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!