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I've changed a setting so I'm hoping that people can post comments now. Will someone please try to comment? My apologies for having it set "funny." I was wondering why no one was commenting! Kinda hard when the blogger-person has her settings out of kilter...

Playing Basketball

We are in Nunapitchuk today. It is a village that we can see from our front door. Usually. When the clouds settle in and I can't see it, I get kind of panicky. Just seeing this village keeps my mind from freaking out about where we are living. Kind of like a reminder that there is still more world out there than our little village.

We brought the junior high kids over yesterday by sno-go. Joe drove and I rode behind him. We had 7 kids with us for the first trip. About a third of the way here we hit a huge snow drift and over we went. He basically threw me off the machine! The kids came running up to see if we were all right. We were but I did get a little panicky. I couldn't tell where we were and if we were on land or the river. There is something about riding on the river that makes it okay. BUT, stopping on the river really bothers me. I do not want to get in the water. Not that I think there's any water out here but what if .... Anyway, I got in the sled and one of the kids rode with Joe and we finally got here. Then Joe went back for the rest of the students and H and N.

We played 2 games yesterday and will play 2 more today. We lost both of them. And we had 20 -30 point leads at half-time. I know that sounds crazy but EVERYBODY got to play. We are struggling with kids who think they are God's gift to Yupik basketball and so we are working to expand our players to a team and not just a few show-offs. Of course, better planning on the coach's part would have helped in the first game and in the second game if they had just dribbled and passed the ball around for the last 20 seconds we WERE winning. Just had to try that last shot.... Oh, well.... we'll try it again this morning.

We spent the night here. When you travel, you have to be prepared to stay over. And now this morning it is blizzarding. I think the temp is okay but you sure can't see much. Supposedly, we don't travel with temps under -25. That includes wind chill. I want to go home to my bed.

Little Girl

Where did my little one go?! This young lady can cook, do laundry and is fast becoming a basketball demon. She's taller than her mother and she loves to laugh. She'll be an eighth grader next year. Oh, my.

White Out

It's cold ---- temp. is at -9 and windchill is bouncing down around -60. I saw it get as low as -69 last night. The local cable channel this info across the screen on the our village channel.

It's been so "white" that standing at the window in the school, I could hardly see our houses at about 70 feet. It was rather impressive.

We had 5 schools here in Akula for games yesterday. One team was able to sno-go over so they went home. My guys went home, of course, so that left three teams overnight. Plus our 16 or so dentists and staff who are here from NYU. Right now everyone is hoping for a break in the weather and they'll get to go home!!!! The earlier weather report was predicting that this stuff would last until Wednesday. If they don't go, and they're still here on Monday, then we still have school and they will spend the day in the gym. That won't be fun. I'm glad I will go home to my house this afternoon!

Pizza Party!

Yay! Our social worker brought pizza from Bethel in on Monday. They are half-baked and frozen. My students are very excited. They have all brought back their permission forms and will be back in my classroom at 5:30 tonight. If you teach..... you know this has been a l-o-n-g day.

Our social worker is hired by our school district. He travels to several different schools and tries to help keep us all alive and safe. No kidding. When he has been around for a couple of weeks our school "gets bushy." The kids really have no adults to talk to and Jim has worked very hard to establish relationships within the village. When things happen in the village ---- we call Jim.

It's still cold and now I'm hoping it sticks around. We are hosting two other schools for basketball. If the windchill is below -35 we will have to cancel. You can't travel with school kids in those conditions. In fact, two weeks ago we missed our Saturday games because we had come back home and on Saturday morning the windchill was too cold. Couldn't travel. I was sooooo sad....... HA! A free day! We were so happy.

Another thought

I've been thinking about this. The mud and muck was pretty icky when we arrived last August. We wore our rain boots and got around okay. Most of where we want to go has boardwalks.

Then it snowed. And it got icy. We learned that snow is good. Ice is not. Snow lets you get a little traction going. We ordered ice cleats for that other stuff. When the snow melted off, we were all a little sad.

Last week it snowed and snowed. Three foot drifts. Walking in it was hazardous. Better than ice but still rather treacherous. And while I thought the more snow the better ---- NOT!!! Almost all the snow up here so far has been D-R-Y. Thank goodness. If it was sticky we'd all be cold today! Frozen! Instead, it just blows and blows. You can't tell if it's snowing or blowing. Well, today you can because it's absolutely beautiful. The skies are clear.

I've decided that 2 or 3 inches at a time is okay. But when it snows and drifts --- I'm in trouble. I put my foot down but it just keeps going. Then the twisting and turning that comes from the slipping and sliding puts me on my rear. Deep snow is not a good thing. Give me a good packed path any day.

What's for lunch today?

For those who may wonder? Our school lunches are JUST LIKE the school lunches in Oklahoma and every other state, I suppose. Yesterday we had egg rolls with sweet and sour sauce, peaches, rice and steamed carrots. Today, it's meatloaf. I guess two things are a little different --- we have white steamed rice in place of mashed potatoes. Potatoes are a luxury up here. Good ones are hard to find. When we do have them at home --- we eat the wholes thing. Skin and all. And if someone doesn't eat it all --- we save it for potato skins in the microwave later.

Also, fruit is hard to come by. Apples are pretty easy. Oranges, a little harder. Bananas are a treat and grapes ----- WOW! We get excited about grapes! I've seen watermelon in Bethel but was scared to price it. I'd hate to pay very much and load it on our plane just to have it turn out bad. We are all excited to get home this summer and buy some peaches from Porter.

We also have to ship in all our meat. We've learned what not to order from Span Alaska. Their hamburger is not so good. Our next meat order will probably come from Mr. Prime Beef in Anchorage.

We have decided that this is definitely the way to live. We make very few trips to the store and it's usually only for eggs and ice cream. Yes, we can get ice cream--- something about it being easy to ship --- don't have to worry about it freezing this time of year! Anyway, having groceries delivered to your front step will spoil you. You can get anything you want up here --- as long as you're willing to pay the price.

It is cold now

This morning the mister and I left the house at 7:15 or so. Dark. Cold. Windchill was -30. I now measure cold by whether my nose freezes up. If my nose feels like the sides have shrunken in ---- then, it's cold. It only does it if the temp. goes below zero. Anything over zero now feels very pretty good! I'm ordering a parka from Cabela's today or tomorrow. We have one more sno-go trip with the basketball team. My old coat has been okay but I really don't want to take my chances for that last run.

Speaking of sno-goes --- we've done our taxes and whooopeee! we just might buy our first sno-go this spring. We'll see. We'll have to watch for sales. We've been researching and are beginning to narrow it down. That will be a lot of fun. It would really open up the villages to us. We could even sno-go to Bethel. That's 28 miles southeast of here.

We finally got eggs in on Friday. There haven't been any eggs at the store since before we left for Christmas. Do you have any idea how many things require an egg?! We had scrambled eggs this morning. Yum. Yum.

We cut Hannah's hair on Saturday night. It's just below her chin. Really cute. We did make-up on Sunday afternoon. Too grown up.

Hannah is taking the 7th grade test tomorrow. If she passes, she'll be an 8th grader next year. YIKES!

The cold and the dry are taking a toll on my eyes. Apparently, my eyeballs are L-O-W on moisture and I can't see well at all. Thank goodness for Bausch and Lomb.

We have a team of dentists and students from NY at our school this week. They evaluated all the students today and will do cleanings and fillings for the rest of the week. There are about 16 of them.

If anyone is counting --- we have less than 15 and 1/2 weeks left. May 21 will be here soon.