First Day of School

So I don't have internet at my house yet, and the school internet keeps kicking me off blogger periodically. Which is why I haven't updated about coming back to Atqasuk or starting school. Also, it's been crazy since we left Anchorage for the village.

I know you're all wanting to hear about the first day of school. It went very smoothly, although my kids were all very honest that it was not the most fun they've had at school. Sorry kids, the first day of school is always a little boring, even through college. You have to learn how to do things the right way before we can do all those fun school activities. I'm not about to do fun guided reading while the rest of the class is running around like monkeys instead of doing their reading assignment. We'll have plenty of fun activities and games later.

In my class, I have thirteen third and fourth grade students. They're all very sweet kids, although they were a little sleepy the first day. So far I've won all the minor face offs, and they have been minor. We haven't had any butting heads like I did during the first week of school last year. I woke one girl up and she told me she didn't want to go to the carpet, so I told her that I didn't really care what she wanted to do, I just needed her at the carpet. As soon as she realized I wasn't going to leave her alone to sleep, she did what I'd asked her to do.

At lunch on Friday a few of my girls asked if they could come visit me, meaning come visit my house and see what there is to see. I'm not about to let kids inside my house, so I told them that they could come visit me after school in my classroom. So after school on Friday four of the girls from my class stayed to 'visit'. All they wanted to do was talk to me and color and make fortunetellers, so I'm up for them visiting after school any time they want. They just need some extra love and attention from the teacher, exactly how I used to 'visit' the same way with some of my sixth graders during recess and after school last year.

My rewards system for good behavior involves coupons or 'prize passes' on Fridays. The kids get to pick a prize pass, something like not wearing shoes in my classroom for the day, or getting to jump to the front of the line. They're all things that don't cost me a cent, but the kids love them. I think most of the boys chose Line Jumper, and several of the girls picked Color Your World, which lets them write with crayon and colorful pens all day. I'm fairly positive we won't all get prize passes next week, but it was nice they all earned them this first week. Now they know what they're missing if they don't earn it in the future. I'm excited to introduce my reading program next week, so we'll see how that goes. It also involves rewards for finishing books and being able to answer some questions about the books they read.

On Friday night (school started on Thursday) we had a staff versus student basketball game. I didn't play (we had enough other staff members I didn't have to embarrass myself) so I sat with some of the girls from my class and took pictures. I found out yesterday that I'm the new Newspaper Advisor, so I'm sure some of those pictures will appear in the first edition. The staff was winning after the first half, but the students came back and won the game. Which I suppose is good because we'd like the basketball team to win some games this year! Especially since we're hosting regionals at the school this year, which is a really big deal.

Next week I'm sure I'll be very busy. I'm supposed to be getting my internet installed at home tomorrow, (YAY!) so put in a good word that happens! None of my food from my shopping excursion in Anchorage has come in yet, but hopefully it will very soon! Four rubbermaid tubs worth of food items will be amazing.

Here are some pictures of my gigantic classroom (For you, Mom). It's a work in progress because the teacher in there last year had a ton of old stuff that I had to clear out and organize. Don't even ask me to open my closet.

Atqasuk Arrival

I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for my blog update about getting to the village. But here's the funny thing about bush Alaska, the bush is the bush and things will go how they will regardless of your neat little plans. Example number one: my adventure getting to Barrow. Example number two: my inability to blog because of the internet connection. As in, our apartment's internet is being set up this week and the school internet was kind of funky so it wouldn't let me on blogger. No big deal, because I'm in Anchorage now for our inservice.

First things first, let me tell you about Atqasuk! For those of you who don't know, Atqasuk is just under 300 people. So very, very small. My high school graduating class had more people than this village. Everyone has a Honda (read four-wheeler) and there are about 75 children in the school. There is a community center, post office, one little store, a fire station, a police station, and a health clinic. And, obviously, Meade River School where I will teach third and fourth grade.

When we got to the village, most of my boxes had arrived and were in our house, but only one of Danielle's boxes had completed the journey. This means that all the delicious food we'd planned on being there when we arrived was not. So our first real order of business was to go shopping. Food in the bush stores is expensive. Very expensive. Most people either order food and have it shipped in, buy through Amazon Prime, or bring it in using Rubbermaid plastic tote bins whenever they go to Barrow, Fairbanks, or Anchorage. In addition to the food being expensive, the store is only open for limited hours; 2-6 Monday-Thursday, 12-6 on Friday, and a short period of time on Saturday.

How expensive are groceries? Well, a pack of four sticks of butter cost $6. And we spent $103 on the items in the picture below:

Then there's the post office, where they knew my last name because of the number of boxes that had already been delivered for me. Oops. Sorry guys. The post office is a busy place because we all have P.O. boxes for our mail. Not that it particularly matters if your P.O. box number gets on a package, because the post office workers know every person in town and where they live. The post office was full of boxes, mostly for a teacher who just retired. I had two more boxes waiting for me; my pillows from L.L.Bean. So now I have pillows, but no sheets. Awesome.

Boxes you mail to the bush get there whenever they get there. You just have to put them in the mail and know they'll show up eventually. So my missing boxes of sheets and books are probably sitting somewhere in Prudhoe Bay or Barrow, just waiting to get on a bush plane flight to Atqasuk. The problem is that these planes are tiny. 7-9 passenger CESSNA planes. So they carry however many people are flying that day and then fill the rest of the space and weight limit with cargo, including the mail, food for the store, and our packages. Here are some pictures from the first plane flight I took to Atqasuk so you can get an idea of the size plane I'm talking about here and why packages might take a while to get here:

The white tarp behind Danielle is the back of the plane. The black you can barely see near her elbow is the net holding the cases of soda for the store.

The pilot. As seen from my seat. I'll get a better picture of the dashboard next time. Our second pilot got turned around and pulled out google maps as a navigation aide. So there's that.

Last thing I want to tell you about and show you before I end this post is my house. I'm living in the four-plex, a big house for teachers and staff divided into four apartments. Mona (the counselor) lives in the three bedroom across from Danielle and I. Burt, Mary, their 20 year-old son Gale, and their 9 year-old daughter live in the apartment beside Mona. And next door to Danielle and I lives Janice and David, whom we have yet to meet. There are a few other places for teachers and staff to live, including Rod and Patti's house (they've taught in Atqasuk 6 years), the principal's house where Debbe (principal) and her husband Michael (8-12 science teacher) live, and the duplex, where Jim lives on one side and Dale Marie lives on the other side. We're quite a fun group, and I'll tell you more about the different teachers in later posts. For now, enjoy some pictures of my house! I'll post more pictures of the village, the school, and other things over the next few weeks. Right now I have to get back to my inservice training!

The outside of the four-plex

My kitchen. With two stand-alone freezers and a fridge/freezer combo.

The living room with our borrowed tv. Thanks Burt! Also my classroom boxes stacked in the background.

My room. Please pardon the mess. I'm still unpacking....