Recent Happenings

4-11-05

Hello!  Spring is coming...right?!?  We're still waiting here, but it appears like it may be around the corner.  We've had crisp but pretty weather here lately, generally around the teens in the daytime with some wind, and dipping down close to zero at night.  Can't wait until breakup, when we can start kayaking!  OK, maybe I'll wait until June this year (unlike last year when we went on May 1st and Tam fell in for the first time--BRRRR), but we're still excited to see birds, green grass, and blue water again.

Basketball finished up about a month ago, and we finished first in our 7 team league tournament!  That was a lot of fun, especially for the kids, and we're glad we got to be a part of it.  We are now about to start a mini-season of ultimate frisbee, which the kids are kind enough to play, knowing I have the most fun at it!  Man, we can hardly believe that there are only like 30 days of school left!

Our last day of school is May 20th, and on that day Tammy and I will fly to New York for our friend Melissa's wedding.  We'll stay for a week to take in the big city shows and restaurants, something Tammy has always wanted to do.  Then we'll be around Kasigluk until mid-July, when we'll fly down to the Northwest for a couple more weddings, returning to Kasigluk around August 1, and school will start again about 2 weeks later.

In reference to our last update, Tam has been enjoying her elliptical, using it pretty often!  And I've inherited an old treadmill from another teacher here who upgraded his.  So we now have the capacity to work out, no matter what the weather is like outside (assuming we have electricity, but that's another story...). 

Another item from the last news update was about my classes in speech-language pathology.  I just learned a few days ago that I've been accepted into the master's program in that field of study at East Carolina University, which was my first choice!  I'm super excited, and as I mentioned in the last column, its all going to be covered by LKSD! 

Tam and I continue to progress in our Yup'ik skills.  Slooooowwwly.  I think often of what we learned from Betty Sue Brewster during our Servant Partners orientation about language learning.  Her big phrase was "learn a little, use it a lot".  This is the oral language learning model and I think it is absolutely the most effective way to learn the language, especially if your end goal is not for academic study but for neighborhood fluency.  But man is it hard!  It's no fun sounding like a Super Kass'aq (white person) in front of people you like but don't know really well.  And let me tell you, it is much easier to sound like a Super Kass'aq than it is to sound like a Super Gavacho/Gringo.  It is just a tough language!  Here is a sample of some written Yup'ik from the website of the Akula school, located across the river from us.  And here is a kid's book in Yup'ik (this might take a little while to load if you're using dialup).  Anyhow, we are progressing in it, and we plan on taking the second semester course in the Fall.  We have not given up our goal of attaining a functional level of Yup'ik competency!

Quyana for reading our latest news.  Summer is coming!