New News

Airline tickets are bought. Wow. That was a big step. Yes, we've sent off the contracts and such but actually getting the tickets.... after more than a year of watching prices dip and soar.... It's a relief to finally have them in hand now. We leave DFW on August 4 at 2:56 and fly to Seattle. Then it's on to Anchorage where we're supposed to arrive at almost 10:00 that night. Of course, it will feel like 1:00 in the morning to our bodies.

We'll spend three nights in Anchorage and then on to Bethel for 3 days of teacher inservice. We'll fly out to Kasigluk on Friday.

Our school district will pay for $1000 moving expenses for the Mister and for myself. That is going to help out tremendously. Not all districts help with moving costs. Plus, we will get an advance on our pay, to be held out in May. We also get laptops for each of us at inservice so we don't have to ship our computer if we don't want to. However, we think we'll go ahead and ship it in the fall for the kids to play games.

Thoughts about groceries --- Some teachers wait and buy all their food in Anchorage or Fairbanks in August and then ship it out to the bush. My thoughts are.... this is my first time in Anchorage and I want to look around. I don't care about spending my days in the stores. So, we'll be ordering most of our stuff online and having it shipped ahead of time. I'll go to Mr. Prime Beef that week and set up an account. Then they can ship our meat out when we really get to the village. I'll let you know how this all pans out later.

The Boy and the Girl are excited about the class list we received today. The Girl will be in junior high ---- yes, her daddy nearly flipped! --- and there are 14 in grades 6,7,and 8. The Mister has 20 on the roll and I have 16. However, as our principal wrote --- this may all change until May 17 of next year! Be flexible. Be adaptable.

We attended a Winters family reunion last weekend. So good to see people. Our beloved Windstar had a major arterial attack of some sort and died on the way to the party. We will miss her terribly but hey --- how many people can say "our major mode of transportation has died but it's okay, we're moving to Alaska and there aren't any roads there anyway?!" Still, I wish we had gotten to Bates earlier and got to visit more. Don't forget the Sanders' reunion next month!