NYO

Last week, I had the opportunity to coach NYO (Native Youth Olympics) while our Jr. High teacher was at a conference in Anchorage. NYO works like track, where there are a range of about 2 dozen events that students can train for and specialize in. 

This is Indian Stick Pull, where challengers hold a greased length of wood and attempt to wrest it out of their opponent's hands.

Girl power.

This is the Alaskan high kick. This is my favorite event and one I'm halfway decent at. However, after trying it for the first time, I woke up the next day and couldn't sit up in bed. You must land on the same foot that you use to kick the ball, which apparently involves muscles that I've never used before.

We finished the first quarter of the school year last week, and we only just managed to find a special education teacher a few days ago. That would be a major deal at any school, but especially ours where every classroom has at least 1 or 2 kids who, by lower 48 standards, would be in a self-contained classroom for various reasons, though most of those are behavioral in nature. Needless to say, we're very happy that Rick decided that retirement in Seattle at his age wasn't so glamorous or exciting after all, and that he'd rather spend the winter with us here in Goodnews. 

Rick has been itching to get out and explore the area around Goodnews, so last weekend Gary let him borrow his quad and I took him out on the trail to the trout stream that I frequent. This is a photo at Gary's- you can see the mountain Beluga in the background, where the bay meets the Bering Sea.

Lately, I've been snagging the spawned silver salmon that have migrated into the streams and rivers. Once spawned, these silvers are no longer feeding, so there's no way to catch them other than snagging or dip netting. I don't have a net yet, and snagging is much more fun anyways.

While catching the spawned silvers is fun, they don't really look that appetizing to us. Fortunately, these are a delicacy among the elders of the village, so I've been gutting and freezing them and handing them off to Gary, who distributes them to some of the older members of the village. Yesterday, one of the classroom aides told me she would love some spawned silvers if I catch any more. I guess the word has gotten out!

While the snow melts about as fast as it falls near the bay, out on the tundra where it's colder, the snow seems here to stay. We followed these fox tracks for 3 miles out to the trout stream. We found dozens of sets of tracks; it's a veritable highway out on the tundra for predators, and I found a lot of good places to set traps once the season opens on November 10.

The clouds rolled in just as we were getting ready to leave. Four-wheeling up and down mountains for an hour in freezing rain and sleet isn't exactly the most fun, so we'll see whether Rick joins me again next weekend or not!

U.S Wellness

We’ve done quite a bit of posting about where we get most of our groceries from, but we’ve left out one important part: meat. As you've seen in a few previous posts, we’ve been eating a lot of what Alaska has to offer, but we’ve also purchased 2 orders of meat since we arrived here in August.

Enter U.S. Wellness—a great company in the Midwest that sells organic grass fed meat and dairy products. We heard about the company from the teacher that Simon replaced, who had all good things to say about the company. So, upon our arrival we immediately put in a small order. Some of the things we purchased the first time: hamburger patties, 1lb packages of ground beef, sugar free breakfast sausage, Colby cheese, a round roast and chicken apple sausage links. We ended up with around 40 pounds of meat for around $400 shipped. That’s a great deal! The company doesn’t charge shipping and ships overnight with fedex. We placed our order, it shipped on a Monday and was on our front porch the following day! Great customer service and we would soon find out some of the best meat we’ve ever had.

Fast forward to October and we’re ready to purchase some more meat. We’ve decided to place an order with a co-worker this time because the more you buy the bigger discounts you get. Together we ordered a total of around 82 pounds of meat! That’s somewhere around $600 worth of meat. We placed our order and waited for the packing/shipping date to come out; looks like our meat will once again pack on a Monday and arrive on a Tuesday. GREAT! Tuesday rolls around and we don’t have a single package waiting for us at the post office. L Knowing how the freight planes work we realize maybe it missed the plane in the morning and we will have to wait until Thursday. We know from our previous experience that the box is well marked and should be handled appropriately by the carriers and placed in the chill/freeze section. Thursday afternoon comes and I head to the post office as soon as school is out----no packages. Simon calls me to say that according to the tracking the box is in GNU. I head back to the post office to double check with the Post Master to be sure we don’t have any boxes waiting behind the counter. She promises we’ve got zero boxes. I head back to the school and begin placing phone calls to Fedex to determine what happened to our box. I spend about an hour and a half on the phone with various carrier companies trying to determine who might possibly have our extremely valuable box of meat. No one has any answers for me Thursday, but I get promises of returned phone calls on Friday morning. After a half day of school Friday I start making phone calls around 12:50 to again try to locate the box. After around 45 minutes on the phone with several different carriers I locate the box! The good news is they have the box in the chill section, the bad news is they insist that we owe them shipping fees before they will release the box. I try to explain that we have already paid all of the shipping up front but they are relentless and insist that we will have to pay the shipping fees if we want the box to be picked up. Enter Simon—This is where he calls the meat company directly. He just so happens to get the owner of the company on the phone, nice guy who is immediately appalled and realizes that our meat has now been sitting in a cooler inside a cardboard box for much longer than the 24hr promised time period. He hangs up with the promise of contacting Fedex to get this worked out. His exact response was, “I’m on the case." Within about 10 minutes of talking to the owner we get a call from Fedex in Anchorage, and this time the person actually knows what they are talking about! The customer service representative immediately tells Simon not to give any money to the third party carrier, that she will get it all worked out. She works on the case for about an hour and a half calling to talk to Simon several times to get approval for decisions.
At one point, she tried giving us some advice, and the conversation went something like this:

FEDEX: I see here that Bethel is only about 100 miles away. Would it be possible for you to just drive there and pick up your box?
SIMON: Well, that's a good idea, except the only way we can get to Bethel is by bush plane.
FEDEX: Oh, you can't borrow somebody's car to drive there?
SIMON: No, you can't drive to Bethel at all. There aren't any roads.
FEDEX: No roads!?
SIMON: No, ma'am.
FEDEX: Well...how much does it cost to fly to Bethel?
SIMON: Round trip? About $400 per person.
FEDEX: Whoa! That's crazy!

Even people who live in Alaska don't always realize what life in the bush is like. Finally though, she gave the third party instructions for next day delivery to GNU. WHEW! We were super concerned for a while that our meat wasn’t going to get here or was going to get here and be spoiled. Thankfully, the meat arrived here in good condition and is now in the freezer just waiting to be cooked! Yum!

Goodnews Bay Store

We’ve heard we have a pretty decent store here in Goodnews and judging by what some of our new teacher friends have to say, ours is pretty sweet. Most of the time you can find an assortment of “fresh” vegetable and fruit that usually includes apples, carrots, potatoes, red potatoes, onions, garlic. Sometimes you can even get oranges or bananas, but those are quick to sell out, so you’ve got to buy them when you see them.

As for other perishables, the store usually has yogurt, bread, butter, and cheese.  As you can imagine the prices aren’t anything near what you would expect to pay at your local grocery store. The store carries plenty of other non-perishable food type items and all of the junk food, candy and pop you could want. It’s not unusual to see kids here walking around after school with cans of pop and candy from the store, which would explain the terrible state of their teeth. All of my kindergarten students have at least one cap but most of them have more caps than baby teeth.

The store has a rather large freezer section that includes about 5 deep freezers full of frozen goods. I don’t have any photos of them currently; so maybe that’s a topic for a future post.

What's on the Menu?

You might be wondering if we’ve tasted some awesome Alaskan cuisine yet; and the answer is YES. We’ll give you a look at our menu from this past week.

Deep fried halibut with a curry mayonnaise sauce. 

Country fried moose with mashed potatoes and gravy

Dolly Varden char. The fish don't have scales, so you can eat the skin. 

We stuffed it with butter and garlic.

As you can see, we’ve been getting our fill of the meats that this land has to offer. A few of the guys from the village have generously shared some of their catches with us and we’ve been so thankful. It’s been quite an experience to try some of these things for the very first time!

My favorite has by far been the Halibut—I know why I’ve never liked fish before because I’ve never tried Halibut. Quite a few of the natives will tell you that halibut is also their favorite fish. They can’t understand why we’d never had halibut before we moved to Alaska. We did our best to explain to them that Halibut is very expensive in the lower 48; a concept they can’t quite grasp because it is readily available here during the peak season. Simon doesn’t discriminate; he likes it all and has been enjoying a Salmon Patty for lunch every day for about 2 weeks now.

A Little Bit of Everything

It's been about a week and a half since we've posted last, and there have been lots of things going on in Goodnews, so this post will have lots of random photos and stories...enjoy!

First of all, congratulations to Donny Porter for winning our Alaska basket at the fundraiser in Everson last weekend. In addition to some delicious Alaskan jellies and rolls, Donny won the first season of Alaska: The Last Frontier on DVD. In our post Alaska Basket, we wrote that this is the only show on Alaska worth watching that gives an authentic picture of life in the bush. Our friend Gary actually knows some of the people from the popular show Alaskan Bush People, and he said that the show is fake, along with many others on TV. His actual estimation of Alaska reality shows went something like this: "The Last Frontier...it's a pretty good show. The rest of them are all BS." Most of the others have a lot of manufactured drama and try to sensationalize bush life. So if you want the Real McCoy, watch The Last Frontier or read our blog!

No manufactured drama here, either. Last weekend, I got my Honda stuck about 5 miles out on the trail to the trout stream.

 The quad sunk down in the mud so deep that the frame of the quad was actually resting on the trail. I spent about an hour trying to get it out by shoving sticks and grass from the tundra under the tires to try to give it leverage. But it was stuck pretty good. So, I walked a mile and a half and climbed a hill, praying that I would have cell coverage enough to call somebody. Luckily, I was able to get a bar on my phone long enough to call Gary. The poor guy was relaxing at home watching football, but he drove the 5 miles out to pull my quad out of the rut.

Gary actually got stuck here himself the day before, but he was with someone and they were able to get his quad out. After pulling my quad out, we made a new trail on the tundra that bypasses this section.

Looks like mink or muskrat tracks. These were everywhere along the bank of the stream. 

A 17" dolly varden char. 

This is actually pretty small for this type of fish. There were some much larger char I saw swimming by my line. I'll be back for them in a couple of weeks. 

My fishing pole bunjeed to the front of the quad and caribou antlers 

I found on the tundra bunjeed to the back. 

Sounds like the start of a great country song.

A bridge on the trail made from PVC pipes tied together.

We may not have fall leaves in autumn, but the tundra has some beautiful colors of its own. The smell is unique as well, a mix between fall leaves and evergreen; very aromatic.

The greenhouse behind the school.

This weekend I unboarded it, cleared out all the weeds and junk, 

and planted some cold weather crops.

The dirt is not very good, so we'll see whether anything will grow or not.

It would be great to have salad again!

Ben and I have been playing basketball at men's open gym on Tuesday nights.

It's been a good chance for us to meet some of the people in the village our age (and get a little exercise!) 

In addition to preparing for the week, our Saturdays are now spent as chaperons for school-age open gym. Each classroom has a time they can come up and play games in the gym (or play on computers for the older students). Here, Christina is showing some K-2 students how to play cornhole, one of our favorite games from back home.