Meet The State Bird

I’m not sure that this is a topic we’ve covered on the blog before, but it’s high time we’ve mentioned it. Moments after walking into our new house in Goodnews we met the state bird of Alaska. Since then, we’ve had weekly encounters. I’m sure these aren’t pleasant encounters for the bird, but we surely enjoy them. Now, you may be wondering which state bird I’m referring to and that would be the ciivak, (pronounced g-back), known to many of you as the common housefly. We have never seen so many flies in our lives. Just when you think they are all gone one more starts buzzing around. For all of you Breaking Bad fans we’ve had many a Walt moment when seeking to eradicate all of the flies from our house, the school and our co-worker’s house.

For your viewing pleasure: here is a series of pictures that show Ben and me killing flies in his kitchen. They were so bad I was afraid to leave any of the food out uncovered! These things are everywhere! On the positive side they move pretty slow and are usually easy to kill.

Getting mail here in the village can sometimes be a pain and other times it seems to work just like mail does in the lower 48. We have a Post Office that is open 6 days a week M-F 9-12 and 1-5 and Saturday from 1-5. However, there are times when you make a trip to the post office only to find the door locked and not a soul who knows why it isn't open. Most of the everyday mail comes on small Cessna 207 planes with larger items coming on bigger cargo planes. Naturally, if the weather is poor no mail comes in or goes out. After a day or two of no planes there is usually a surplus of mail and mail planes as they try to catch up. We've experienced shipping boxes home via priority 2 day mail that have taken 2+ weeks to get home. What you should know is that since the mail leaves the village on the small planes it's not the post master's job to get the mail to the plane. Getting the mail to the plane is the job of the Yute Village Agent. This person takes the mail to the plane and delivers the mail to the post office. As you can see there are several opportunities for mail to get misplaced. Now for a picture of the inside of our Post Office. This just might be why it takes a few days to get packages. Often we can tell by the tracking that the package is in the post office but don't get it for another day or two.

Feeling Thankful...

With Thanksgiving on the horizon (and with it, a couple of much needed days off of work!), our conversations have gravitated towards what we are thankful for in life and in our present situation, and at the top of the list is our principal, Shannon. You may have noticed that our posts do not reveal much about the school, our students, or what goes on in our classrooms, and that's mostly because we're trying to find that balance where we can be honest about the situation without being overly negative or pessimistic. Despite the tranquility and beauty of the scenery and our village's namesake, there are some unique, well-entrenched challenges here in Goodnews ~ both at school and in the village. We've had our share of frustrating days where we question what we're doing here.
However, we've also taken stock of the progress that has been made from the first day of school until now and that helps put the bad days in a more proper perspective. Last week, for some reason, was chalk full of those bad days, and we can't help but share one event with you, one that left us feeling very thankful for our principal.

Warning: Name(s) have been changed to protect the guilty.

As we said above, last week was a very difficult week in a number of ways. Our students were highly emotional, disagreeable, and at times defiant. This happened across the board, from Kindergarten through high school. Last Thursday, our principal, Shannon, had a meeting with one of the high school students, Jim, who had missed the last week and a half of school (and plenty of days before that as well) to let him know that he had failed his classes due to absences and was going to be placed on a credit recovery track, in which he would spend his day on the computer instead of in class with his peers. Jim didn't like this, so he got up, left the principal's  office, and proceeded to spray the walls of the hallway with coffee from his mug. When Shannon quickly followed him out to contain the situation,  Jim took off his shoes and threw them at her. He then came at her to attack, but at that moment, our VPSO (Village Police Safety Officer), who happened to be dropping his daughter off for school, grabbed Jim from behind. As the VPSO held him back, Jim swung at Shannon's face, missing her by mere inches. As Shannon recounted the story to me later, she said that she didn't flinch or turn away as Jim swung at her, because she wanted to let him know that she couldn't be intimidated and that she wasn't afraid of him. The VPSO restrained Jim and quickly escorted him out of the building. The ASB (our version of the PTA, except they have much more power) is meeting this week on whether to agree to Shannon's recommendation to have Jim expelled. Without a principal with strength and resolve like Shannon has, this place would simply fall down around us. We're very thankful for her leadership!

Last weekend, Gary took me with him to check his black fish traps by the lakes out past the school, where there are endless streams and ditches that connect the bay to the ponds and lakes.  

No blackfish, but you can see the tiny muskrat he caught.  I used this opportunity to find places to set my traps for mink, muskrat, and otter. 

Gary clearing a path to place one of his blackfish traps.

Thanks to my dad and Russ Slade for lending me some trapping supplies. 

A unique catch-within-a-catch! My trapping season started out strong with this catch, but with 7 straight days of rain, things have been slow lately. Weather-wise, it's been an unusual winter here so far, at least according to the elders. It's been in the mid 40s for about a week now, and we haven't really had any snow yet. 

Updates

It seems as if we’ve forgotten all of you blog readers, but I assure you that is not the case! We’ve been plenty busy here in Goodnews and have several posts working their way onto the blog in the next few days. Until then here is a glimpse into our last few weeks- er.. almost month!

We finished up October with the trick or treating and the Halloween carnival on October 31^st and November 1^st.  Trick or treating was on Friday and some villagers were deterred by the weather. A bit of a snowstorm blew in Friday late morning and ended up cancelling all Friday afternoon flights. Saturday was the Halloween carnival at school—several of the families attended and had a great time playing carnival games and winning prizes.

One of the teachers from our building is out on sick leave. She and her husband had to travel to the lower 48 for some appointments and testing. They’ve been gone for 2 full school weeks. This makes for a really interesting time with her class. We've really missed having them around. Her husband is retired and works from home but comes to school at the end of every day usually with a great story to tell. We've learned quite a bit from them! Teacher friends...imagine having subs that aren’t trying to get hired! Sometimes that can turn into a total nightmare—if they don’t feel like working—they don’t show up. However, this time around we’ve been pretty lucky and the girl that is subbing for our co-worker has been awesome and seems to have found her niche with the first and second grade class. I share a paper-thin wall with that classroom and have been impressed by their behavior.

Since our last post we’ve traveled to Bethel again for new teacher training. As always, that’s an adventure and means movie time! There is quite a trend with the new teachers—many of them make time to see a movie. It is truly one of the only times that you can relax, let go of work and possibly forget where you are for a few moments in time.  We enjoyed a movie with Ben and some new teacher friends from Kasigluk-Agula. This time our training dinner was held at Swanson’s, which you might remember from THIS post. Swanson’s catered a pretty good “Thanksgiving Dinner”, which included your choice of turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, potato salad (that’s for you Pap Duke!) and stuffing.

Our flight to Bethel for training was delayed for several hours due to weather but we finally got a plane and headed to training later in the day. The most interesting part of our travel was our return flight. You’ve never really lived until you’ve lived through a bush flight during the windy season on the coast of the Bering Sea. What an adventure; or something like that! We had a few moments that would’ve caused an audible shriek on your normal jet liner, but this is an Alaska bush plane- you don’t have time to gasp when you’re only flying 650ish feet off the ground. Let’s just say we hit a pocket of air that caused our plane to rise slightly and then drop dramatically. Immediately after, the pilot took off his headphones and turned around to make sure everyone was okay, then promptly tightened his seat belt as tight as possible. If that’s not a sign that your seat belt should be a little tighter, I don’t know what is. Simon spent most of the time following that incident holding his breath; it was a pretty bumpy and nauseous ride. Needless to say we made it back to Goodnews in one piece! We even had a pretty smooth landing. If you’ve ever wondered what landing in a bush plane is like check out this video on CNN of a jet-liner landing during wind. It’ll blow your mind, and possibly lead you to think that bush flying is for the young.  Don’t worry—those landings are few and far between but they do make for exciting times!