A New Experience

This week was a very interesting one.  The weather has started to change and my roommate and I make our morning walk to school in the dark.  The temperature has also started to drop and we have had heavy frost on the boardwalk twice this week.  This morning I did some calculations about the shortening amount of daylight and calculated we would lose around 8 hours of daylight before the days will start to lengthen again.  This will leave us with around 4 hours of true daylight along with the "light" during dawn and dusk. 

Along with the cooler weather and shortening days, moose hunting is a fact of life here in the Lower Yukon Delta.  Many of my students have gone to "catch" their moose and have come to school the following day extremely tired.  Being tired, along with the excitement of their experiences, leads to students who are not very focused and are easily annoyed.  I am certainly glad that we had district wide in-service today and tomorrow. 

I did take some more pictures of Kotlik and the house this week.

 

                                                 Another beautiful sunrise from the porch.

 

A picture of the kitchen from the dining room.

 

 

The dining room.  The door on the right is the door to the laundry room we share with the other family in our duplex.

 

 

This is the third bedroom.  We use it for storage and keep the water distiller in there.

 

 

The bathroom view from the door.

 

The rest of the bathroom.

 

A view of the living room from the front door.  The door in the back is my bedroom door.  My roommates, Mike (on the phone) and Hobart (on the floor), are also in the picture.

 

A view from my bedroom door.

 

This was taken from the dining room table.  We have quite a view of the Yukon out of our front window.

 

I love the sunrises from the porch.

 

This is the old school.  The village now owns it and it stands empty.

 

The neighbor getting the boat ready to go "catch" a moose.

 

Sunrise from the front of the school.

Flight From Anchorage to Kotlik

 Our plane from Anchorage to St. Marys.  It had 29 seats and we ended up with 30 passengers (we had an 18 month old boy also).

 In line to board the plane.  The man on the right (striped shirt without a hat) is a State Trooper you might have seen on the show "Alaska State Troopers".  He goes by the name of "Hollywood" on the show.

 St. Marys airport terminal and an Era (Ravn) 207.  We were late arriving in St. Marys because they were fogged in and we couldn't leave Anchorage.  Luckily, they adjusted flights and we were able to get on with another bunch of teacher and finally made it to Kotlik.  We were only 4 hours late. 

 A picture of the passengers flying out of St. Marys.  Everyone was with our school district and we were even upgraded to flying in a Caravan. 

 A picture of the scenery along the way. 

 A picture of Alukanuk, Alaska as we got ready to drop off some of the teachers.  The big building on the hill is the new school. 

 My first picture of Kotlik after we touched down.  This is some of the new housing on the East end of town as seen from then runway.

 The Kotlik airport terminal.  I'm not sure what is in it, but our welcome wagon was there when we arrived.  The six-wheeler belongs to the school and the four-wheeler belongs to the Era representative who also contracts to pick up the mail. 

 My first look at the school.  On the right is a huge anchor that was dug up when they built the new school.  There is a cable attached to it to keep the students from carrying it away. 

 Our ride into town. 

 The Caravan we flew from St. Mary to Kotlik in. 

A view of Kotlik from the airport.  The only road in the town is shown here (running diagonally from the right to left) as it runs into the boardwalk. 

Unloading the baggage at Kotlik.  Baggage unloading is pretty much a self-serve thing here in the bush.  The pilot pulls stuff out far enough for the wheels to clear and then closes the plane up and leaves.  There is not much wasted time her when it comes to runway time. 

I'm Here

I have finally made the time to get my blog together and published. I have now been in Alaska for 7 weeks and it has been unlike anything I could have imagined.  I live and teach in the village of Kotlik, AK.  The village has a population of about 675 and is located on the Yukon River a few miles upstream of Norton Sound.  There are no cars or trucks here due to the fact that there are no roads.  The village is at 3 feet elevation (according to one of the village Elders) with very little dry ground requiring the installation of elevated boardwalks for foot and "Honda" (4-wheeler) travel. 

My teaching duties are different than originally planned.  I am teaching a class of 15 Third graders instead of a combined Third/Fourth grade class of 11 students.  My class is made up of 10 boys and 5 girls who are all very active "challenging" for the new teacher.  I am with my students all day minus 30 minutes for lunch and 35 minutes during their Yup'ik (native language) class.