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.