Recent Happenings

6-6-04

Greetings!  School is out and summer is here, in a big way.  Yesterday was a scorcher, reaching the mid-70s here.  Our new thermometer, mounted in the shade, said it was 88 degrees.  But that would be some kind of all-time crazy record and I don't believe it.  Still, it was hot enough that we had a lot of trouble sleeping last night!  Its hard to explain, but a sunny day here in the 60s really does feel like 80 degrees.  So yesterday felt sweltering!

It was my birthday(30!), and Tammy advised me a couple of times to go get the mail.  Finally around 12:50 I called the post office and asked when they closed (yesterday was a Saturday), and they said 1:30.  So I went out to the school boat, to find that the gas can was locked in a compartment of the boat with a padlock that I have no key to.  Doh!  So I had to kayak there!  I grabbed our biggest boat and jumped in at 5 minutes before 1:00.  It generally takes 40 minutes at an average paddle speed to get to the post office.  This time  it was hot and windy and I had 35 minutes.  Along the way I decided to try a shortcut, which ended up as a dead end, with about 30 feet of grass separating me from the main channel of the river.  This grass held about 2 inches of water, not quite enough for me to push through in the big kayak.  Rather than backtrack, I just stepped out and hauled the boat through the grass, and discovered that my feet went substantially deeper than 2 inches under the muddy water!  I also managed to raise a cloud of mosquitoes during this maneuver, most of which stayed with me the rest of the way to Akula.  Ouch!  I tied up at the airport and hoofed it the rest of the way to the PO, arriving at 1:27 (I had no watch on and was pleasantly surprised to arrive in time).  Phew! 

They had a bag of mail, and FIVE boxes for us.  Hooray!  It was a fun surprise to get so many presents exactly on my birthday!  I paddled back, going much slower than before, and stayed close to shore in case I rolled so that I could quickly get the mail to shore before it was all ruined.  I got home hot,  sweaty,  sore, and well-chewed by bugs, but I had the mail!

A couple of days ago, Tammy and I went kayaking with 2 boys for a couple of hours, and we went egg-hunting together on some tundra that we paddled to.  While we were walking along, a duck rose into the air from close by and flew away.  I ran over to the spot, and we found 2 eggs there.  Feeling a little guilty, we took the eggs home.  I gave mine to our neighbor Martha.  As we were pulling into shore, another neighbor called out to us and asked if we wanted to go manaq (fishing) with them.  It was about 10:30 pm, and we hadn't eaten dinner yet, but they said they'd wait for us.  So at 11:00, off we went to go pike fishing with the family of my assistant basketball coach.  Tammy ended up catching 3 pike, and she lost a few more close to shore!  I caught 2, and the family we came with caught about 10.  Here is a picture of Tammy with one of her pike.  We had a lot of fun.  It was the first fish I'd caught in years (I've tried pretty often, but was skunked for a while), and the first for Tammy in over 20 years!  I got a great photo of her holding one of her pike with the 1:00 sunset behind her.  So in one day, we found our first eggs and caught our first pike.  A good day!

Since school got out on May 19th, we've stayed busy in Tammy's classroom, cleaning, organizing, and preparing for next year.  It is kind of amazing how the work at the school just never stops!  You think you'd reach some point where it is all done and you can just step back and relax.  Hah!  Anyway, the school year ended well.  Tammy continues to be a great teacher, her kids really enjoy her and learned a ton!  Our school actually made AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) this year!  Our kids scores on  the annual tests have been going up every year, which is really pretty amazing, and I think my wife deserves at least a little credit for their test scores.

I've been finally working on my grant-writing class.  I'm excited about it and really enjoy it so far and hope that it can have some practical future application.  I finished my two SLP courses and did well in both of them.  I'm still not certain if it is for me or not, but I plan on enrolling in the Fall and continuing with the program.  Our basketball season finished up in mid-March, and our team finished a disappointing second in the league tournament.  We'd won nearly all of our games all year and the kids were pretty devastated to lose in the final game.  But after some time I think they were pretty happy with the season anyway.  We're all excited for next year already.  It was a lot of fun, and it really gave me a great way to get to know the 12-14 year olds and have some sway in their lives.  I may seek to be the assistant coach next year so I can concentrate on really teaching the game and not have to deal with the travel, playing time, and the other stuff.  Or I may be the head coach again, I think at this point it depends on someone from the community stepping forward who wants to be the head coach.  After basketball I started up an Ultimate Frisbee team!  Unfortunately, there was only one other team for us to play against (Kwethluk, the same kids who beat us in the basketball finals), and they had eligibility problems that kept their team from competing every; week.  But we practiced every day and it was a blast to teach the kids the game that is probably my favorite.

Tomorrow we leave for Bible Camp in Unalakleet!  We're bringing 3 high school kids with us to high school camp, which runs from June 7-14.  After that, its off to Los Angeles on the 15th to attend the wedding of a good friend.  Then back to Anchorage  on the 20th for one of our monster shopping trips.  On the 23rd, Tammy's parents arrive in Anchorage, and we're going to have a little vacation with them, visiting Denali and Seward before flying back to Kasigluk with them.  They'll leave after a few days, and two days later my mom, niece, and two of my nephews will fly  into Bethel for a week-long visit!  A week after they leave, my dad and step mom will be here visiting for another week.  I will leave with them, and fly on to North Carolina for the wedding of one of my best friends.  I hope to visit with John and Jennifer Weston along the way in Kentucky.  Kentucky is close to North Carolina, right?  : - )  Then I'll return to Anchorage, where I'll meet up with Tammy, who will be taking a week-long intensive course in Alaska History.  At the end of that week, on a Friday, we fly to Washington DC for another wedding!  On Monday morning we will be back in Bethel where Tammy has a 2 day in-service, and then Thursday is the first day of school back at Akiuk.  We're excited about these fun summer happenings, but we're also a little wary of getting totally exhausted going into the next school year.  We hope and pray that we will remember to REST in the midst of so many fun and busy things to do.

What else is new?  I did some work (finally!) on my brother's site.  It still has a ways to go, but you can check it out here if you want.  You won't find many cuter baby photos than they have of Isaac.  Lately we've had hot weather here, and we've managed to go kayaking and canoeing a number of times, usually with kids.  And there has been some times of rest, like watching movies and sleeping in.  OK, I can't think of anything else, and this has gone on long enough.  Quyana (thank you) for reading our latest news!