Hello once again!  I cannot believe it is the last Sunday in March already.  It seems like yesterday that I was thinking, "I can't believe it's the first Sunday in February already".  As much as I long for summer vacation, it scares me how quickly time goes by.  I don't want to miss it or waste it. 

This week we returned to school from Spring Break.  I felt pretty prepared to go back.  However, it turned out to be a trying week.  I feel like overall the kids were just a little more difficult to handle and a little less willing to work.  That wasn't too big of a deal, but there were a few very stubborn, very vocal students that made that days seem hard and made me wonder "Why do I put myself through this?"  Overall, it was okay though.  We made it through another week, and the end of the school year is creeping right upon us. 

I don't feel like there is much to report this week.  I guess Tim did have a bit of excitement.  He traveled to New Stuyahok with the counselor and 7 students on Thursday.  They went for a leadership conference and didn't return until Saturday evening.  Unfortunately, Tim reported that most the day Thursday was spent waiting for the conference to start and all of Saturday was spent waiting to come home.  I think the actually leadership conference part was alright though.

The days continue to get longer and brighter.  Last night we had daylight past 9:00 pm.  I'm really have to be conscious of going to bed now.  I can't gauge it by daylight.   

     Where to begin?  We had Spring Break this week and I'm really glad we did.  It was nice to have a release from school.  Monday and Tuesday were regular school days, well kinda.  We had parent/teacher conferences both of those days, so school was shortened by an hour each day.  Out of both days, I think we had a total of 5-6 people show up.  Obviously not overwhelming.  It was rather fun, because instead of staying in our classrooms, we moved out into the commons and set up a few tables.  Conferences for parents were super quick.  They could talk to various teachers in a short amount of time and we got the chance to chat and have fun between visits.

     On Wednesday, we got a funny phone call from our case worker's supervisor in Seattle from LDS Family Services.  Her name is Tawnya, and she asked us about our home visit the week before.  Long store short, apparently our home study wasn't done properly, or at least thorough enough.   I guess we were suppose to have 1.5 hour individual interviews and a 1 hour combined interview, among other things.  So, to amend things, we ended up having a shortened home study interviews over the telephone with her.  It's all good now, but it was a bit disappointing to find out that our social worker spent so much money to come out and didn't really do everything.  

     On Thursday we went ice fishing for Smelt.  Smelt is a small Harring type fish.  It swims mostly in the ocean and comes up the Togiak River between Jan-Apr.  It was really fun.  There were some previously drilled out holes in the ice that we ice picked clean.  Once clean we simply dropped a line with a hook in the water. The fish would bite within seconds.  In the hour and a half were fishing, Kaitlyn and I caught 30 or so fish.  It was just so much fun because, for the most part, as soon as you put your hook back in the water you'd get another fish.  Here are some pictures.  They will also be uploaded to the "Photos" tab.  
     The rest of the week was spent at school, preparing for school and building this website.  It was definitely nice to relax and not have to think about anything important.  We are down to 8 weeks left of school.  Before we know it, school will be out and we'll be back in the lower 48!

     Another week gone already!  The picture at the top was actually from last week, not this week, but I figured you’d all forgive me.  Last week I was able to go smelting with some friends.  It was not only my first time ice fishing, but my first time fishing at all.  How does a girl live the majority of her life in Idaho, the remaining portion of her life in Alaska, and never go fishing?  Well, for 25 years I managed it.  It was actually really fun (very cold) and really easy.  We rode out to the mouth of the frozen river on our 4-wheelers.   We had to be careful not to get stuck in the powder.  When we arrived at the mouth of the river there was already several holes that had been previously dug (I’m not sure if dug is the correct word for putting a hole in ice, but you get what I mean).  We just had to rebreak through the ice because they had all frozen over again.  With the help of an axe and an ice pick we had several holes ready to go in no time.  We used a simple stick with about 6 feet of line and a hook on the end.  No bait needed.  Every few minutes a fish would bite and most the time, they would just fall off the hook once you got them out of the hole, so we didn’t have to handle them a lot.  I particularly liked that feature.  It was really cold so we constantly had to wipe the ice off our lines to keep them from breaking and use a slotted spoon to clear out the newly formed ice on top of our holes.  I caught about 15 smelt.  Luckily, I was able to give them to someone else so I didn’t have to eat them all.  (Have I ever mentioned that I’m not very fond of fish?)
     Our friend Robin had a birthday this week, so last weekend her mom came into town and brought pizza with her from Anchorage.  We had a huge birthday party in the school.  It’s been awhile since I’ve had pizza from any sort of restaurant.  Our case worker was here, so he joined us at the party.  He thought it was quite funny that someone would go to the work of flying pizza in from Anchorage.  He obviously hasn’t been in the village for 7 months!
     This week was Tim’s 29th birthday.  I tried to make it as special as I could despite our work schedule and village life.  I made a “Happy Birthday Mr. Phillips” poster and secretly put it on his classroom door.  That way, all the kids going into his room would know it was his birthday.  By the time we got home from school there wasn’t much time left to celebrate.  I did make him a dinner that involved peanut sauce because he loves peanut sauce.  We really celebrated this weekend.
     Saturday night we had 14 people over at our house for a party.  Everybody brought some food to share, so we had a feast.  We played the game “What if”.  I think I was the only one in the room who had ever played before so it was fun to introduce everyone to a new game.
     Tim was noticing that everyone was commenting on how close to 30 years old he was.  I said something, his parents said something, and our coworkers said something.  He kindly reminded all of us that he didn’t turn 30, he turned 29 and we should let him enjoy 29 before shoving 30 down his throat.  (He didn’t use those exact words, but you get the idea.)  So Happy 29th Birthday Timmy! 
     Friday, Heather’s sister, Bridgett, came to visit.  Heather was so excited that it was infectious.  I couldn’t wait for Bridgett to come.  It was really fun to meet her.  We don’t get visitors here often.  (If anyone wants to come visit, let us know!)  She’ll be here for 10 days.  I foresee some fun in the next week or so.  
     Saturday morning Tim and I had to take some tests.  Tim took the Praxis I: basic reading, writing, and math.  We have to take the Praxis I for our teaching certificates to remain valid.  I took the Praxis II: biology.  It was hard.  I hope I passed.  I have to take the test so that the district can say I’m highly qualified to teach biology.  I don’t feel qualified to teach biology at all, much less highly qualified. 
     Well, I better stop before I get an entire book.  I was just excited we actually had something to report on this week and pictures to go along. 

     This week has been very tiring.  Last Sunday evening last week, I (Tim) came down with some sort of bug.  It doesn’t really surprise me because the the school has been laced with sickness for the past month.  Anyway, I caught it, and it was something terrible.  Fevers, shivers, and nasty chest infections.  Not fun.  I stayed home on Monday and Tuesday.  I reluctantly went back to work on Wednesday and Thursday, but I still felt weak.  Luckily, we didn’t have too much to do because our basketball teams are at their regional tournaments, which means that most of our classes don’t really operate.  
      On Friday we were scheduled to take adoption classes through LDS Family Services.  They were suppose to start at 8 am and go till 4 pm (AKST).  It was really just a meeting for new adoptive parents in Seattle that we got to listen in on.  The information provided was good stuff, however, we weren’t able to listen to the whole training because our LDS Family Services social worker came to Togiak to do our home visit.  He was an elderly gentlemen who had worked for LDS Family Services for about 31 years.  He retired, served two proselyting missions, and now is serving an LDS Family Service Mission in Anchorage.  Really  nice guy, however, it was his first visit to a village and definitely didn’t come prepared.  He arrived with only a warm coat and some gloves.  Luckily, the airline agent was nice enough to give him a ride in his truck to our apartment, because it would have been a very cold ride up the hill on our four wheeler.  
     The Home Visit was actually quite short.   He came in and chatted with us for a while, asked us if we had any questions (which any questions we had were already answered in the training meeting that morning), and then proceeded to take pictures of our apartment.  We didn’t really know what he wanted to do.  I think he was simply excited to be here.  So, we bundled him up and took him on a four wheeler ride down to the post office and grocery store.   It was apparent after a while that he was not accustomed to four-wheeler travel.  We took him to his apartment (the school visitor apartment) and let him get ready for the night.  That was pretty much our visit.  It last all of 2-3 hours or semi-awkwardness and 20 minutes of questioning.