Alapaa!!

Hello Everyone,
Sorry it has taken us so long to update our blog. As seen in the title, Alapaa means "cold" in Yupik. It has been nothing but cold for the last month. The coldest it got without windchill was -36. Who knows what the windchill added in. Someone mentioned the other day when we had a mandatory firedrill that it was -52 with the windchill. Needless to say, Alapaa has been apart of everyone's daily vocabulary. Since it as been so cold we have not been able to go out riding our snow machine across the river or for very long distances. The other day we went on our snow machine from the church down to the store and my nose, which wasn't covered got frostbite. So, are we jealous of all our family and friends down in Minnesota/and the Dakotas who have had very mild winters so far? Yes, yes we are! For now we will enjoy the beauty of this place we live indoors. :)

Not a whole lot has changed in school. Ben continues to be an awesome teacher. I don't think the kids realize or appreciate how good of a teacher he is. Ben is working hard now to build relationships with his students and parents and be a good role model for them, rather than the teacher who tries to force information (that they really don't care about) into their brains. I continue to love my students. This year has been completely different than last year. I have 14 students who love school and love coming to school. Often when I say it is time to get ready and go home they collectively give me an ahhhhh, but we love school. I definitely have kids who like to test my patience, but you learn to roll with the punches...sometimes literally. We have to give an AIMS test which records letter recognition, letter sounds, nonsense words, and word sorting. My kids did this at the beginning of the year in October and I just gave this test again last week and I must say, I had tears in my eyes seeing the growth they have made. The students get one minute to see how many letters they know. At the beginning of the year the majority of the kids knew anywhere from 0-10 letters. This time around they were all in the 40's-to even 80's. They are awesome!

Moose (our dog) is quite the character. He talks to us in moans and groans when he needs to go outside or when he wants something. Sometimes if he is misbehaving and we mention the k word (kennel) he puts his head down and looks up at us with the sweetest puppy eyes we can't help but smile and scratch his head. He has a lot of energy, but also sleeps quite a bit throughout the day. He still LOVES chewing on hooves and rubber bones. He is great with kids as well. We often have kids come over to "visit" and moose plays right along with them and isn't rough. Even my Kinders who are smaller than he is. Moose is probably about 60 lbs. or so. We will find out when we come back for the summer. We are both interested to find out.

The picture above is a picture of one of my students who came over to visit today. I had to take a picture of her in her parka. A lot of the kids wear parkas that are lined with animal fur. They are VERY warm! I would have a friend make one for me, but my sister might kill me. :) Well, that is all for now. Please send us warm thoughts. :) We appreciate all of you! Also, there is a youtube video that shows Mountain Village and a little bit of what the culture is like. Please take a look at it. We know a lot of the people who are in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8vKU78-nwY

Ben and Anne Harvey