We've had some unusually warm weather and many of the elders in the village have been heard saying that spring has come early! Well that's just fine with us--and most of the kids as well. Our days are getting quite a bit longer here now. We're seeing sunrise around 8:18am and sunset somewhere around 9:22pm. It's been rather light out until around 10:15-30ish this weekend. We're pretty close to gaining about 5 minutes of sunlight per day. It's been absolutely lovely until you realize that it's 10:00 and you can still hear the neighbor kids, who happen to be in your class, outside playing.
A few nights ago around 9:00 some junior high and high school students stopped by to invite us to come play bat with them. Simon thanked them for their invitation but then assured them that we are in fact old people and playing bat after 9pm didn't work for our bedtime. He suggested they invite us again when they chose to play earlier. Of course the next night around 6 we hear a whole gaggle of kids on the front porch wanting to know if we'd like to play bat. So--we had our first lesson in the village game of bat aka baseball.
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Bat is played at what is known as the gravel pit.
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Just a little pre game waiting for the ball to arrive.
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The line up of batters waiting for their turn.
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| The outfield and only base. |
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| Rocky even joined in on the game. |
The game of bat is quite different from baseball. Their similarities are that they use a bat and ball and require running. It took us quite a few minutes to catch onto the rules and strategy of the game. The game doesn't have a true pitcher, the ball is simply tossed up from right in front of the batter. After hitting the ball you move to the right side of home plate and stand to wait for another batter to hit the ball far enough for you to make it to base safely. Sometimes there were 5-6 players waiting. We had a nice time playing with the kids and I'm sure we'll be back out there a few more times before the end of the year.
Christina, I wasn't sure where to answer your question about Span Alaska, so I thought I'd just post it here! (if email is better for the future, my email address is rcunningham18@hotmail.com) We do a collective order through our school, a bunch of us placing orders together, to get bypass (free) shipping. If you order more than 1,000 pounds, you can get bypass. But even if you have to pay shipping, it seems reasonable. They have dry, refrigerated and frozen goods. If you go to their website: www.spanalaskasales.com you can request a catalog. I always use the catalog, write out my order, then we fax it in with everyone else's orders.
ReplyDeleteSometimes they are out of items, which is frustrating, but when items haven't shown up or have been wrong, their customer service is great!