Spring Changes

Spring is a time of great changes in Alaska. The daylight hours, which at first increase almost imperceptibly during the long, dark winter months after the solstice, suddenly explode at an exponential rate as we race towards summer and the Midnight Sun (we're gaining more than 30 minutes a week now, and it is light out well past midnight). The migratory birds return by the millions, breaking the profound silence of a winter in the wilderness; other animals, too- the other night we had a fox barking outside of our bedroom window- we watched it for about 20 minutes in a standoff with a teacher's cat.  The sounds of motorboats and Hondas and children playing fill the air where before was just the whipping of the wind and the swoosh! of ravens' wings.

 

This goofy little girl continues to go through exponential changes as well. She's crawling, climbing, scooting, and even standing on her own now, in what we call "complete mobility mode." We're getting excited to take her home next week and watch her as she gets to experience so many new things this summer.

One thing we don't have to worry about is pineapples....

...we don't like them!

"Helping" mom and dad at the book fair.

We had a school-wide pizza party last week for one of our students who won a major nation-wide award from Scholastic. He was one of only 5 students across the country to win their reading award. Alexie read over 2 million words this year!  He'll be skipping a grade next year and coming up to high school. 

Scholastic sent us a cake and 22 pizzas so the whole school could celebrate.

Alexie with his family. The woman on the far left is Anna Beavers, the skin sewer who I occasionally visit and write about.

On Friday, we celebrated the graduation of our 4 seniors and our preschoolers who will be moving up to the school in the fall. 

Yuyuraq precedes every major school event.

Junie making new friends.

My graduates! I've spent the last two years working with these young men and women, and to see all of their labors come to fruition was an amazing and emotional experience. At times they drove me crazy, at times it didn't look like we'd have more than one graduate, but in the end they all rose to the challenge and finished strong. Two of our graduates will be continuing their education this fall in college, and another will be entering a program to receive a certificate in welding. These young men and women are the future of Alaska, the future of the Y-K delta and the villages. 

After graduation, we held a prom for the whole village in the gym. 

Junie had to come inspect my lights and my DJ equipment of course.

Junie high-fiving one of Christina's students.

Dancing the night away....(Junie still hasn't recovered from prom, 

she's been wanting to party every night since!)

List Season

We’ve made it to what Simon calls one of my favorite times of the year, list-making time! Who doesn’t love a good list?! I’ve spent the past 2 weekends getting our to-do lists, to-order list and to-pack list all written out for the end of the year. I’m not going to lie those lists are pretty lengthy. We’ve got lists of things that need to be done here at our house before we leave, things that must be done at school before the end of the year, things that need to be purchased for our summer time back “home”, things we’ll need to order for next school year and finally things that we need to pack and take with us for the summer. Whew! Just thinking about the list can be exhausting and yet it’s exhilarating all at the same time.

I assured Simon that he would thank me later for my list that included "a thousand dollars worth of items".

We packed our first suitcase last weekend and checked several items off the ‘to pack’ list. I did a little happy dance, and then promptly re-wrote the remaining items on a new list. It’s a great feeling to cross something off those lists!

 This weekend we did an inventory of the freezer and pantry to determine what we should eat for our last 18, yes 18, days here in Goodnews. I don’t know anyone who likes to waste food, but given the cost and difficulty of getting food here we especially hate to waste food. So, part of the inventory today included checking expiration and best buy dates on nearly everything in our pantry. We ended up with just a few things that were too far gone to use and one huge can of pumpkin pie mix that needs to be used before we leave.

How should we use this huge can of pumpkin pie mix when we don’t have all of the ingredients on hand to make a pie—well chocolate chip pumpkin cookies, of course! So, we set out making a double batch of cookies tonight. Don’t worry we’re not planning to eat these all for ourselves; we’ll share with the students! Some cookies will likely end up at Prom and others at an auction for the Jr/Sr High students.

About an hour into baking!

Some of the finished product. I missed getting pictures of the rest--they are already packaged and in the freezer for student activities this month.