New School Year, New Start

As a new school year begins so does new adventures. After living back in Colorado, I have a teaching job! After two days of school, I am so glad to be back in the classroom. I didn't realize how much I had missed it.

Here is the new classroom. I wanted to try a theme this year, so I went with blue and yellow. I think it turned out pretty well and the kids seem to like it. It is a great start to what I hope is a wonderful school year.

To all those teachers out there, thank you for all you do for the kids of the world!

Football Season!

The start of fall means the start of football season. This weekend Chris and I were able to go to the Boise State game at Colorado State University.



It was both our first big football game. There were a ton of people, but also a large group of Boise State fans. There was plenty of blue in this green and gold world. It was a great game and a blast.

Summertime

Summer is just too short. Week starts in one week, but we did have some great trips this summer.

We did get the chance to visit the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. It was fantastic. We were able to go up to the very top and see the surrounding city.

This is the view from the top. It was amazing to see so far.

In South Carolina, we were able to go walk around the Naval aircraft carrier called the USS Yorktown. It was amazing to walk around a ship that used to set sail around the world.

Going to camp in Colorado was also a good time. The sunsets over the mountains were beautiful.

School starts in less then a week, but the adventures are still going to come.

The last day in Alaska....for now

Because Nome is south of Brevig, the ice is already starting to melt.

This picture was taken at 2am. This is as dark as it will be for the rest of the summer.

To finish off the year in Alaska, a bonfire was created on the beach. Songs and fire and the Alaskan sun. What a great ending.

24 Hours of Daylight

May 15, 2011=24 Hours of sunlight. During the summer months in the Arctic, the sun goes 3-6 degrees below the horizon. Although the sun does go down, the rays of sun are still seen throughout the night.



At Prom, May 14, Native Eskimo singers came and allowed the students the chance to Eskimo Dance. It was so fun to watch the kids come out and dance to the music.


Native Eskimo art includes beading and sewing. We have been stringing beads in first grade for the last quarter. I became interested and created my first beaded barrette! I think it turned out pretty well. A new hobby is coming around.

May

The ice is starting to break up. The blue water can finally be seen underneath the ice. The ocean is still frozen, but the ponds are melting.

For the last week of school, I took the class around the community to take pictures. They thought it was the funnest thing ever. Here is just one of them.



For the first time ever I took a walk on the frozen ocean. It doesn't look any different then the surroundings but just knowing that it was ocean made it feel really cool.

We went walking on the beach where the pebbles are starting to show again and found this fire. There was no one around and it was just blazing away.

The ice is starting to break up. This is a view of one of cracks in the ice. It goes down a couple feet.

April Snow Showers!

It is April, wow, and we are still getting loads of snow and having 60 mph winds and blowing snow. The picture above is the result of what happens when you leave a window open and then leave to go to work. We did leave the window open, but it was beautiful outside and by the time we got home, the snow was blowing with 50mph winds and it just happened for form a small snow pile in our house.

The icicles on our house. They are quite fantastic.

I have always loved to crochet, but have found several websites where there are patterns for animals. These are the creations I have made with yarn!

Arts and Fun

The Inupiaq Eskimos have many types of artwork. In school, the kids get to experiment with the art form of beading. The Native women in town bead barrettes and earrings, but the kids get to make bracelets or necklaces.
In science we learn about the states of matter. This day we got to play with mixing liquids and solids and blowing bubbles! Lots of fun.


The video is a 360 view of the Arctic tundra not far out of Brevig.

Winter Weather

During the last few days, the weather in Brevig has been the worse I have seen yet. Blowing wind and snow up to 65 mph and snow drifts five feet high.
Even with all of this, school does not close.

I woke up on Wednesday morning to take the dogs out and opened the door to this....



I decided that I would take the dogs out later.
We shoveled the stair three times and each time it was that high.

One day of school this week we had so little kids that we decided to combine the entire elementary wing. There was only about 20 kids the whole day. The weather was so bad that not many people wanted to go out in it. I don't blame them. I could barely see my hand in front of my face.

Fun with no Sun

Living in Brevig is like living in a different world. There are no roads, no cars, and no places to go to hang out. So, to cope with this, our neighbor has collected tons of games. This is one of them. Probably the most confusing and detailed game I have ever seen. It took us three hours to play the first half, but it was so much fun.

Having the entire village on one power source can be a blessing and a curse. In this case, the whole village was in a power outage for about two hours. There are several reasons the power goes out up here, but all we need to know is where is our lantern! I love it. It brights up the whole room with a push of a button!

Chris and I got new glasses while we were down in the lower 48. We finally got them and showed them off

Little Dribblers is a basketball team comprised of 3-6th graders. The Coach is as tall as the players, and he is on his knees. It was quite a sight.

This weekend Little Dribblers played in a tournament against Diomede. Diomede is an island that happens to be the closest point in the United States to Russia. The people who live there are unique in their own way and live the Eskimo way of life. They still go whale and polar bear hunting. The only way to get to the island is on crab boat or helicopter, except for the winter because they have an ice landing strip that is built on the frozen ocean. It is a place I would love to go, but scared to actually visit because it is likely that I would get stuck there because of the weather patterns.

100 Day of School

The puppies are getting bigger! They are getting to be big enough that they take me on a walk.

I made homemade noodles finally! They turned out great and I even had a sharp knife to cut them with. Its called and ulu and it is used by the Eskimo women to cut seal skin.

First grade celebrated the 100th Day of School! We had a lot of fun.

We wore our hats all day and did 100 piece puzzles.

We also made a wall of 100 hearts with things that we were thankful for.

Putting 100 stickers on our 100 day hats.

Christmas Break

Eskimo Games happen every year the week after Christmas. Chris participated in the event called Leg Wrestling.

Learning to sew!

The makings of the kuspuk. These are the cuffs and the front with the pocket. I sewed on the border and then the rickrack. I am finally making my lines straight.

It's so cold outside that there is ice on the inside of the window. I had to use a hair blow dryer to melt the ice away.

An ornament made from an Alaskan Native. They are made from seal skin and then beaded on the perimeter. These ladies make ornaments in the shape of polar bears, snowmen, reindeer, angels, and trees.

The first big snow fall of the year. The snow fell and then the wind came. The constant blow of 35 mile per hour winds for a couple days straight causes the wind to blow the snow into drifts. Most of the drifts are about five feet tall.

Eskimo Games: Leg Wrestling

Deck the Rooftop

Merry Christmas from Brevig Mission School!

Christmas Time

Well it is Christmas time up in the bush and that means Christmas Tree!

The pups are growing. They are almost too strong for me to hold them both, but Chris thinks they make a great pillow!

The weather is always around 0 degrees. The wind however makes the temperature hit negative numbers very quickly.

The sun comes up around 11:30 and sets around 3:00-3:30. We are still losing 5 min. a day in sunlight.

I have made it through my first semester of teaching and loved it.

Chris and I went to Anchorage for a visit and were supposed to fly out yesterday to Nome, but after flying all the way to Nome and finding out that we couldn't land because of weather, we turned around and came back to Anchorage. The booking agent informed us that all planes were booked til Tuesday. Good thing we are on Christmas Break.

Frozen Land and Sea

This is what the beach looked like a couple months ago. The water is flowing and the rock filled beach is inviting.

Now the ocean looks like this. The water is freezing and the rocks are now slippery with ice.

The ocean is freezing but as it still freezes it moves to and from the coast. This will be one of the last parts of the ocean to freeze. It's crazy to think that the ocean is freezing.

The Tundra is freezing!

Planes land on runways of snow. The Bush Pilots are some in the best in the state, I am confident in their ability. It is an experience flying in a plane and taking off and landing on a runway of snow.