1 week down...many to go.

Hey Yall,

Well, Ben and I have survived week one. We had our first day of school on Thursday. Let me start off my saying that Thursday was probably one of the most chaotic days of my entire life. Ben has about 100 students. He is teaching science 7-12. That's a lot of kids. He has 45 minute classes. He was quite overwhelmed on the first day as well. It is definitely going to take some getting used to! Let's just say...Ben and I were SO excited that it was the weekend.

The first day for me as I said above was chaotic. I was supposed to have 19 students coming to school. By about 10:00 A.M. I had 24. The children kept rolling in. I have heard that one child here is equivalent to 2 down in the lower 48. So, I had 48 children in my room. I was extremely overwhelmed. I had children crawling under the tables, running out the door, going to the bathroom every 5 minutes, talking to neighbors, playing with toys they shouldn't be playing with. These children have never had structure though so it should not have been surprising to me. Regardless, I absolutely love my children. They are very sweet and very bright. After day one of Kindergarten I met with our counselor and IL and AIL (principal and vice principal) and we decided to go down to 1/2 days. This was a big relief. It was far too chaotic to have 24 Kinders all day long. So, starting on Monday we will try out half day.

Ben and I really love it here. We love all of our co-workers. Everyone has been very helpful! We like our new church as well. That was something we were worried about, but our pastor dives into scripture and it has been a blessing! The community is very sweet. You can't walk to the store without talking to about 10 people. (We love that) Ben just got done filleting a salmon that we received as a gift. The thing was HUGE. We are going to eat it for dinner tomorrow night. I'll let you know how it goes. :)

Well, it is the start of a new week and we ask that you pray with us that it goes smoothly and we can get go know our students and community better. Thanks for following! There are many pictures that I posted on my facebook if you want to check those out.

All our love,
Ben and Anne

"Waqaa"

"Waqaa" is how we were greeted by several of the children as we arrived in Mountain Village meaning hello, welcome. Let me start off by saying Anchorage was beautiful, but Ben and I were excited to leave the city. We left on the 19th and flew to Bethel on a 18 passenger plane. We went and ate at a wonderful pizza place in Bethel before boarding our 8 passenger plane to Mountain Village. A mix of emotions went through our heads as we were coming here. We were anxious, excited, nervous, and curious thinking about how our lives were about to change...again. :)
The flight over to Mountain Village was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! It was all tundra and so there were little lakes and rivers everywhere. We flew low enough where we could see boats along the rivers, trumpeter swans swimming.

When we arrived to Mountain, I was pleasantly surprised. We had heard that there are no trees and flat. Well, there are bushes, but they are green and from a distance look like trees to me. There is a big hill here as well. So, coming from South Dakota and Minnesota...this isn't too flat. ha ha. Our principal came to pick us up at the airport...or shall I say dirt landing strip. He then brought us to our houses. I fell in love with our house. It is much bigger than we thought, a lot nicer than we thought. We were then able to go take a tour of our school and as we were looking around in the gym, we noticed almost all of our totes were there. So, the next hour or so we started loading up totes and bringing them to our house. Did I mention that the school is only about 30 ft. from our house. Anyways, we got all of our totes into our house and helped Kevin (another newbie) with his totes. We then came back to our house and started opening up totes. It was like Christmas. Val and Kevin came over and were quite entertained by all of our stuff. We may have gone a little overboard. :)

Today, (Friday) we woke up and went to the Post Office...we now have an address! It is..

Ben and Anne Harvey
P.O. Box 32025
Mountain Village, AK 99632

After hitting up the post office we went to the AC store. You can get pretty much get all the basics there, however it is very expensive! For example, a 12 pk of coke is almost $13. A dozen eggs were $6 Ben and I have gotten back to unpacking all of our things and hopefully getting everything situated before we head to work on Monday. We have three days of inservice and work days and we start school on Thursday.

With love,
Ben and Anne

Alive and in Anchorage

Hey all,

Sorry it has taken us so long to update our blog. Well, we have been in Anchorage for a little over a week now. We stayed with the Burkels for the first week and now we are partaking in our new teacher orientation at the Hilton. Let me just say that Anchorage is absolutely beautiful!

Last Saturday Ben and I hiked Flattop with the Burkel family. It was incredible. Greg and Tom Burkel, Ben, and Cody (Burkel dog) made it to the very top and got some nice pictures that I will share. We have also been doing a lot of shopping. Shopping for household items, rain gear, food, etc. So far, we have shipped from Anchorage 34, eighteen gallon totes full of stuff.

Our new hire orientation started on Monday the 9th and we are quite overwhelmed. We have been getting training on different curriculum, classroom management, and technology. I'm not going to lie, there have been times where I have thought in my head.....maybe I'm not cut out to be a teacher. I even asked Ben today if I could be a stay at home wife. ha ha..I'm kidding. I'm really looking forward to this experience. All the teachers that we have met so far from Mountain Village are very nice and SO helpful! We look forward to working with them more.

We leave on August 19th for Mountain Village. I'm not sure that we will get internet access right when we get there. We are able to get into the school on the 23rd and start school on the 26th. We will try and update y'all every week.

Until next time,
Ben and Anne

P.S. The pictures are of our hike up flattop. It was kind of fun being above the clouds!