My Alaskan Adventure: August 2011

Just a brief update for now and I'll edit later.

Since my last post I attended a throw party. This is an event held by the women of the family when a boy kills his first seal or a girl finds her first egg. The party I went to was held by Maxine a teacher at the school. A throw party consists of the women literally throwing household items into a crowd of women and children from the village. I caught a bowl, candies, and writing utensils, while my roommate caught a pitcher. Pictures will follow.

On the first day of school, Agnes my aide brought me dried salmon strips to try and they were delicious.

Maxine brought us Yupik ice cream which is usually made out of crisco and berries. The one she brought had a relative of spinach in it as well as dried fruit and salmon berries. I definitely ate more then is healthy but it was delicious.

I am finally receiving my full circle farms. Every Tuesday I get a box full of fruits and veggies. I didn't know I missed them so much until the first box arrived and I literally jumped for joy.

For those of you who know my mother, you will be happy to know that this week I attempted and successfully made her stuffed cabbage and homemade pierogies. Even though her recipe was super complicated for use in bush Alaska and I had to use Maureen's simplified recipe because I could actually get all the ingredients here. I assure you I am not starving in the bush. My roommate and I have almost finished an entire gallon of ice cream which arrived on Thursday evening.

So obviously training is over, but some of these pictures pertain to the last couple activities so I am going to go back in time in order to describe them. The day after my last blog we learn all about the Yupik culture in our training session. We learn some basic words as well as two dances. We also got to try the local foods. The portions were small which was a good thing for those of us who were nervous about the taste and textures. Everything was surprisingly good, including the whale blubber. The taste and texture are hard to explain but definitely better than I was expecting. After the day's classes were over, we went fishing. Jenni is the brunette in the pictures and my roommate while Gia the blonde lives downstairs. Needless to say we had a fun time even though we didn't actually catch anything. It was raining pretty good and we were out on the boat until about 11 pm at which point we had to go home and pack. The following day we flew into Kipnuk and I assure you it is exactly what I was expecting. It was colder and mudder then Bethel and was raining pretty good when we landed. The landing wasn't the smoothest one I've had but the pilot was good and I had complete faith especially since Jenni is a pilot and didn't seem nervous. Our apartment is nice and the hardest thing so far has been waiting for our stuff to arrive at the post office. Things are coming together though. I'll update pictures once we are settled. My classroom is big and setting it up was more difficult than I anticipated. I was trying really hard to take into consideration everything I was taught during college and I may have over analyzed the situation. I will update these pictures once I am done setting up. This past Sunday we flew back into Bethel and stayed at the District Office overnight. This was a day earlier then we were supposed to get in because we were going to tour a gold mine on Monday and we had to fly out of Bethel early on Monday. Needless to say the district office at night is an interesting place to be and I got some good pictures. As we flew inland to the mine on Monday, there were both trees and mountains that surfaced which is exciting because we have neither when flying to the village. The mine is not currently active but is the proposed site for Donlin Gold. We got a lot of information on what the project consisted of and where certain aspects of the mine would be placed. We drove to the top of a mountain to see the site from above and several Yupik ladies showed us how to find tundra tea and berries. Tuesday and Wednesday was training for the entire district. I don't have much to say other then I finally got to meet the rest of the teachers from my village and learned more about the programs that the district implement for instruction.