Tim and his Thanksgiving Turkey
Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great Thanksgiving get together with the other teachers at the school. I (Tim) made the turkey, which I think turned out better than last year, and Kaitlyn made Three-wheelers (rolls). The meal was great and spending time with all the staff was also great. However, our Thanksgiving vacation was over shadowed by a basketball tournament that I ran. Basketball tournaments are the way to make money and fund raise here. People in Togiak love to play basketball. I volunteered the wrestling team to sponsor the tournament. The Thanksgiving tournament is an annual event, which starts Thanksgiving evening and runs all day Friday and all day Saturday. After everything is done, 20 games are played. I wasn’t really thinking when I volunteered the wrestling team to host the tournament, because I ended up spending my whole Thanksgiving vacation at the school. Luckily, Kaitlyn was okay with it, she wanted to finish some sewing anyway. I was lucky enough to have another teacher help set up and run things. Actually, all the staff that volunteered were awesome. I was really surprised how much food was sold in our concessions booth. We went through 42 12-packs of soda pop (504 cans) in three days. This number should have been higher, but I ran out of soda multiple times and had to go back to the store and buy more. After everything was said and done, we ended up grossing over $3000. This money will help us travel to more tournaments next year.
Kaitlyn, Gala, & Lorinne snowshoeing on the tundra
Tim wasn't the only one who stayed active this past weekend. Kaitlyn, being the multi-tasker that she is, stayed very busy. She was kind enough to help out at the basketball tournament Thursday night in the concessions and then train the people who were going to work it the next day also. She also went snowshoeing with a couple of other teachers at the school. They went up "Two-Hill". The temperature has been holding steady at around -6°F for most of the past week or two. When she went snowshoeing, she came back and noticed that her eye lashes had iced over. After that, she decided to keep it warm and came indoors and did some sewing. Kaitlyn has been working on a Kuspuq, a traditional native shirt with hood. It's essentially a 'hoodie', except that it's made out of thin fabric. They can sell here any where from $65-$100+ dollars. She thought it would be fun to make one on her own. She's been taking lessons from one of the native teachers at the school. So far it's been looking great. Kaitlyn also took some time to continue working on her quilt. She's been building her quilt at the school with a group of people from town and school. Thanksgiving weekend was no break for Kaitlyn either.
