Things We Learned This Week....

I spent the last week watching Rick's kids while he was in Anchorage at a conference.  Although the week was stressful on multiple levels, we learned a lot...including why I'm not ready for parenthood.  Here goes a top-ten list (in third-person, because the girls did some learning to.  HaHa):

1. Don't eat Cheetos and play the Wii - Sandra hates Cheeto cheese because it gets everywhere.
2. Bouncing on the couch when you sit down will drive Sandra crazy.
3. Sandra's house is not big enough and not child-proof - especially the coffee table.
4. Sandra will make you eat your dinner, even if you don't like it.  You will put it in the fridge and keep eating it until it's gone, or you will not get dessert.
5. It irritates Sandra when she has to continuously tell you to "Take a bite.  Take a bite."  Don't try to mush your food either, because you'll still have to eat it.
6. When it's bedtime, you get to pick one movie - then it's Sandra's choice because at that point, you're just refusing to sleep and it's making her cranky.
7. No video games, tv, etc. until homework is done.  Period.
8. Sandra must know things...like how to spell their middle names, apparently.
9. Elbows, knees, and fists in the middle of the night reminded me of why I don't like sharing my bed with small children.  It made for a long week of very little sleep.
10. Doling out punishment sucks when their not your kids.

Yep.  Not ready to be a parent...at least not a parent of partially-grown kids.

It's the little things in life...

When you live in the bush, it's the little things in life that become important.

Last night, Lindsey invited me over for dinner.  She had gotten a head of cabbage, and made corned beef and cabbage.  It's amazing how tasty that cabbage was!  And cabbage is one of those veggies that doesn't have a lot of nutrients or flavor.  But...oh man...was that a gourmet meal!

The ability to go to the store and get something as silly as birthday candles is also something that you don't think about.  For Rick's and Lindsey's daughter's birthday, we didn't have any candles.  So what do you do?  There's no Wal-Mart.  There's no Walgreens.  Well...there is, it's just a $500 flight away for a $3 pack of birthday candles.  So, what do you do?  You light a lighter and have her blow it out...11 times, once for each year she is old and one more time for good luck!  Yes...that's how we roll in da bush!

Internet also is very important when you live up here.  It's a life-line to everyone from back home, all the news in the world, etc.  When the internet goes out...bad things happen.  A couple of weeks ago, the internet went out for a week.  We were pretty sure the village was going to riot if the company didn't get up here and fix the internet issues.

You don't realize how important the little things are (like cabbage) until they're gone.

More Tobacco Awareness

So, today I made my health class (all 6 of them) go present their videos and posters they had made to the grade 3-6 classroom.  I was highly impressed by the effort and presentation.  It started out a little slow, with mostly me talking to the kids, but the high schoolers started to pick it up and took over.  One of my star athletes talked about how smoking really effects how you play sports.  A couple of my girls talked about how smoking effects pregnant women and their babies.  They also helped the kids come up with a list of terms to use when they search on the internet for pictures (we have internet filters that block students from certain sites).


Here's two more videos they made.  Enjoy!

What Snuff Can Do to You

Stop Smoking

Tobacco Use

So, tobacco use among students is a pretty big issue here.  We have a Tobacco-Alcohol-Drug (TAD) policy for the student athletes, which means they are not allowed to use those things during sports seasons.  We've actually had quite a few students get kicked off of the teams for violating the TAD policy, mostly for tobacco products.  We've got students as young as 3rd graders being caught with tobacco.  The most common form among students is snuff (a form of smokeless tobacco).


Because tobacco (and even drugs and alcohol among some students) is such an issue, we started a Natural High Challenge.  A natural high is an activity, art form, or sport that you LOVE to do and makes you feel good inside.  It doesn't involve any drugs or alcohol.  The idea is that everyone has a natural high.  The students all made posters, depicting their natural highs, and could enter a contest for money if they wrote an essay to go along with their poster.


Also in response to the use among students, I've had my high school health class make anti-tobacco videos.  Here's two of them.  Hopefully I'll have more to post soon.

Facts About Smoking

Deadly Tobacco

And so begins February...

So, our internet has been out for a week in the village.  Which doesn’t seem like a big deal, until you realize how much you use it.  I’ve been utterly bored!  And the internet company was not helpful about getting it up and running again.  Luckily I noticed tonight, as I was doing my dishes, the pretty lights on my internet box (which sits in my window, next to the sink).  It’s funny how excited we all got when it came back on!  It’s ridiculously slow though.

It’s also been ridiculously cold up here.  Pretty sure it hasn’t been above zero all week.  The moisture from my breath freezes on my coat as I walk to work.  Sometimes it makes me wonder...

(I love postsecret.com)

Anyway, I’ve got a killer tax refund coming back to me.  Pretty excited.  Last year, I went to Oahu on my tax refund.  This year, I’m going some place warm and sunny.  I just want to lay in the sun in a bikini and thaw.

Other news in the bush:  Basketball season is in full force.  Last week both our girls and boys basketball teams went down to New Stuyahok (also known as just Stu) last week.  They left Wednesday after school.  Now, you have to realize, when there’s only 21 high schoolers in the whole school, and 15 of them are on the basketball teams, that really leaves your lesson plans in a lurch.  Especially when two of the five students that are left haven’t really attended school since January.  It also means that when 75% of your high school leaves for sports, so does 75% of the village (if not more).  This week is the Elks tourney in Naknek, which means they’ll all leave again on Wednesday.  AND, if that doesn’t draw enough of our students away, there’s also carnival in Stu starting on Tuesday.  For all of you crazy Colorado folk, it’s not like the flashing lights and fast rides carnival.  It’s more like a festival;  cultural events take place, sometimes dog-sled racing, and other fun stuff.  Anyway, anyone who doesn’t leave for basketball will probably go down to Stu for the week for carnival.  Just another week in...paradise?

And I’m going to leave you by dispelling a few myths that seem to be in everyone’s head:  

1. Alaska is not always dark in the winter.  Even on the shortest day of winter, I had 6 hours of daylight.  Right now, the sun is coming up sometime between 8 and 9ish (not sure when exactly because I'm teaching) and setting around 7pm or so.
2. Alaska does not always have snow.  This is unfortunate right now, and apparently rare.  Recently, it’s been bitter cold (think -20) and very windy.  Not the best conditions for snow.  But very good conditions to keep our 2 or 3 inch layer of deadly ice in tact.  Currently, the lower-48 has more snow than my village.  It’s irritating.
3. There’s a significant difference between “Alaska” and the “Lower-48.”  They might as well be two different countries.  It’s not something you truly understand until you live here though.