Disclaimer: I’m tired.  This was our first week back at school since Spring Break.  We are now beginning our “count down” till school gets out.  I know we shouldn’t, it’s hard not too.  We have seven full weeks left of school.  We have to be strong, because it sure is easy to forget that you still need to be focused.  This week was very much a transitional week for us.  Both the students and the teachers needed to “transition” back from a full week of not doing school.  Now that we finished the week, I think we’re all back into the swing of things. 

     We are still running only one bus to and from school each day, this means that the bus needs to make three trips to get all the students to and from school.  Because of poor weather (and poor road maintenance) it takes about 15-20 minutes to drive the 3 miles from school to town.  Because of this crazy bus schedule all first periods have been very low in numbers.  Our principal has informed us that if this bus brakes down, we are going to start hiring 15 passenger vans and trucks from the community to bring kids to the school. 

     Day 27.  Wednesday we had our 27th day of school affected by snow.  This one was a little strange, here’s why…usually when it snows out it takes a while for the city to clear the roads, either because the wind is still blowing or they wake up late.  Wednesday we were told that the roads were going to take a while to plow and that the bus was behind the plow.  Our principal initiated a “1-hour delay” to allow the plow to do his thing and then start the bus transfers.  Our school secretary got on the VHF and announced to the community that we were on the 1-hour delay schedule and not to come until 10:00.  Unfortunately, the bus driver didn’t hear the announcement and followed the plow all the way to the school with students in it anyway.  At 9:00 (or a little after) we started to see students walk into our rooms.  We teachers were a bit confused and a little disappointed.  Since we knew there was going to be a 1-hour delay, we wanted to hold our high school staff meeting before school instead of after.  The delayed started gave us that opportunity to do so.  Unfortunately, when students started showing up we had to resume our previous schedule and teach.  You might be thinking, “what about the delay?”  Well, we eventually had to get back on the VHF and announce that we were no longer on the 1-hour delay schedule and to come to school.

     Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday were special days.  The community holds a wellness conference at the school this time each year.  We were supposed to let the students out after lunch those three days so that they could attend the conference in the commons.  However, put yourself in their shoes.  How many of you would want to stay and listen to a bunch of people speak?  Exactly…hardly any of the students stayed.  I’m not really quite sure why we let them out in the first place.  Why should we alter school if there’s no real need to do so?  Anyway, Friday morning we had some more snow fall (about 3-5 inches) and the Wellness Conference Committee decided to move the conference down town instead of holding it at the school.  The down side is that we had already altered our schedules and planned on not teaching certain classes.  Once the conference was moved down town we were put back on a normal schedule.  This made things interesting, as none of the teachers really had anything prepared.  We all had to “shoot from the hip”, so to speak.  It made the day interesting, to say the least.    

     Friday night Kaitlyn and I had some friends over to play games.  We played “Bohnanza”, or as our friends like to call it, “Beans”.  We introduced two of our friends to this game for the first time.  It was a really fun game.  We had a lot of “bartering” going on.  I think someone walked away with a promise to make cornbread (I’d take that bribe).  However, the night was turned upside down when one of the new guys said he’d trade his turn for one of my Wax Beans (22 in deck, very low ranking card).  After discussing with him that it wasn’t a really fair trade, he decided to still up hold the deal and I (Tim) traded in a heart beat.  The fun thing about it was that no one noticed our deal as everyone else was talking amongst themselves.  When it came to his turn he turned it over to me, and everyone’s mouth dropped.  It was totally a game changer, especially since I was previously able to acquire a Garden Bean (very high ranking card) and then flip over two more of them in the deck. This equated to “instant points”…lots of them.  You could imagine, everyone else was not pleased.  What’s interesting to note, is that is the first time anyone has ever offered to trade his or her turn for a card while we’ve played this game.  He introduced a “game changer”.

What’s in a name?
    We were lucky to have an unusually long spring break.  We had this entire week off of school.  Although, I’m not sure if spring break is really an appropriate name for this time off of school.  It is true that we have had sunny, clear days.  I have even heard that many of you in the lower 48 have been enjoying temperatures in the 60s and 70s.  My sister mentioned to me that her kids have been riding their bicycles to school this week.  However, in Togiak, the temperature has ranged from -10 to +10 Fahrenheit this entire week and the ground is still completely covered in snow.  I’m not sure when spring will be coming, but I’m not going to start looking for it until May.

Ivory Carving
    Tim and I were lucky enough to spend Monday-Wednesday this week at an ivory carving class.  The class was open to anyone in the community; however, 8 of the 10 students in the class were teachers.  It was nice to have the class fall during spring break and even nicer that the local tribal council offered scholarships to take the class so it didn’t cost us anything.  Twilly was our teacher.  I have taken an ivory carving class and a soap stone carving class from him in the past.  It’s kind of nice having the same teacher because he knows what I have carved in the past and can teach me to do new things or play off my strengths.  We spent 5 hours each day at the boys and girls club dremmeling, drilling, sanding, and shaping.  I wish I would have taken a picture of us in the process.  You would have seen a room full of people wearing hats, safety goggles, and face masks, all covered in ivory dust.  The floor was also covered in ivory dust and the noise of all the dremmels, drills, saws, and belt sanders should have prompted us to use ear plugs.  We smelled of burning ivory as well and the smell followed us home.  (I do enjoy carving ivory, but I do not enjoy the smell of carving ivory.) 
    Tim started out carving a ring.  He was working quickly and it looked really good.  Unfortunately, right as he was finishing, he noticed a crack that went all the way through his ring.  When carving fossilized ivory you always have to be mindful of cracks.  Tim then started on a kayak to use as a zipper pull.  His piece kept getting smaller and smaller as he shaped it, so he made another, bigger kayak.  Unfortunately, this piece of ivory also had a crack.  Tim was able to work around it and adjust it a bit in order to still use the piece.  He finished up his ivory carving by making a second ring, which also looks really good.

    I started out making a ring, but wanted to get onto bigger and better things.  So, I started on a bracelet.  Man, are they time consuming!  I will never take another ivory bracelet for granted again.  Each bead must be shaped, sanded, and polished, as well as have holes drilled through it without breaking them.  My bracelet ended up being quite a bit chunkier than I would have liked, but it made working with the ivory a lot easier than it would have been with smaller, slimmer beads.  From now on when I see an ivory bracelet for sell for $250, instead of being surprised at the high price, I will be surprised at the low price.  After finishing my bracelet there was only about an hour left of class.  So I quickly started a pair of earrings.  I used the natural shape of the ivory, so that I wouldn’t have to spend a long time shaping.  I wasn’t able to complete sanding and polishing the earrings before class was over, but I can finish that on my own.

College Courses
    Last spring Tim and I started taking a class called “The Art and Science of Teaching”.  Both of us were close to having 18 credits after our bachelor degrees.  When we get 18 credits, we get a pay raise.  So, we thought, why not finish up one more class during the summer and qualify for more pay?  We signed up for and started the class, but didn’t quite have it finished by the time we returned to Togiak last fall.  (Okay, we weren’t even close.)  I had attempted to work on it on the weekends this fall, but I finally came to the realization that completing the course before the pay raise deadline was hopeless; so I set it aside.  It was my goal to finish the class during spring break, which I accomplished by Tuesday evening!  I was so excited and relieved to have it finished.  Tim still has a little work to do on his, but he’s closer.  Three things are good about finishing this course.  Firstly, I don’t have to worry about it anymore.  Secondly, I can finally get that pay raise.  Thirdly, now I can get reimbursed for the cost of the class. 

I Don’t Own a Car . . . Or Do I?
    It’s really difficult to make phone calls and take care of business during the school week.  Most places in the lower 48 are closed by the time the school day is over here.  So this spring break gave me a chance to call on some things that have been waiting to be taken care of.  About a month ago I received a bill in the mail from New Mexico State University for two parking tickets.  At first, I found this really humorous.  I don’t own a car and I have never been to New Mexico.  How in the world did someone send a parking ticket all the way to bush Alaska?  I thought I’d call the university just to let them know they made a mistake.  Come to find out, I do own a car and it was parked in New Mexico.  The Altima that Tim and I sold two years ago was still registered to us.  After making several phone calls and doing some research, I discovered that the buyer never registered the car, (in fact, the registration had been expired for a year and a half) never changed the license plates (side note: make sure that you always take your license plates off you car when you sell it . . . at least in Idaho), and never changed the title to her name.  I legally still owned the car, which also meant I was liable for everything connected to the car.  Not cool!  I couldn’t find the bill of sale anywhere and Tim and I didn’t turn in a release of liability.  Advice for car sellers: ALWAYS fill out a release of liability.  So after calling the police department and parking department at New Mexico State University, the dmv in Rexburg, the department of transportation in Boise, and our old insurance company, I finally gathered enough information to fill out a release of liability.  Luckily, the state will let you turn in a release of liability even two years after the sale.   I never got a hold of the buyer, but I was impressed with myself that I was able to discover her name, phone number, address, and email address without having any documentation of the sell and without ever meeting her.  I kind of felt like a stalker. I’m glad to finally not own my car.  (Thanks Dad for turning in all the paperwork for us!)

Homemaking
    I won’t try to convince you that my house stayed particularly clean or that amazing meals were made this week, but I was able to take care of a few things more than I usually do.  I finally paid some bills, made phone calls, solved mysteries concerning double charges, and finished the mending.  I’m sure Tim is glad to have a little boost in his wardrobe.  I also took care of our bell peppers. 
    Did you know that bell peppers freeze really well?  One of the foods I miss the most since moving to Togiak is bell peppers.  We can buy them here sometimes, but they’re very expensive and usually don’t look that appealing.  If you find one that does look okay, you have to eat it very quickly before it goes bad.  At Christmas time, Tim and I bought 6 bell peppers while we were in Anchorage.  I knew it was a bit foolish to buy so many for only two people, but they just looked so good.  Not wanting any to go to waste, I started researching freezing peppers.  According to several sites on the internet, bell peppers freeze very well and keep their flavor and most of their texture when you thaw them.  I gave it a try and it worked wonderfully.  You slice them up, spread them on a cookie sheet, and put them in the freezer for about one hour.  Once they’ve frozen enough that they won’t freeze together, you can put them in freezer bags.  Whenever you want to cook with them you can dump them straight from the freezer bag into your dish you’re cooking and they taste almost as good as fresh peppers.  While Tim was in Anchorage at the end of February for ASTE, he picked up 12 more bell peppers.  (We had long since eaten all the peppers from Christmas.)  I finally cut and froze the peppers this week.  I’m glad they didn’t go bad while they waited for me to find time to take care of them.

Another Kuspuq
    I will admit, that I’m totally thrilled with my productivity this spring break.  I didn’t want to plan on finishing a bunch of school work, but I did want to get a lot of projects finished.  I made myself a list of things I wanted to accomplish, some school related, some personal business related, some just plain fun related.  By Saturday afternoon I had accomplished everything on the list except one: sew kuspuq.  I didn’t expect to finish the entire kuspuq last night, but I just started working and before I knew it I was done.  (Okay, it was 10:00 pm before I knew it, but that’s okay.)  I now am the proud owner of two kuspuqs.  The first kuspuq I made I had help from Fanny Parker every step of the way.  (Thank you Fanny!) This second one I did completely by myself using my memory and my first kuspuq as a pattern.  It didn’t turn out perfectly or exactly the same as the first, but it turned out well.  I decided to make one without a skirt this time.  (It’s common to have kuspuqs with or without skirts.)  Now I have one of each.  I’m excited to wear it to school next week and “try it out”.  I know they don’t look very fashionable, but in the village there is no such thing as fashion and people wear them all the time.  They are actually quite comfortable and warm and I like showing my appreciation/acceptance/interest/whatever-you-want-to-call-it of the culture.

Tomorrow starts the beginning of the end. Only 8 weeks of school left.  Time has really flown by. 

Oh, and one more thing.  It's official. Tim and I will be returning to Togiak next year.  We signed our contracts and turned them in last week.  Who knows how long we will live in bush Alaska, but at least until 2013.

    This week was crazy.  I don’t think spring break could have fallen in a more opportune spot.  I couldn’t imagine starting another school week tomorrow.

     Monday the roads were bad once again.  We started school at 9:00 am, but no buses had arrived yet, so we only had students who walked to school.  It’s always awkward to hold class in this type of situation.  You don’t want to waste time with the kids who were there on time and are sitting in front of you (especially when you’ve had 20+ school days affected by weather already), but you can’t justify continuing on when over half your class is missing due to circumstances out of their own control.  The first bus arrived about 30 minutes into the school day.  Only one bus was working that day, so they had to drop the kids off and then return down town to pick up the rest.  By 11:00 am the secretary announced that the bus full of the second group of kids was stuck, so they would be even later.  By 11:30 am it was announced that the bus had turned around and would not be bringing anyone else to school.  In addition, school would be let out at 2:10 pm to get the rest of the students home.  Needless to say, it was a frustrating, unproductive day.

            Tuesday and Wednesday we finally had some normal days of school.  We started on time and stayed in school until our regular 3:12 pm dismissal.  All of these bad weather days are started to blend together, but if I remember right, Tuesday we ended up having students in school until after 4:00 pm, because the buses got stuck on their way to the school to pick the kids up.  Luckily, my last class of the day was filled with students who walked to school, so I didn’t have to do any entertaining.

    Thursday was an early release day due to parent teacher conferences.  Our school is known for having poor turnouts for parent teacher conference, so our principal tried to do everything he could to entice people to come up.  He provided a bus for transportation and held a potluck and a bazaar immediately following the conferences.  I had 2 parents show up.  Tim had 5.  (Tim teaches middle and high school, so he has a twice the pool of students and parents to pull from.)  Sometimes I wonder why we even bother holding parent teacher conferences.  On the plus side, I made 5 pairs of mukluk slippers to sale at the bazaar.  They didn’t all sale on Thursday night, but they were all sold by Saturday.

    Friday we had an early release day again.  I’m not sure exactly why: perhaps to kick off spring break.  Although, if that were the case, it was kind of ruined by the Saturday school that we had because of a  day of school being weathered canceled last week. 
 
            Saturday school was a bit of a joke.  I knew attendance was going to be pretty low.  Firstly, it’s Saturday school . . . school on a Saturday; would you go?  Secondly, next week is spring break and many people already had plans to leave town or simply just sleep in.   To make attendance worse, the roads were bad once again.  We have so much snow that every time the wind blows at all, the roads become drifted over and our snow removal equipment is all breaking down.  We ended up having an hour delay to school.  The plow was working on getting the road cleared when it broke down at about 9:30 am.  At this point, it was obvious that getting a bus to the school was impossible.  My principal did not want to cancel school because all the staff had already woken up early and gotten to school on a Saturday.  No one wants to repeat that.  So our late start Saturday school ended up being a late start optional attendance day of Saturday school.  Regardless of school being optional, we still had about 10 high school students show up and, even more surprising, they stayed the entire day.  (I so would have been out of there after lunch-time if I had been them.)  At 10:00 am, when school started, I took all 4 high school students that had shown up by that point snowshoeing.  I told my students to walk toward 3-hill.  We walked for about 30 minutes and then I told them it was time to head back.  None of them had ever been snowshoeing, but they seemed to like it.  It was a beautiful day and it was above zero (2 or 3 degrees  Fahrenheit).  I did return with ice in my eye lashes and eye brows, but that has become common place. 

    We had lunch an hour early on Saturday and then spent a long time in the gym.  I ended up spending the afternoon playing basketball with the 5th and 6th graders.  Tim watched the Blindside with some students in his classroom.  I guess Saturday school could have been worse.
 
            Tim turned 30 on Friday!  I felt bad that I couldn’t make a bigger deal of it.  It’s hard to do a lot for birthdays when we both work full-time and we have to work on the weekend.  Unfortunately for Tim, I was pretty boring on Friday evening because I didn’t feel very well.  I was going to make Tim a steak dinner but ended up taking a nap first.  I attempted cooking steak when I woke up, but Tim ended up cooking his steak dinner himself.  I did surprise him with his birthday presents though.  I got him a back massager and an iphone 3G.  I think he was pretty excited, even if it was an older model.  Saturday evening, we had a potluck for Tim’s birthday.  We only had 8 people show up because so many people were out of town for spring break or just exhausted from our long week of work.  It was fun though.

    Our friend, Heather, took this picture as we left her house last week.  We had gone to her house to wait for the storm to die down before we walked home.  If you look hard, you can see Tim and I in the distance (left of the middle of the picture).  Below are some pictures of the school, a shed and a connex next to the school, and the road.  This can give you a good idea of how much snow we've gotten this winter.

     We live in a very interesting place.  One week could be very uneventful and even mundane and the next week could be crazy.  We’ve had one of those scenarios for this post.  If you’ve followed our tales of Togiak this year, you’ll know that our weather has been quite active.  We’ve had multiple storms that have forced school to close early or even close for the entire day.  This week we had a few of those storms role in.  The first storm arrived very early Monday morning.  The wind blew hard enough to shake the building and wake people up.  What made things worse was that we had just received some fresh snowfall a day or so earlier.  This wind picked up this snow and drifted it all over the place creating very limited visibility (about 50 feet).  This was very much the definition of a “blizzard”.  This caused school to be canceled, mainly because no one could get out of their house.

     The storm died down late Monday evening.  We resumed school Tuesday as normal, however, it was anything but normal.  Apparently, the storm drifted the roads so badly downtown that no one could make it to the school.  We had to delay the start of school by an hour to give time for the city plows to clear the roads.  The school busses picked up an hour later than usual and started to follow the plows.  Unfortunately, the snow was so deep that it took hours for the plows to make a one-lane road from down town to the school.  The bus was full of students and was stuck behind the plow for two hours.  School started at 10:00, but most people didn’t get there until 11:30-12:00.  On that note, the cooks were unable to get to school and start making lunch so that was delayed also.  After the road was clear there was a one-lane tunnel that was six feet deep and about 50-75 feet long.    

     Throughout the duration of this storm and events at school, I (Tim) was in Anchorage at a technology conference.  I went to the Alaska Society for Technology in Education (ASTE) conference. I was really excited to go, since this is right down my alley.  The highlight of this conference for me was attending the Google Workshop for educators.  It was an all day meeting showing how to use all of the Google tools and specifically how to use them in an education setting.  I have to say that I am very much a Google fan, especially now. There are so many things you can do with Google in the classroom.  Togiak is in the middle of an Internet upgrade, which means that maybe next year we’ll be able to incorporate more Internet tools, like Google.  I also got to attend a few Apple sponsored events, like iPhone/Pad app creating and using iPads in the classroom.  In those classes we got to play around with and create some textbooks for the iPad.  Having an opportunity to play around with Apple’s new iPad textbooks I have to say that I think they are fantastic.  Interactive textbooks are definitely the future, however, right now the price cost of purchasing sets of iPads to use them doesn’t make it worth it just yet, but I think they will come down eventually. 

     Storm number two rolled in Friday around noon.  It was just like storm number one that hit Monday, except not quite as powerful.  Friday after school the students had to wait for the busses because they were once again following the city plows up the road.  All the staff and students were told to follow the busses out because the plows were going to lead the way so the bus could make it back downtown.  Kaitlyn and I had some 4-wheeler troubles that morning and had gotten a ride from a coworker.  We had planned on just walking home, however, the storm was pretty crazy, so we decided to wait at Heather Jeffer's house to see if the storm would die down a little.  We were at Heather's for about 2 hours, but the storm didn’t really get any less harsh.  If we were going to have to walk home anyway we thought it would be better to walk home before the sun went down, so Kaitlyn and I put all our stuff on and hoofed it home. The wind blew and we had to climb over a few drifts, but we made it home.  At the point of my writing this post (Sunday afternoon) the roads have yet to be cleared.