Saturday school has confused my internal clock.  On Tuesday I was absolutely positive it was Wednesday.  Several of my students were positive that Wednesday was Tuesday and others were convinced that Thursday was Friday.  It’s amazing what creatures of habit we are and how many successive days can be affected by one day being out of the ordinary.  Luckily, we have had a normal weekend to help us get back on track.  I guess it hasn’t been completely normal.  Tomorrow we have an in-service day, so our students have a three-day weekend.  Who knows, maybe our internal clocks will be messed up for yet another week.

    This week was spirit week.  Once again, I dressed up every day, but hardly anyone else on staff or in the student body dressed up.  Monday was fake an injury day.  I wasn’t up to getting up early to make any black eyes, so I just taped up a couple of fingers and told all my students I slammed my fingers in the door. Tuesday was fan day.  I really am not into watching sports and have no paraphernalia from any professional teams of any sport.  So, I wore my Proform Airborne Jump Rope Team warm-ups.  I forgot how wonderfully comfortable they are.  I wish I could wear them to school more often.  Wednesday was triplet day.  I am used to twin day and I was prepared for that, but triplet day?  Wow, that’s a little bit tougher.  Luckily, Tim and I were able to talk Heather into joining us.  There were only 3 people dressed up in the entire school: Tim, Heather, and myself.  We all wore sweatshirts that had “Phillips” written across the front and wore pigtails.  Yes, even Tim had pigtails (see photograph).  Thursday was nerd day.  I woke up thinking there was absolutely nothing I had for nerd day except taping up my glasses.  Oh, I was wrong.  With a little effort I was able to pull something together.  My students couldn’t stop staring at me.  It was funny to see the students try to take me seriously during our student council meeting.  Some of them were really struggling and just couldn’t stop laughing.  It’s probably good that we don’t have dress-up days every day or we would never accomplish anything.  Friday was our traditional school color day.
    This week the girl’s basketball team had some home games (hence the spirit week).  Thursday we had a pep rally in preparation.  In my opinion, it was the best pep rally that has happened at Togiak school. (Music REALLY helps.)  It was one of those times when I thought, “Oh, I’m glad I’m a student council advisor.”  The best part of the whole pep rally was that Mike (the other advisor) and myself really didn’t do much at all.  The students planned, prepared, and pulled it off (other than the shopping that Mike and I did for the supplies).  To top it off, I felt like our student body was a little more interested and spirited than usual.

    Tim and I attended the game on Thursday evening and then took our classes to a second game on Friday morning.  Our girls’ team never let the opposing team come even close to their score.  It was kind of an uneventful game in that sense.  The game ended with Togiak triple the opposing team’s score. (Go Huskies!)  Some of my students were complaining later in class that the game was boring because there was no competition.  I pointed out to them that at least the game was boring because we were winning by so much and not boring because we were losing by so much.  They stopped complaining after that.
    Tuesday was Valentine’s Day.  Tim and I kept it pretty simple.  I quietly hung hearts from the ceiling in front of his classroom door before school started.  He quietly “heart-attacked” my classroom door while I was in PE class.  Tim’s middle school students helped cut and decorate hearts for me.  Apparently, our last name is spelled “Philliphs”.  I laughed to see that spelling on over half the hearts.

    This weekend was pretty simple.  Tim and I spent Friday evening with Heather.  She was a good sport.  We showed up at 7:00 with little notice and in return she made us dinner and talked with us all evening.  Saturday, Tim and I hosted a movie night featuring Breaking Dawn.  Today has been a pretty typical Sunday.  We attended church and then spent time talking to Tim’s parents and my parents.  All in all, it’s been a good week.

Last weekend, Tim and I got a real treat.  We were able interact with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in person.  This is something I miss more than I realized. Last Saturday evening, we attended the adult session of stake conference and unknowingly sat right behind our branch president, his first counselor, and their wives.  After the meeting we all went out for pie along with the Petersen family.  Chris Petersen is the branch clerk and his family has opened their home to us on multiple occasions when we’ve been traveling through Anchorage.  Last Sunday we were traveling back to Togiak, but were able to attend church with the Dillingham branch during our lay over.  The Dillingham branch is very tight knit and very friendly to us every time we visit. 

This week at school has been a bit exciting.  It was spirit week.  We had dress up days every day: crazy hair day, white out day, career day, twin day, and fake an injury day.  Tim and I had fun dressing up each day.  Unfortunately the students weren’t very involved.  Each day there was anywhere from 0 to 4 students who participated.  However, I do think the kids enjoyed seeing what Tim and I would do next.  On Twin Day, Tim and I dressed alike.  We wore the most similar clothes we could and with Tim’s help, I even drew a beard on myself.  In between each class, when I would step out into the hall, the kids would just snicker and laugh as they passed by.  They all thought it was pretty funny.  Friday I managed to give myself a black eye with some Crayola markers.   Tim had to endure accusing questions throughout the rest of the day.

Friday night/Saturday morning was the culmination of our spirit week: the Lock-In.  Tim, being the student counsel adviser, was also the adviser over the Lock-In.  I think that out of all the years I’ve known Tim, I’ve never seen him more stressed out.  He was very nervous about the lock-in flopping, but it went extremely well.  We had a very good turn out: 56 kids.  Middle school and high school students were invited.  I think about half the middle school and high school study body was there.  This is a huge percentage for participation in Togiak.  We had all the high school and middle school teachers plus a couple elementary teachers volunteer to chaperone.  All the teachers enjoyed themselves.  The kids behaved themselves.  I never once saw a behavior problem the whole night.  I was shocked.  We locked 56 kids into the school from 10 pm to 6 am, students that usually don’t make it through the school day without behavior problems, and we had no problems!  It was so refreshing.  The kids participated in a 2-on-2-basketball tournament, movie watching, video game playing, karaoke, food relays, and a pie eating contest.  I have a feeling that Tim just started a yearly tradition.

So Tim and I were at school from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm on Friday and then returned to the school at 9:00 pm and didn’t leave until 6:30 am the next morning.  Needless to say, we slept a lot on Saturday.  We didn’t wake up until 2:30 pm, which really confused my body.  We ate breakfast at 4:00 pm and then were really shocked when only hours later it was already bedtime again.

When Tim and I were in Anchorage last weekend we brought back 50 pounds of produce.  We couldn’t help ourselves.  It was like Christmas.  Well, last night, we really enjoyed that produce.  I made fajitas with fresh peppers: orange, yellow, red, and green.  Tim made his green avocado salsa.  Yum.  It was like we were cooking in the lower 48 again!  I will never take fresh produce for granted again.

    
    I know I wrote last week, but I’m going to go out of turn and take this week too.  
     Wow, I keep thinking, next week will be more under control . . . but it hasn’t happened yet.  We are still really busy with lesson planning and spending ridiculous amounts of time at the school.  Although, we have noticed we’re running low on steam, and sometimes the lessons are less planned than we’d like because we just have to go home.

     This week was spirit week.  I was so excited.  Spirit week gives you such a good excuse to dress up and be a bit goofy.  Plus, it’s amazing to see the difference in how the kids view you when they realize that you like to have fun too and that you can out-costume them.    Yet, I have to admit, this spirit week was a huge let down.  Tim and I dressed up every day and a few other teachers did as well.  However, throughout the entire week I had only 3 students dress up on one occasion.  I was sorely disappointed and there was a lot of potential fun missed out on. Well, even if the kids didn’t get into it, Tim and I did.  Tuesday was Hippie Day, Wednesday was Twin Day, Thursday was “Dress Nice” Day, and Friday was School Colors Day.  I must admit that living in bush Alaska does make it difficult to dress up.  Some of the stuff you just don’t have and you can’t make a quick trip to Wal-Mart and pick something up.  Tim and I had to order Hippie clothes online two weeks in advance . . . and they weren’t cheap.

     The weather in Togiak has been really nice this week.  It has been sunny with a light breeze.  What more can you ask for?  Maybe, some time to spend outside to enjoy the weather.  We’ll take what we can get though. 

     I saw my first Togiak bear this week.  Tim missed it because he was in the teacher’s lounge.  The bear was just running right behind the school.  He looked like he was having a grand time.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t close enough to get a very good picture.
     One of Tim’s students came by this week with a fresh silver salmon.  It was the biggest fish I’ve ever handled before.  He gave us the entire fish and took off.  Tim and I looked at each other thinking, what are we supposed to do with this.  Luckily Sam, our vice principal, had showed Tim how to fillet a salmon, but he had already cut off the head and gutted the fish.  We called up one of our coworkers who is “married” to an Alaskan Native to get some step by step instructions.  Our house smelled pretty fishy, but Tim successfully beheaded, gutted, and filleted that salmon. 

     We are starting to see the effect of native culture in our classrooms.  The parenting here is so much different than what we’re used to.  It is very common to see kids outside playing at 9:00, 10:00, or 11:00 at night.  When I say kids, I don’t just mean teenagers, but 5 or 6 year olds too.  School doesn’t start until 9:00 am, but daily we have several students come in an hour or more late because they slept in.  I haven’t had a day of class without students falling asleep and I definitely haven’t had a day that I’ve had 100% attendance.  Students will be gone for 1 or 2 weeks at a time to go hunting, fishing, or to the state fair.  If parents leave town for awhile their kids will just stay home from school because they can.  Parents will allow their kids to check out of school whenever they like.  The educational value here is very low.  It’s amazing what this does to the dynamics of my classroom.  It is crippling.  Kids are constantly lost and behind.  Only 1/3 of my class knows what’s going on, because the others don’t come to school and they definitely don’t do any make up work.  It is a huge obstacle that I’m not quite sure how to handle yet.  It just seems to be an accepted fact here that attendance is bad and lots of kids flunk.  I don’t know if we can influence that or not, but we’ll see what we can do.  
     Tim and I spoke in church today.  It’s the first time we’ve been asked to speak in 3 years.  Last time, like this time, we were the only two speakers, meaning together we needed to fill about 40 minutes of time.  3 years ago when we spoke, I, tragically for Tim, only spoke for roughly 4.13 minutes and Tim was left to fill up all the rest of the time.  Oops.  It was my goal this time to actually take my full half. A couple years ago I was asked to speak at my college graduation, which completely scared me out of my wits.  I had to speak for 5 minutes . . . that was it.  But what was I supposed to say for 5 whole minutes?  I spent hours and days working on what to say.  It turned out pretty well; at least I thought so.  It was from this experience that I learned in order to speak in sacrament meeting for longer then 4 minutes you have to invest some time and effort.  So I did just that.  I am proud to report that I was successful in speaking for an entire 15 minutes and I had a much happier husband compared to last time we spoke.  However, it was not entirely uneventful: right as sacrament meeting was starting, our neighbor decided to vacuum/shampoo the carpet on the landing right outside our door.  You see, last week during our power outage, the water heater overflowed, soaking the landing between our two apartments.  Apparently this triggered some mold or something else rank smelling in the carpet.  The smell started to seep into our apartments.  Under normal conditions, a neighbor shampooing the landing carpet would not in any way affect a sacrament meeting talk, but when you attend sacrament meeting in your own living room it can be quite distracting.   So during my talk, we had lovely background sounds of a carpet shampooer. However, I don’t think those sounds were much compared to the sounds from other’s living rooms that forgot to put their phones on mute.  I must admit that the smell of our hallway and our apartment has greatly improved.