1st Week of School

So far, Puffin and I are really having a great time.  We are really liking it here.  I am very tired and busy with starting a new year, but things so far are going well.  Here are some pics.

This is the "road" around the lake.  I take Puffin on this 5 mile walk on the weekends.

This is Max the one eyed dog - she follows Puffin and I around on our walks.

This is the view of the mountain during one of our walks:

Puffin got tired so here she is in my backpack.  This was a long walk usually she is fine, but it was really foggy and cold and rainy so we weren't able to take the most direct way around the lake.

The final part of the walk around the lake is on the runway.  It is soooo nice to walk on pavement.  The military paved this runway so it is on of the few paved runways in the bush.

These bones are ruminants of the whales that the people on the island hunt for food.  

This is a mini-4 wheeler.  All of the kids drive these - I think I would look awesome driving one of these :)

Here is what some of my boxes looked like when I FINALLY received them.  David tried to send me some Vegetables in 3 day boxes, but instead I received some liquified grossness in busted up boxes!

The first day of school was also my birthday.  These are some pics from that day.  

This is outside my kitchen window.  The sun is rising behind the presbyterian church.

This is the sunrise on my way to work.

The Kindergarten came into my classroom and sang to me for my birthday.  They were soooo adorable and here I am with a sticker they gave me after my wonderful song.

The kids collect "sea food" off the beach.  Some of my students found these and were bringing them home for a salad.  They stopped and asked me to try some and I was really impressed with how good it tasted.  It was like a cross between a cucumber and lettuce.

Puffin and I like to take a walk down to the "beach" sometime.  The beach is of course made of rocks and not sand but the water is amazing.  When the waves crash on the rocks, it is so loud.  There are giant piles of rocks everywhere.  

One of the students and I hiked up the mountain the day before school started.  

Here I am starting the hike up the mountain.   

This is the view just before I started the hike.

These rocks mark the best path up the mountain.

These are some of the rocks that we climbed over to get to the top of the mountain.

Those two large rocks sticking straight up mark the graveyard.  Here they can't bury the dead because the land is all permafrost.  Instead, they place the wooden caskets on top of the rocks and mark the sites with crosses.  
I am part of the way up the mountain and this is the view of the village.  

This is a bird rookery where some birds land and hangout while they rest up after their long journey from Russia.  That is a real Puffin on the rocks.  We tried to walk down these rocks here, but Puffin got scared and wouldn't let us.  

Far in the distance, those mountains are Russia.

This is the only other village on the island - Savoogna.  It is about 40 miles about through the mountains.  

These are some of the other teachers.  Tyler is the guy - he teaches second grade.  The other two are my roomates.  Ashley is the preschool teacher and Amy is the science teacher.

Here are all the new teachers on a plane to Unakleet for in-service.  

This is the view from the plane.

These men are building a walrus skin boat. This boat is used to hunt whales.  Gambell is one of the very last villages that still uses skin boats.  

The skin is stretched over a wood frame and tied down using rope made out of the skin of whales.  

Women prepare and dry the skins then they sew them together and the men put them on the boats.

These men are using ivory tusks to tighten the ropes.

First pics of Gambell

Here are some pictures of my first few days in Gambell. So far, my thighs are killing me from walking, but it sure is a good workout!

This is the view form my backyard. I have no idea why there is some grass just here, but this is the only place there is any grass at all in the village. That is the Bering Sea and you are looking at tomorrow.

Here is the Post Office. It is a blue trailer, but is completely redone on the inside - VERY nice!

This is the National Guard in case you want to join up :)

This is the view as I walk to school. Straight ahead is the mountain and way off to the right is the lake.

This is my apartment complex. There are 4 different apartments in this building.

Solar Panels! Savouga even has windmills. If St Lawrence Island can figure it out, what is wrong with the Cape!!

This is the school:

More pictures to come soon....

I finally have a new mailing address:
PO Box 108
Gambell, AK
99742

Alaskan Road Trip with John

John and I spent 2 weeks driving and Camping (sleeping in our rental car) all over the road system of Alaska. We traveled over 3000 miles on our journey and saw a lot of fun and exciting things. It is amazing how long it takes to get from one town to another. Many of the "highways" are unpaved and have sheer cliffs on each side. Also, there are moose, rabbits, geese, and squirrels all over the roads. On top of all that, there are a ton of fun places to stop and hike on trails along the roads so every adventure took us a lot longer than I thought!

We started out on May 16. John flew in that morning and I arrived in the afternoon. We had lunch with some friends of mine who were amazed to see that my "little" brother was so tall! Then we stopped at Fred Myers and loaded up on some supplies. We bought Pilot Bread, which are big crackers, peanut butter, jelly, banana's, and salad. John organized the car and I supervised then we were off.

Our first adventure took us South towards the Kenai Peninsula where we slept outside a glacier for the night. We tried to go to the visitor's center in the morning, but we were in a little early in the season. They had posters up and a hiking trails clearly marked so we just explored on our own. As we were walking, we saw a PORCUPINE. I had no idea what it was - it actually looked like a baby bear climbing a tree. I really need to stop getting my ideas about nature and wild life from cartoons!

A moose came up to our car the first night we were camping. Guard Dog Puffin alerted us, but I got some cool pics of it while it was leaving:

Here are some pics from our way down to Kenai:

We also stopped at a conservations park that rescues hurt animals. Did you know Bison were not extinct?

Up close with a Caribou: Brown Bear - this was definitely close enough for me!

The snowy part in the middle is the glacier:

The frozen water is melted glacier:

We wouldn't want Puffin to get cold while hiking!
Puffin is on thin ice:

Eagles anyone?

A really cool partially frozen river:

Icicles on the side of the river bed.

In Denali, we saw bears, cubs, moose, caribou, and all kinds of birds. Here is a picture of the state bird a ptarmigan (who starts a word with "pt"). It changes plumage from white in the fall to brown in the spring. This one is caught between seasons - part white and part brown:

Mt McKinley:
John and I in Denali:

Back Seat Driver:



We tried to go to a hot spring in Circle (one degree below the Artic circle), but when we got there this is what we found.

In the middle of all these run down buildings, there was this beautiful house...so strange.


If there was a road, John and I traveled on it! We drove over 300o miles in about 13 days. It is amazing that Fairbanks was the hottest place we traveled. We encountered temperatures varing from 30 to 90 degrees. I really didn't exspect the south of Alaska to be warmer than the north. We also got to drive over some really high mountaints (about 5000 feet) with some breath taking views! Here are some random pics from the road:

Nature Week

This past week I have seen more nature than I have ever seen in my life!

On the first of May, our river broke. Here is what it looked like from my apartment:

This is what it was like at the beach:

Here is what some of the ice build up looked like last night on the river:



I went hiking with some kids and Puffin and we managed to find the last bit of snow.


This is the stream we hiked down to:

Here is Puffin happily enjoying the snow.
A Bald Eagle followed us on our hike:

It has been very hectic here with the end of school coming up on Friday. We had graduation last Friday and 13 students walked. That is a VERY big class. Here they are celebrating after the ceremony:

We also had prom that same night. Prom here is really just a big community dance that some of the graduates and their dates dress up for. It was really fun. There is a band and they play only old country music. I "two-stepped" with a few elders.

The other day a friend of mine got a bunch of ducks. He brought about 10 of them up to the teacher housing for us. So, I actually plucked a duck - like took the feathers all off of it!! It was pretty weird and gross. I was totally grossed out by the whole experience. It peed on me and kept making noises as air was escaping from it's belly. My friends were all teasing me that the duck was mad at me and asking me to stop plucking it...I didn't think they were very funny. I said if I had nightmares I was going to come and stay with them! I didn't actually cook my duck. I just gave it to one of the other teachers who was going to roast it or whatever.


This is a friend of mine that I steam with at night. Here son-in-law caught a porcupine! They called me over to try some, but Puffin and I were out hiking so we missed out.

Last night I was out on the river and I saw a otter and a bunch of MOOSE!! I can't believe I really saw moose - they were huge!! We even saw a little baby one. It was really cool!

The other day, when I was walking with Puffin down at the beach, I saw a beaver that someone had shot out on the river and he was taking it home for diner. I had no idea they were so fat and their tails are scaly like a snake! In person, they look nothing like they do on the cartoons.