This week was pretty normal. It was Tim’s 2nd week of wrestling practice. I think practice is going pretty well for him. He’s had about 12-14 kids interested, which for Togiak, is quite a lot. The first wrestling match is next Friday in a village called Koliganek.
We had retakes for the state test Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week. It made my biology class kind of interesting since half my students were gone testing. There was a bear that was hanging outside the back of the school all day Thursday, so I let my students watch the bear for a little while. Later that evening, Jeremy, another teacher, shot the bear. I guess it was wounded because it was barely moving. I did take a look at the bear’s hide after they cleaned it up a bit. It was pretty big.
Friday afternoon I agreed to help out the school volleyball team. They don’t have enough players to actually play a game, so they asked the faculty to come play against them. It was actually fun and I was much less embarrassed than last time I played volleyball. We decided to play again on Saturday. This time Tim came and played with us. We played for 2 hours and then I played some 2 on 2 basketball with a few of the teachers. I forgot how much endurance basketball takes. I was more tired from 10 minutes of basketball than from the 2 hours of volleyball.
Saturday evening, our neighbor, Eve, invited the entire staff over for lasagna. I made a bunch of breadsticks to take over. (I was disappointed though, because they did not turn out very well). I’m glad that we have some activities like that to look forward to on the weekend.
I came to a realization this weekend. Every week I plan on getting so many lesson plans done on Saturday and to get ahead. By the time Saturday comes around, I am too exhausted to lesson plan and then I beat myself up for not getting enough work done. So I decided yesterday, I’m no longer going to expect to get planning done on the weekend. I will relax so I can survive the next week. It might mean that I’m still at the school until 8:00 every night, but at least my weekends will be more relaxing.
I had the pleasure of trying some herring eggs earlier this week. I went to the 2nd grade classroom to ask the teacher a question. She is a native from Togiak. She was just having a snack and offered to share with me. She told me that the herring eggs were from last year. She had a quart size bag full of them. It looked as if they were stuck to seaweed. She put some seal oil and soy sauce in a bowl, grabbed a handful of eggs, smothered them in seal oil and soy sauce, and ate them with her fingers. She then told me to help myself. I took a much smaller handful. I managed to swallow it all, but the seal oil was very potent and the eggs were very crunchy. I don’t particularly want to try it again.
Tim and I haven’t been too surprised by the sunlight here, because we knew what to expect. When we first arrived in July, we had about 15 or 16 hours of daylight. Now we’re down to about 11 or 12 hours of daylight. The thing that surprised me most is the time of day that we have our daylight. Right now it is getting light around 9:00 am, but doesn’t get dark until about 8:30 pm. It’s like living in Idaho, but being on the eastern time zone. We are so far west that we get our daylight later in the day. Alaska time zone works great for those in Juneau and even those in Anchorage, but it has been a little weird out here in southwest Alaska.
Saturday evening, our neighbor, Eve, invited the entire staff over for lasagna. I made a bunch of breadsticks to take over. (I was disappointed though, because they did not turn out very well). I’m glad that we have some activities like that to look forward to on the weekend.
I came to a realization this weekend. Every week I plan on getting so many lesson plans done on Saturday and to get ahead. By the time Saturday comes around, I am too exhausted to lesson plan and then I beat myself up for not getting enough work done. So I decided yesterday, I’m no longer going to expect to get planning done on the weekend. I will relax so I can survive the next week. It might mean that I’m still at the school until 8:00 every night, but at least my weekends will be more relaxing.
I had the pleasure of trying some herring eggs earlier this week. I went to the 2nd grade classroom to ask the teacher a question. She is a native from Togiak. She was just having a snack and offered to share with me. She told me that the herring eggs were from last year. She had a quart size bag full of them. It looked as if they were stuck to seaweed. She put some seal oil and soy sauce in a bowl, grabbed a handful of eggs, smothered them in seal oil and soy sauce, and ate them with her fingers. She then told me to help myself. I took a much smaller handful. I managed to swallow it all, but the seal oil was very potent and the eggs were very crunchy. I don’t particularly want to try it again.
Tim and I haven’t been too surprised by the sunlight here, because we knew what to expect. When we first arrived in July, we had about 15 or 16 hours of daylight. Now we’re down to about 11 or 12 hours of daylight. The thing that surprised me most is the time of day that we have our daylight. Right now it is getting light around 9:00 am, but doesn’t get dark until about 8:30 pm. It’s like living in Idaho, but being on the eastern time zone. We are so far west that we get our daylight later in the day. Alaska time zone works great for those in Juneau and even those in Anchorage, but it has been a little weird out here in southwest Alaska.
