Saturday, March 14, 2009

Beaver Fest

Sorry this is a little out of order, but I have just been so busy I haven't gotten to post this. We had a carnival like thing here called Beaver Fest (Feb 19-22). One of the main events is dog sledding so here are some pics of the dog races.

Here are some pics from the races:






How cute is this little boy:

The Highlight of Beaver Fest is the Junior Miss Competition. It is a bunch of high school girls who compete in what can only be compared to a beauty pageant. There "talents" were mostly comedy acts which was REALLY funny. One girl "sang" the song "Let Me Clear My Throat" as an old man. She was fully in costume with a cane and all! She was really hilarious - even the elders were laughing!! I had the very important job of tallying all the scores from the judges. I guess because I am the math teacher it is assumed I can add.

Here is some of the audience:
While everyone waited for me to add the scores, the contestants and some of the elders did native dancing:
Here is the Winner - Tersea:

The dances were another big part of the weekend. Every night, there was a live band and most of the village gathered in the gym to dance. I learned to "two-step" and I had a wonderful dance partner - Craig. This is Craig at the Dag Races:

I was exhausted the night of the pagent but I was glad I made the effort to go to the pageant. It was the best part of the weekend. That weekend was one of the craziest ever or so I thought, but it just kept getting more insane! First we were hosting the middle school basketball tournament from Thursday - Saturday afternoon. Then, on Sunday morning I left for Juneau. I was coaching 3 teams that weekend so I was pretty busy, but as I walked off the court on Friday afternoon the principal said to me "The housing is done - you need to be moved in but Sunday night." I looked straight at him and said "Are you insane?", but he was serious so literally between games I had to pack my apartment and move all my stuff up the hill to the new housing (7 months late) IN BETWEEN games. It was so crazy, but it got done so that is really all that matters :) So, I left for Juneau on Sunday morning and had a wonderful time at the conference. But when I was at the airport going back, I got an email that the games for the upcoming weekend in Dillingham were being pushed up to Thursday. Without ever returning to Stu, I went straight to Dillingham and coached until Sunday morning.

I also received an email that we were moving into the new school and classes would be held there on Monday morning. Again, my reply was "Are you crazy?" But nope, we opened a new school on Monday morning - without ANY materials! It was quite a week. We had nothing - no paper, no pencils, no books, no student computers, no soup in the bathroom, no chalk for the board, NOTHING! It was the week before spring break and since I had been gone the whole week before; I figured it was useless to try and teach math so we did a whole unit on drugs and addition. We watched intervention and read parts of the book "A Million Little Pieces" and discussed what happens to your brain and your body on drugs and alcohol. All in all everything worked out. Supposedly, they have finished moving all the supplies from the old school to the new school. We will see - tomorrow when I return to Stu, I plan on unpacking my classroom and setting it up. As soon as I am settled, I will post some pictures of that too!

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