Fall or Winter?

Hello Everyone,

Well, we have had a very interesting last couple of weeks weather wise. A couple of weeks ago the tundra started turning a beautiful rustic orange with hits of brown, meaning our short "fall" was here. I also saw that our fire weed that blooms from the bottom up was all bloomed out. The tale says that once the flowers reach the top, summer if over. Well, summer is definitely over here. Last weekend we had some thunderstorms and hail. Yep, you heard me...thunderstorm. Well, let me say there was only a couple of rumbles, but I will have you know that EVERYONE was surprised by the sound of thunder. I've never heard thunder in Alaska and the natives were saying that it usually doesn't thunder in September. I was pretty excited to witness it though. And then there was snow....

This last Wednesday I got on a bush plane with the other elementary teachers in Mountain Village to attend an all district inservice in Hooper Bay. The elementary teachers were in Hooper and all the middle school and high school teachers from the district were in Mountain Village. So, Ben stayed here with the dog and I went to a village I had never been to before. Hooper Bay is a coastal village, so I got to see and fly over the Bering Sea. I had heard that it is always windy in Hooper Bay, but man oh man is it ever windy. We had a pretty smooth flight over to Hooper, but when we got closer and closer it started to get really windy. You can pretty much feel every wind gust from the plane. Anyway, as we were about to land we were making a turn to head towards the run way and at one point I could see the ground on one side and the sky on the other. Not because of the wind, but that's just how we were turning to land. We arrived and some of the newbies faces were looking a little green. There were times where they were holding on to their seats. I was probably the same way when I first came out, but you eventually get used to bush flying. In fact, I would much rather fly on a bush plane than a big commercial plane. I get nervous on those planes now every time the seat belt sign comes on and it always takes FOREVER to land. On Bush planes you can always see the ground, you are never too far up and it's just fun. :)

Poor Ben had inservice on Thursday and Friday for high school teachers and then he also had a tech inservice on Saturday and Sunday. Ben is the lead tech guy at our school if y'all didn't know. I'm glad Ben is the tech guy because I"m probably the least techy person out there. One of these days I will learn how to use a smartboard, but as for now, I will continue to use my doc-cam. My inservice went pretty well. I didn't learn a lot of new things as a lot of what they were teaching us was way too hard for our Kindergartners. So, all of the Kinder teachers just kind of collaborated our own ideas. It was a lot of fun to see some of the teachers I hadn't seen since Ben and I first got to Mountain Village.

On Friday, the day that we were supposed to fly home, Hooper Bay was going through what seemed to be blizzards every couple of hours and would only last about 5-10 minutes. One minute we would look outside and the sun would be shining and the next minute we would look out and see whiteout conditions. Well, guess what....we flew right through it. :) The teachers who were nervous on the way to Hooper were definitely a lot more nervous on the way home. Like the weather in Hooper, we flew through white out conditions, bumped around a little, flew through rain, sleet, and sunshine. It was like flying through all four seasons in one 30 minute flight.

Anyway, that is all I have to report right now. Enjoy your warm weather for us because I think winter is right around the corner for us! 

Fall Adventures

Hello Everyone,

     I know this will be real shocking for all of you to hear, but it has been really busy these last couple of weeks. A good kind of busy though. We are about three weeks into the 2012-2013 school year and everything seems to be going ok. We have a new Assistant Instructional Leader who is just awesome. My Kindergartners love when he comes into our classroom. He is a lot more visible around the school then administrators we've had in the past. I've had to call him a couple of times this year so far and he has always been there within seconds. Ben really enjoys him as well and gets good results when he needs to call him. Things just seem a little calmer all over the school. I'm up to 17 kids now, which is pretty high. Our school has a total of 232 students and 103 of them are in just K-3. If you remember from my first year, I had 28 Kinders, this last year I had between Melanie and myself 25, and this year there are 25 students. So far so good though, we are making progress. For the most part, most of my students are getting the hang of school. I still have about three kids who don't want to listen. They can really drive me nuts, but I have to take a deep breath and take things into consideration like them not going to head start, their family life having no structure, to not getting enough sleep at night. The majority of my kiddos are academically very low as well, probably the lowest that I've ever had. It will be fun to see their progress throughout the year.

 I'm in the black holding the gun ready to see moose.  The one in the orange is our good friend, Sarah Peterson.

     Anyway, enough with school...Ben caught his 2nd moose this year and it was huge! He went out on a BEAUTIFUL Saturday night with Chris Redfox and Tony (one of the construction workers.) Last year Ben was out for 3 days. This year they took off around 5:30 and got home around 1 in the morning. I opened the door when Ben knocked and I could tell by the grin on his face that he had caught his moose. What I hadn't realized was they had left the moose out there. They gutted him, but had to leave early because it was getting dark. They were back really far in these very narrow sloughs and it gets tough to maneuver the currents when you can't see. This was also good news to me because Ben asked if I wanted to come the next day to help bring the moose in. I was hesitant at first, but let me tell you, I had a blast. It was rainy all day, but that is what good rain gear is for right? Anyway, we pulled up to the location and walked back an there was the moose...the HUGE moose. Ben looked at me to make sure I wasn't crying and to my surprise I was totally ok and proud of my many husband. Chris Redfox was the native we were with and he just started going to town on the moose. He knew exactly where to cut and how to cut and what we needed to keep and what we would be leaving out there. It was a lot of fun and now our freezer is jammed packed with moose meat, and we only kept HALF of the meat.

     The following weekend, Ben and I went out with Matt and Sarah Peterson and this time I was prepared that if I saw a moose, I would try and get him to. Now, many of you that know me are probably thinking there is no way that Anne could shoot an animal. Believe me, I thought that too and still kind of do. I've decided to believe the way the natives believe, that these animals "give" themselves up for you. So, if you catch it, that animal wanted you to have it. Now trust me, deep down I know this is not true, but please just let me pretend. Ah, who are we kidding...I will probably just stick with manaqing in the winter. I will give you $10 if you remember what that means. :)

     The weather here has been a lot like Minnesota's weather. One day it will be sunny and beautiful and the next day it will be rainy and cold. In Mountain Village we will have a couple of really nice days followed by about a week of rainy days. Mountain Village held the district XCountry meet yesterday and my job was do drive our Honda behind the last runner. It was pretty fun, except my hands were freezing. Those poor kids were running in 34 degree weather with shorts and tank tops on. Tough Eskimos I tell you! When the boys were done running I rushed home to get some mittens in time for the girls race. Today was a strange day on the weather front as well...we witnessed hail for the first time. For a split second I thought I heard thunder, but I think that was just the big tractor thinger magig that wakes Ben and I up at 7:00 in the morning on the weekends. Yep, construction is still going on and right now it is going on right outside our window. Bummer!

     In about two weeks I will be going to Hooper Bay (one of the coastal villages) for teacher in-service. The K-5 teachers in our whole district are going to Hooper Bay and 6-12 teachers will be here in Mountain Village. I'm excited to see the Bering Sea and see some of the teachers that I met our first year at new teacher in-service. I will also be going into Anchorage in October for training on the tutoring program that I run for 3rd-6th graders. As I say every blog, I will try to update this as much as possible. Thank you for reading!

Ben and Anne
Harvey