Spring Break in Kong

           This semester is going pretty fast so far, and it is already the middle of March. (Spring break is the week of March 17 to March 21.) Our school gets a one-week spring break for all of the teachers and students. Since I am still fairly new here and don’t have much money, I chose to stay in Kong during the break. Also, a majority of the other teachers decided to go on small vacations (Megan and Garnet went all the way to Mexico.) or to visit family, so I am almost here alone. The reason I say that I am almost here alone is that I am dog sitting for the teachers. I have Hermes, who is Megan’s dog. Hermes is a poodle mix, so he is this fluffy white dog and is full of energy. I also am watching Mabel, a puppy that Cori got from the village, who I might be able to keep. The reason I might be keeping her is because Cori has terrible dog allergies that she did not know about. But, having the dogs as company over spring break is going to be a real fun time.

            My biggest excitement for things to do was actually walk the mile from my apartment into the village. I really needed to go to the store, and since I do not have an ATV or snow machine the only way to get to the village was to walk. It was a chilly day, but luckily there was barely any wind. I walked all the way to the store and took some great pictures of downtown Kong, so I would be able to share them with my family and friends. The weirdest part was going to the store and having so many people just look at me in this weird way, since I was a teacher that actually stayed in the village over spring break. Many of the villagers even left the village to visit family, so there were not many people in Kong at this time. Overall, the walk into the village was absolutely amazing.

            Besides walking into the village, I wanted to go exploring around the tundra. However, I did not want to be alone. To fix that problem, I decided to take Hermes on these really long walks to see where all of the boardwalks in Kong lead to. The boardwalk is pretty much like a boardwalk on the beach, except this is what ATV’s and snow machines can travel on. And, Kong has two boardwalks: one is very new and the other is pretty old and falls apart a lot. I wanted to see where the old boardwalk would lead. So, Hermes and me started our walk towards the lonely cell phone tower in Kong, despite the other teachers warning me that the old boardwalk can break and you will fall through at any time.

            The walk was amazing. I wanted to walk closer to night so I would be able to photograph one of the amazing sunsets that we get in the Alaskan tundra. As we were walking towards the cell phone tower, I was just in my own little zone when I hear this crack. I just thought the boardwalk was a little squeaky, so we kept walking. All of a sudden I took another step and my foot when right through the boardwalk! I literally had my foot in a giant hole. Luckily, I wasn’t stuck. I pulled my foot out and decided to just be a little more careful this time when I was walking since we still had quite a bit to go before we reached the cell phone tower. Once we reached the cell phone tower, I noticed that the boardwalk still didn’t end. So, Hermes and me continued on this journey to find what would be at the end of the boardwalk.

            After about five more minutes of walking, I got to see some metal objects in the distance. As we walked towards these objects, I realized that they had some words written on them. It turned out that they said, “No swimming in the lake”. At the end of the boardwalk was actually a second lake. It was just amazing to see this second frozen lake! We have the one lake that separates the village from the school, but to find another one all the way out here was pretty cool. I stood there for a few minutes just to look at the lake then turned around to go back home.

            I continued to go on walks to the lake or the village for pretty much my entire spring break. I was also trying to potty train Mabel, so she could stop making messes in the apartment. Dog sitting was a little tiring since Mabel is so young and has to be taken outside a lot. Luckily Hermes was a really good dog, which was a relief.

            Once the teachers started to come back on the weekend, it was nice to give the dogs backs. I was just a little surprised that I would not be keeping Mabel since someone else wanted her. I just got upset, since I started to bond with her so well over spring break. And now, I had to give her up. That was probably my least favorite day of spring break, but other than that I got quite a bit of exercise and took some amazing photographs.

The Worst Weekend in Alaska

            Valentine’s weekend in Alaska will probably win as one of the worst weekends ever here. I hope this blog doesn’t sound like I am just complaining, but it was just not a good weekend at all.

            As I stated in my last blog, my sewage was not working quite like it should, so I was not able to stay in my apartment due to the horrible smell that was protruding from there. Also, I had to travel again this weekend with the girls’ basketball team to Tuntutuliak (which has the short name of Tunt). I won’t lie, but I did not want to leave Kong at all. My apartment was a mess, and I was exhausted from all of the moving that I had to do the day before. Luckily Megan and Cori (the girls the share the unit next to mine) said that they would look after my unit and try to clean it the best that they could.

            One thing to know about the twenty-eight villages of the Lower Kuskokwim School District is that they are pretty spread out over the southwestern part of Alaska. Also, they are divided into three separate basketball leagues to make it easier on everyone for traveling purposes. We are part of the Mid-Coast League, which has the following villages: Kongiganak, Kwigillinok, Tuntutuliak, Chefomak, Kipnuk, and sometimes we can play EEK or Quinhagak.

            Tunt is further away from Kong than Kwig was, so it was a longer plane ride this time. The girls all seemed to be in a pretty bad mood as well. I still was not happy to be traveling when I could be cleaning all of the sewage from my apartment. But, I still tried to put on a happy face and do my best to give the illusion that I was so happy to be traveling this weekend.

            The girls were just being very rude this day since they kept telling me to go and get them this and that. They pretty much were trying to make me their slave and I was not going to put up with this. I think part of the problem was that it was Valentine’s Day and they were away from the families and special Valentines which made it difficult for a few of them.

            Besides, the girls being all in bad moods, I did get to walk around Tunt a little bit. Tunt has more hills than Kong and I will just say walking up an icy hill means me falling right back down the hill. It was very difficult for my and my large and puffy winter jacket and my large boots to walk through these hills. But, I did get to go to a few stores and get a decent amount of snacks to make me happy for a while, so I guess that could be a good thing.

            So far, this blog doesn’t seem like many bad things did happen to me, besides being with miserable teenage girls on Valentine’s Day. But, it would all change. My female students really believe that I should have a man in my life, so they took this opportunity to ask the Tunt basketball coach if he would go out with me. The lesson I learned from this was when the students come up to you and tell you that they are going to go ask a guy out for you, they actually mean it. They are not joking by any means. I will now always take my students seriously on that type of topic from now on. Luckily, I did not have to go on any dates, since my students failed at their mission to get me a man for Valentine’s Day.

            But, my least favorite part of the weekend was that during our games on Saturday morning, our plane came early for us. Half of the team had to leave with me to go back home, since the coach wanted to stay in Tunt to watch the girls play their game. . These girls were not too happy at all to have to leave the game and go home early. So, they decided to take out their anger on me. They would tell me things such as that I am not a god chaperone and that I should just stay home next time. They even went as far as telling me that I am not a good teacher here. All I could do was to ask them why do they feel this way, since I could not be irresponsible and lose my temper on them. I tried my best to keep my cool, and I think I did a pretty good job with it. I didn’t snap at any of the girls, which is a major accomplishment even though they were saying some of the nastiest things I have ever heard since I moved here. But, I survived this ordeal and got to go home.

            Kong was still the same when I arrived home. Still had a broken wind turbine, but more problems were occurring in my housing unit than ever before. The sewage was fixed, but Cori and Megan told me that they were unable to really clean the apartments since our water just decided to shut off. This weekend kept getting worse and worse as it when on. Luckily, I still had electricity and I decided to turn on my Scenty for as long as I possibly could.  For those of you that do not know what a Scenty is, it uses a light bulb to melt scented wax, so it is like a candle minus the fire. I think I left it on all night long just to help with the awful smell that was occurring in my apartment. Garnet offered for me to be able to stay with her that night, but I really just wanted to be able to sleep in my own bed for one night.

            A miracle did happen overnight. The water began to work again slowly throughout the night and finally around 8A.M. on Sunday morning, we officially had running water back in both of the apartments. I was just so happy that I would be able to shower, wash my dishes, and do my laundry. But, most importantly I got to finally scrub my entire bathroom, so it would not smell like sewage again!!

            In the end, I pretty much am praying that I do not have to ever experience another weekend like this one again. I am hoping that I do not have to travel with the girls basketball team anytime soon again, mainly because I am far behind on getting my teaching materials ready and that will need an entire weekend to get all of that ready to go. Luckily, basketball season is almost over and I can start having more time for getting my teaching materials ready to go.

Wind Turbine Fiasco

           February 13 was a very interesting day for me. It started off with me getting a text message from Garnet telling me that we had a two-hour delay. Just like most schools, we do get delays in Alaska, but the reason we had this delay was not because of snow. Actually, we had a wind chill of over negative forty degrees Fahrenheit! I won’t lie, but it was one cold morning. I went to school at my usual time, but I had one small issue of almost being blown away by the wind! Never in my life had I experienced winds as strong and cold as this one.

            Around 10:30A.M we finally got to start school. However, I was not used to how two-hour delays work here. Instead of creating a new schedule with reduced times, you just start teaching the class that would be in your classroom at that time. Pretty much, you lose your first two classes when you have a delay.

            As the day continued like any of my typical school days, with students asking me the weirdest questions. Instead of asking about my relationship status, the students want to know my middle name. (I swore to myself they will not find out until the last day of school.) But, this day was far from normal. In the middle of fifth hour, around 1:20P.M., an announcement came on the intercom saying all students are to be dismissed immediately. Now, this is something that was weird. My ninth grade students that I was teaching were all asking why are we getting out early. I just said that it was probably because of the wind and that it is so cold outside. But, I was completely wrong.

            After all my students left, I went down the elementary hall of the school since I am the only high school teacher that has a classroom located in the elementary hallway. I asked one of the elementary teachers what was going on, and she just told me to go to the office since we were all having an emergency meeting.

            At the office, I learned the real reason why we were dismissed. The one wind turbines was actually starting to melt in the blade and possibly will fall apart. If it fell apart in the way they were anticipating, the blades could possibly fly and crash into the school and the new teacher housing. It was scary hearing that we have to pack a small bag and leave our apartments and move to the old teacher housing until they could figure out what was going to happen to the blades of the wind turbine. Old teacher housing was the one place I have been dreading on ever having to live in since there is no running water or plumbing!

            The biggest problem of being in the old teacher housing was that the place we had to stay at had not been used in over a year, so the heat was completely shut off. This was not something that was fun. Luckily, one of the other teachers that live in old teacher housing with his wife and three children invited us to hang out at his place, so we can stay warm. After staying there about two hours, one of the teachers looked out the window and told us the top part of the wind turbine was gone. We all quickly looked out of the window to see that it was missing. We soon learned that the wind turbine just fell off and did not launch itself into the school or the new teaching housing. We were officially safe to move back home!

            But, the apartment I was living in wasn’t the best place for me to be. My unit and the unit next to mine (where Cori and Megan lived) started to have plumbing issues. The best way to describe this was that the sewage decided to back-up into my apartment and Cori and Megan’s apartment. What happened to put a wonderful thought into everyone’s minds was that the toilet would start making these weird sound effects and then would shoot the sewage up out of the toilet. Then it would go down the toilet and into my shower/tub. It was not a pretty sight to look at! Luckily Megan and Cori reassured me that this happens quite often in out units and that maintenance would be there shortly to fix it. However, the entire apartment stunk and it was late at night, so we all decided to stay at Garnet’s apartment, since hers was not affect by the sewage issue.

            Thursday, February 13 will be one day that I will probably not forget for a very long time. But, the start of an even worse weekend (probably the worst) will just be starting the next day.

Rural Alaskan Sports and Traveling to Kwig

            On January 31, I got asked to travel with the girls basketball team to Kwigillingok (also called Kwig), which is our sister village. Many of the villagers from Kongiganak came from Kwigillingok, and many of their family members still live in that village.

            Of course the only way to travel from one place to the next is by plane, so we all loaded into two small planes after the half-day at school and flew about fifteen minutes to Kwig. Once we all arrived in Kwig, we had a few minutes to get the girls warmed up and ready to play ball. I am definitely not a basketball expert, so I let Dolly, who also works at the school be in charge of all of that, since she is the coach.

            Watching the girls play basketball was very different from teaching them. I have been teaching for a few weeks now and am starting to become more comfortable with the students. You can be a little more relaxed when chaperoning than when teaching but you still have to be authoritative figure for the children.

            So, you are probably wondering how does all of this work? The way basketball works in the villages is that games will be played in a tournament style fashion, except there are no teams that get eliminated. After a few games, dinner will be served and everyone will eat then help clean up the gym, so the games can quickly resume. Once all of the games have been played for the night, you set up sleeping bags on the floor of the classroom that you are assigned to stay in for your time visiting. Yes, I have slept on the floor on a classroom now. (All of my images of teachers sleeping in their classrooms as a young child came true this weekend.) It is honestly like a large slumber party with students and the coach. But, we didn’t spend all night just relaxing in the classroom. Instead, we got to walk around and travel around Kwig, mainly to go shopping in the other stores to get some snacks to eat. But, once morning comes, the games will start right up again.

            My biggest problem with this weekend was that after the games were all done, we got trapped in Kwig because of the bad weather. The second day in Kwig was hard to keep the girls positive, since many of them were homesick and tired. I have learned the torture I put my parents through as a teenager of not wanting to go to bed at a decent time.  My girls kept me up until 2A.M. I guess this is pay-back from keeping my parents up all of those nights when I was younger.

 Kong also helped out with kitchen duty since February 1 was our coach’s birthday and her relative was the cook for the school. So, I volunteered with some of the girls to cook and serve dinner to all of the teams. We cooked spaghetti (Yes, I ate spaghetti since I did not want to starve.), vegetables, got fruit cocktail prepared, and even helped make a lemon cake. It was fun being able to help out and be a part of another school community.

            Once dinner was done, many of the girls went over the Tuntutuliak classroom, where the coach named Patrick was telling the girls ghost stories of a little girl that died in the hallway of the school. Many of the girls I was chaperoning for would not even go to the bathroom at night since they swore this little girl was going to attack them. So, thank you Patrick for keeping all of the Kong girls up and even scaring them by turning lights on and off in the upstairs room. It was a very interesting and exhausting night having to constantly take girls to the bathroom since they were all too scared to go to the bathroom.

            Finally on Sunday, February 2, the weather was good enough for all of us to fly home. I was completely exhausted since this trip has completely drained my entire weekend away, but it was overall a very rewarding experience. I got time to bond with some of my female students, and learn about their lives. In the end, it wasn’t a bad trip at all, and I even made it back to the school in time to watch the Super Bowl!

First Day of School

            As a new teacher, the most stressful day has to be the first day. This day was especially difficult for me since I am a brand new teacher that is starting to teach at this school in the middle of the school year. All of the other teachers had a half of year to establish rapport and connections with their students, and there is me, a teacher fresh out of college with no actual teaching experience about to take a plunge into teaching dual language students.

            The way the school day works here is that students will start to arrive at school at 8 A.M. Breakfast is served in the gym until 8:20 A.M. Breakfast is usually composed of pilot bread with peanut butter and jelly on them and cereal. After students eat, they will sit and relax until the first bell rings at 8:30 A.M.

            However, this day was different, since our principal decided to have a small meeting to introduce me and explain his expectations of all of the students to this second semester. The one student came up to me when he found out I was the new teacher and told me that he expected me to be a lot taller than what I am. Nothing in any of my college education classes could get you prepared to face the remarks that your students will make to you.

            Once the first bell rang and we moved on to the first class of the day, I was really becoming nervous. I really felt like I had no training and definitely was not ready for this day. I did not know any of the students’ names and I had about twenty students in my Algebra 1 that I was teaching first hour. (All of the periods are broken into hour-long classes.) That really made me very nervous. But, all my peers (the other teachers) told me to do today was set up my expectations and rules for my classroom and introduce myself with a slideshow of my life and my experiences.

            As I stated earlier, nothing could prepare me for the questions that the students would ask after the slide show. Many of the students would ask me if I was married or if I had a boyfriend. And when I stated that I did not, they become very concerned. They kept telling me that I should be married and be having children now. (This is because I do have a few students that are married with children.) I tried to explain to the students that I do not have to be married at an early age, but explaining to my students was just not working. Instead, I used my backup plan and had the students explain to me facts about themselves so I can learn names.

            I will just say this: Icebreakers are not easily done with Yup’ik students. Many of the students do not like to talk out loud to the class so getting them to say something about them was like torturing them. Some of the students were extremely nervous that they were shaking. I have learned that I should try to get the students out of their comfort zones, but this might not have been the best way to do so.

            However, I decided that I would do the same introduction lesson for all of my classes. My schedule during the first two weeks of school was completely chaotic, since we did not know where to put students at. Finally, by the beginning of February, a schedule was finally made and I would be teaching the following subjects: two sections of Algebra 1, one section of Applied Mathematics, two sections of Earth Science, one section of Ecology, and one section of Junior High Study Hall. I am mainly nervous about teaching science courses since I am only certified to teach mathematics. And, the only science courses that I have taken in college were all biology or physics related, so that is no help of me. I feel like I am teaching this subject in the dark, since I struggle with the topics because it is not a subject matter that I am comfortable with teaching because I have no experience teaching it. This schedule would go from 8:30A.M. until 3:45 P.M Monday through Thursday.  Fridays were special since we go from 8:30 A.M. until 12:50 P.M. After 12:50 P.M. (that is the conclusion of lunch), students were dismissed, or if students played sports they would prepare to travel for that weekend.

            I am not going to lie, but my first day as a teacher was alright. I feel like I was more nervous than my students. This is because these are a type of students that I am completely not used to. I am used to teaching students from northeastern Pennsylvania and having these students was completely different than what I was expecting. I am going to try my best and educate these students to the best of my ability. I want to try to have these students do the very best that they can in both math and science classes.