3 hour block, Tim starts with priesthood meeting at 9:00 am, I join him at 10:00 am for sacrament meeting and sunday school.  By 11:40 Tim's meetings are over and relief society begins for me.  Directly after relief society, I have primary, which ends at about 1:30 pm.  Between the two of us we are "at church" for 4.5 hours.  As mentioned earlier, today I also had a presidency meeting with the primary and we "attended" a baptism.  There is a sister in Galena who traveled to Anchorage to be baptized.  Since she will be in our branch, our branch president wanted to give us all the opportunity to join in.  We were able to call into the service and sing the songs with those in Anchorage and hear the talks and prayers.  It was pretty cool.  Needless to say, it's been a full day, even though I have spent the entirety of the day in my living room!

    One thing we are blessed with in Togiak is beautiful sunrises.  I feel like we may overdue the number of sunrise pictures we post, but I couldn't help myself.  I sat down on the coach this morning to listen to church and this was the view I had while I listened.  You can't complain about that.
    This week went really well.  Monday was the last day of break, so we saw all the staff returning that hadn't made it back yet.  Tim and I spent most of the day at the school lesson planning and preparing for the new semester to begin.  It is always a bit overwhelming to consider the huge responsibility we have of educating kids and also how time consuming it is going to be to fulfill that responsibility.  On the other hand, it is always exciting to have a fresh straight.  None of the students are behind.  We don't have any grading to do.  Policies can be changed or adjusted.  Expectations are reset.  I always have loved that about starting new semesters.
    Tuesday was an official workday.  We all had to work, but we didn't have students.  I definitely accomplished more on Monday than Tuesday.  On Tuesday all the rest of the staff was there and I just wanted to chat with them and find out how their breaks were.  I managed to focus enough to get my work finished though.  Tuesday was also the day that our heat finally got fixed.  When we woke up on Tuesday morning, our room was 46 degrees.  It was day 5 of our heater being broken.  In those 5 days the outside temperature had ranged from -30 and -20 degrees Fahrenheit.  Needless to say, we were grateful when our principal told us there were two men on a plane headed to Togiak to fix our heater.
    Wednesday was the first day of our new semester.  It was a pretty uneventful week from there on out.  Unfortunately our attendance was very poor.  I have to brace myself.  I know that about 50% of my class is starting out behind because they missed the first 3 days of the semester.  This is likely going to cause them to have poor attitudes toward class which will negatively affect my class as a whole.  Unfortunately, there's not much I can do but move forward with those students who are showing the initiative to come.  I just hope all of those absent students decide that they want to come to school on Monday and have perfect attendance from here on out.  (I know that's a lofty hope.)
    One of Tim's classes changed this semester.  He is now teaching computer applications instead of US history.  He now teaches 8th grade history, 7th grade history, computer applications, Alaska History, Civics, and Weight Training.  I got new students in half my classes and changed a PE class to a health class.  I am very spoiled when it comes to my schedule.  I don't think any other teacher in our district has as nice of a schedule as I do: Health, PE, Biology, Biology, Biology, and Health.  I'm going to enjoy it while I can. 
    This weekend was uneventful and relaxing.  I spent most the day at home.  I told myself that the housework was coming before schoolwork.  I haven't been brave enough to do that for a long time.  My house ended up getting clean and I only worked on lesson plans and grading for an hour or two.
    Saturday evening we invited our neighbor, Mike, up for dinner.  I made potato soup.  Then we headed to Heather's house to play the new game we got for Christmas: Qwirkle.  I would describe it as a shape and color version of scrabble.  The rules are simple and straightforward which I'm excited about.  It's nice for those learning new games when the rules are simple.  However, it is still a challenging game.  Thanks Marshall and Jani for the great gift. 

    Tim had one of the carvers in Togiak make me some ivory crochet hooks for Christmas.  The carver had to rush to get them done and didn't do as much detail work as he would have liked.  Because of this, he asked if he could have the hooks back for a few days so he could make them a little fancier.  I was definitely okay with that.  When he returned them to me he also included a moose-hoof ring . . . pretty cool.  I hadn't even seen a moose-hoof ring before and now I own one.

    Before Christmas, I had asked this same carver to make me a bracelet.  He does really great detail work on ivory.  He has created an alphabet in which he draws a scene to represent each letter of the alphabet.  There is also a culturally-relevant story that accompanies each picture.  I think that his work is beautiful, so I finally decided that it was worth the money to get a bracelet for myself.  When he called to tell me he finished, he said that he had ended up needing to make 2 bracelets to properly do my name, so I was getting two bracelets for the price of one.  I'm not going to complain about that.  The white parts of the bracelet are ivory.  The darkest parts are moose hoof.  The skinner, lighter brown parts are caribou antler.  I'm realizing that for not being into jewelry I'm sure starting to collect a lot of jewelry.

     This has been a fun week for the Phillips’s.  We are on the second week of Christmas vacation.  We had a great Christmas last week with the other teachers here.  Kaitlyn and I had been going back and forth on whether we should go to Anchorage for part of the break or not.  We want to save money for adoption, that’s the whole reason we stayed in Togiak in the first place, and we felt that going to Anchorage would just cost too much.  However, we found a loop-hole.  Our principal, Jason Mabry, informed us that we could fly to Anchorage using Alaska Airlines miles.  So, we checked it out and he was right!  A round-trip ticket between Togiak and Anchorage costs about 15,000 air miles.  We decided to go for it and booked two round-trip tickets to Anchorage.  We decided to follow suit with the using miles to purchase items and used our credit card “points” we had accrued over the past year and booked ourselves a hotel.  This was absolutely fantastic, because it gave us the opportunity to go to Anchorage, buy food and supplies for the next four months, enjoy the city, and still feel good that we were saving money for adoption.  We rented a car and decided that it was more worth it to simply pay for it out of pocket; we found a rental for $14/day.  Not bad.  Monday afternoon, about 4:00, we boarded a Pen Air plane and headed for Anchorage.  

     In Anchorage we stayed at the Homewood Suites.  It is a “long-term” stay hotel that has a full size kitchen and living room in each suite.  Upon arriving, we found out that this hotel didn’t just have a gourmet self-serve breakfast but a gourmet self-serve dinner as well!  How many hotels feed you dinner also?  We are totally going to visit this place more often.  It worked out very well for us, not only because of the dinners provided, but because it had a full size refrigerator/freezer in it.  On Tuesday, we went shopping and picked up a whole bunch of food.  When we were done, we simply brought it all back to our room and stuck it the freezer until we needed to pack it up on Friday.  It worked out great.    After going shopping at Costco and Walmart we had lunch at a little sandwich shop called Terra Bella.  It was in the corner sandwiched (no pun intended...well maybe it was) between a PetCo and a Bed,Bath, & Beyond.  We both ordered the same thing, the combo lunch consisting of the daily soup special and half of a sandwich.  We ordered the Turkey/Avocado sandwich with Spinach Curry soup.  Neither of us were fans of the soup, but the sandwich was awesome. On our way out, we decided to go meander through Bed, Bath, & Beyond.  As we walked through admired all the cool stuff that store has.  We were looking for dish cloths, but ended up with a cool Pizza cutter, cutting board, huge digital clock, and a free massage on the demo massage chairs (we sat in the chairs for about 10 minutes each, there were two chairs).  After our massages we went back to the hotel and had hotdogs with chili and cheese, not very gourmet, but free!  We ended the night by going to a picture show (at a real theater) and watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.  We both really liked it, however the popcorn stunk.  

     Wednesday was our Anniversary.  December 28.  We have been married 5 years.  We started the day out by going to the Anchorage Temple.  In the temple I (Tim) bumped into a missionary that served in the same mission I did.  Tyler Nickl from Bountiful, Utah.  He was an English speaking missionary who served in a neighboring area to me when I was in Paso Robles.  He married a girl from Wasilla and was up visiting her parents for Christmas.  Elder Nickl is about 5 foot even.  Very easy to recognize.  It was great seeing him.  Afterwards, we went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant called “Fudo”.  It was recommended by our friends and colleagues from Togiak, Michael and Delorie Lee, who love the place.  While there I asked owner/operator about the tea she had brought to our table.  I was curious as to what it was made of, so I asked her.  She responded by telling me all about it and encouraging me to try it.  I respectfully declined and said I was simply curious and that I didn’t drink tea.  She insisted, and said, “95% of people who try it like it”.  She went away and I felt the pressure of avoiding drinking the tea subside.  However, 5 minutes later she brought me a new glass with “diluted” tea she made specifically for me.  She stood there and waited until I drank some.  Talk about awkward.  Caving a little, I reached and took a sip, and nodded, “Yes, very good.”  With a smile on her face she walked away.  Kaitlyn couldn’t help but to laugh, as I sat there sipping my water as fast as I could because the tea burned my mouth.  Curiosity kills the cat (and burns his mouth too)!  

     After some more shopping we went Ice Skating a the Dimond Center Ice Rink.  Kaitlyn said that she hasn’t skated for years, and ice skating is suppose to be “romantic”.  Let me tell you what, it’s nothing like the movies.  It’s terrifying!  Once you step onto the ice you realize that ice is hard, and if you fall, it’s not going to be filled with laugher and giggles, rather, back pain and emergency room visits.  We must have looked like baby giraffe’s as we hobbled our way around the ice rink.  After some time we both started to loosen up a little and we could both go faster.  However, the thought of falling and being run over by some 8 year old doing some Brian Boitano triple spin always loomed in the back of your mind.  We were out there for about an hour.  Not once did we hold hands (for fear of falling down) or kiss under the snow flakes.  Darn Hollywood.  Afterwards, we met with tour Branch President, Max Swenson, and our Stake President, President Newman, and renewed our temple recommends.  We’re instructed to renew them when we know we are going to be in town so that they don’t become expired.  We also go to meet two sisters from our branch, Sister Gooden and her mother Sister Cole, both of which we’ve never met except for hearing their voices over the phone for church.  We had a great time visiting and sharing stories.  We visited for about an hour then went back to the hotel, ordered a pizza, ate some ice cream (real luxuries for bush folk) and watched the Food Network show “Chopped”.  (In all seriousness, we did try to watch a “romantic movie”, however, our hotel room didn’t have a dvd player, so Chopped had to suffice).  

     We spent our last day, Thursday, by starting off going to the Temple again.  We participated in a Sealing session.  We probably won’t be in Anchorage again until May, so we want to make sure to stock up on our Temple blessings while we can.  We met up with our friend from Togiak, Robin Jones, who now is the Counselor/Asst. Principal in New Stuyahok and Gala Coopchiak at a local coffee shop.  We visited with them for about two hours.  Since visiting with her, we found out that she was proposed to by her boyfriend, Ben Griese.  We are really excited for them both.  They are both really great people.  We finished up some errands then went to dinner at our friends house, Chris and Julie Peterson.  Chris is the Bush Branch clerk.  We usually stay at there house whenever we are passing through. They are an awesome family.  We left there house about 8:30, (a little earlier than we would have liked), in order to go to the Post Office.  In Anchorage there is a Post Office that stays open until midnight each day.  It is frequented by many bush residents.  It actually is kind of fun to go there.  There are always so many people from all over the bush.  This time we met a lady named Ida who worked for the North Borough School District.  She is native and greeted us with a traditional Inupiat handshake (same as normal handshake, except she used her free hand to grasp the underside of the hands being shaked).  She yipped at me when I offered my hand to be shaken with my gloves still on.  Apparently, that’s impolite.  I was just cold. Oops.  On our way home we stopped by McDonald’s and bought cheeseburgers for all the teachers who stayed in Togiak over the break.  We put them in the pizza box that we ordered earlier that week and stuffed it in one of the freezer bins we were taking back to Togiak.  The cheeseburgers were very much appreciated.  You forget that sometimes the little things in life that everyone craves is a McDonald’s Cheeseburger. :)  

     I must say that I have failed to mention the true champion of our trip.  It was the Subaru Outback, our car rental.  Anchorage was filled with ice and was incredibly slippery.  We were originally given a front-wheel drive, non-traction tire Toyota Camry.  However, after 13 miles of driving, we went back to the dealership and exchanged it for something safer.  I must say that I am a fan.  It was a great little car.  Plenty of room for our bins, all-wheel drive and big enough to fit comfortably in.  I understand now why Subaru is the unofficial car of Alaska.  

     While enjoying Anchorage, a nasty weather system moved into Togiak.  Well, to be more accurate, the void of a weather system in Togiak made things rough.  The temperature dropped to -30°F and hovered around there for the entire week.  On our flight back we got a chance to feel how -30°F feels.  The little planes we fly back on don’t really have adequate heat.  Bush flight passengers know to bundle up in the winter.  Both Kaitlyn and I were in our winter clothing, however, our winter clothing is not rated for -30°F, as we came to find out.  -30°F is a whole different kind of cold.  For one thing, the snow acts differently.  It squeaks when you walk on it.  Actually, it’s more like walking on a Styrofoam. The oil in your 4-wheeler thickens up and the electric switches cease to work.  It hurts to breath, because it shocks your lungs and you have to breath through your mouth because otherwise your nostrils will stick together.  In the middle of all of this, our heater went out. Something happened to the boiler and we’ve been low on heat.  Not completely out, just marginally warm.  We were instructed by our maintenance man to simply turn on our oven and open it’s door to warm our house if we needed. Luckily, today the temperature rose to 5°F.  It feels like we are in a heat wave.  :)  I just want to point out that it was in the 40°F’s in Idaho this past week.  That’s a difference of 70°F between Togiak and Rexburg.  This weather is abnormal for us, and will most likely move on soon.  However, it sure has been a fun experience!