Hello friends!
Sorry for the extremely long delay in posting. I cannot even say I had an excuse except maybe that I've been living! :)
I hope all is well with you and that you survived the holiday season. My vacation was incredible and it felt so great to be back. I was lucky enough to see almost all of my family and friends over the three week break and it was so exciting to see familiar faces that are so important to me.
I arrived back in Anchorage on the 11th and got home to Kwethluk on the 12th. I have to say that feeling of coming home to a familiar place hit me when we were in the river cab from Bethel to Kwethluk. As completely different as life is up here, I missed it so much!
We didn't start back at school until the 16th of January, so I was lucky to get in on the end of the Slavic. Slavic is the Russian Orthodox Christmas celebration. It is celebrated with feasts at houses all across the community and continues for a week. I got to eat moose soup and my favorite akutaq! I also tried whale which is a delicacy around here and eaten on special occassions like Slavic.
If you'd like to see my reaction to that experience here's a video. Hopefully you can see it!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=4199325390332&set=vb.1500690010&type=2&theater
It was also great to see the students around the village before school started. I couldn't determine who was more excited them or me. The first weekend back our school hosted a basketball tournament for all three of our basketball teams. Basketball is extremely important here and it was exciting to watch everyone on the court.
The first couple of weeks of the semester have started off quite well and I'm starting to feel that I'm getting better at this teaching thing. I am not spending nearly as much time at school during the week and I am much more energized during the day because of that. My classes have changed a little bit, so now I'm teaching three math classes along with two PE classes and one health class. School is still chaos, but it is a thrilling chaos that I wouldn't give up. :)
One more exciting first for me was last Sunday(a little over a week ago) when I went to Bethel for the first time on a snowmachine! It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day and we even saw a moose on the way. The landscape here is something unimaginable and so incredibly beautiful! I am definitely looking forward to more of that.
The weather here has been quite a bit colder. We had -60 degree wind chills yesterday with blowing snow, but we are so tough in Alaska that we don't let that stop us from going to school. Today was a little warmer and we had fresh snow so the snowmachine ride to school was quite nice.
Lastly, I want to end with the reason I chose this quote. I have a huge pinterest wall with inspirational messages that I like to look at every day to keep my spirits up and for some reason today the Dr. Suess quote caught my eye. I am thinking now about how this incredible experience in Alaska is more than I ever could have dreamed of and that all of these little things that I am learning are all becoming some of the best memories that I will ever have and I don't even know it yet. I just think it's nice to remember that even when things aren't seeming to move in the directions we expect or want, we will still cherish all of these moments in life.
Well tomorrow will come sooner than I'd like, so good night! :)
Even though I get to visit and hear how things are going, I still love to read what you put on the blog. Your perspective helps me with my own perspective on the world. Never can tell you enough how proud of you we are, and how much we look forward to hearing of the next page in the Alaska adventure. We are home with our -30ish temps today. Feel like a real whimp! :-) Love you Nome - Dad
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