Refreshingly Uneventful......Sort Of

Good evening to all ya'll lovely blog readers out there! I'm coming to you from my lovely living room, where I'm happy to say, that I've spent quite a bit of time lately. The last couple of weeks have been slow and steady, and I'm pretty happy about it. It's nice to have these "normal" weeks, where I'm just out in the village and getting to be with my students (I'm not sure that they would entirely agree with that statement).

Although I've been home a lot lately, there definitely hasn't been a lack of busyness in my life. These last few weeks have been pretty strenuous in the classroom, as we are finishing up our preparation for the state testing that's coming up this week. These tests are unfortunately a huge part of mine and my students educational process. I agree that testing is a good way to find out what the students know, but too much weight is put on them as far as I'm concerned. Before I get too far into the future, let me catch you up on the past.

I really don't have a lot of big events to report on, I just can't believe how fast the year is approaching an end. There are only 35 days of school left!!! In no time at all, I will be enjoying my days off and breathing in that beautiful, South Dakota air. I've been taking a lot of walks lately, as the weather is finally starting to warm up. The snow has been melting a little bit each day, but there is still an enormous amount on the ground. Even though it's been warming up occasionally, we are still not without our chilly nights and mornings (it was -29 on Thursday morning). The last few days have been pretty busy, as we have been hosting a lot of, "Kick-Off to Testing Festivities." I started on Friday night at 6:00 p.m. with a Junior High Boys Sleepover (the social event of the season). The next day, the boys woke up around 9:30, completely ready for some more time on the computers and in the gym. They enjoyed that while I made them breakfast, which was some re-heated pizza from the night before (I told them that it was a good, college preparation breakfast). After cleaning up, it was already a quarter to noon, which meant that it was only 15 minutes until tutoring time (we had a four hour, Super Saturday Tutoring Session). At 4:00, we were ready to start the late afternoon activities which were a music session with a visitor, and t-shirt making with Nancy. These activities were over at 6:00, and then open gym started and went until 9:00 (we also prepared a few meals mixed in with all that madness). Then came today, which really started when I got to the school at 2:00 to prepare for our Testing Barbecue. We cooked all afternoon (I would have to say that I did a great job on the barbecue chicken) and were ready by the time people started showing up at 5:00. We were done and cleaned up by 7:30 and I finally made it home and was ready to unwind before getting back to the grind tomorrow morning. These busy weekends are tiring, but my students enjoyed every second of it, which makes it well worth the extra work and loss of sleep.

That basically catches you up with what's going on as of today. Here are some pictures and a video of the Allakaket area. I feel like I haven't done a good enough job of giving ya'll a visual of what Allakaket is like.....so here ya go.

This is St. Johns in the Wilderness Episcopalian Church (sweet name huh?)

This is the Allakaket Post Office.

This is our version of the typical, Post Office blue box (only a little smaller).

This is the Allakaket Store, always a good Saturday afternoon activity (quick side note, I actually won a $500 shopping spree at the store, but I have to spend it all at one time! Out of 40 stores in Alaska, they drew five names of customers that entered the drawing...and I was one of them. I'm going to get a lot of classroom snacks since I've already have enough groceries for the rest of the year. I'll try to snap a picture of everything I get...okay, that wasn't a quick side note.)

This is the Hall, where all the village gatherings take place (nice architecture).

This is a video of our beautiful, river valley.

I hope everyone has a great week, remember to keep a positive attitude no matter how things are going.

Peace and Love,
Nicholas

Spring Break, Alaska Style

A very merry Sunday evening to all ya'll out there! It's only been about 12 days since my last post, and I've had a lot going on of late. Over the past two weeks, I've been loving being back in my village and then I also enjoyed having a week of Spring Break (a lot of good pictures for ya).

Before I go on mindlessly rambling about myself, I want to say a HUGE congratulations to the South Dakota State women's basketball team. In their first appearance in the Madness of March, they won their game 90-55 over TCU; they also tied the record for three-pointers made in a game, with sixteen. All I can say is GOOOOO JACKRABBITS!!!! NCAA Championship here we come!!! WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!! (SDSU is where I went to college, in case any of you are in the dark on that one). Here's the link to the ESPN article....
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncw/recap?gameId=294000026.

Alright, back to life on the Circle. I last left off on the Tuesday after the Regional Basketball Tourney.....that week finished off nicely and I was soon riding high on my first weekend being spent in the village in a long time (oh yeah, and it was the start of SPRING BREAK!!!). I slept in a lot that weekend, and took quite a few long walks down the river; it's a great time to be out for walks lately, the bitter cold is somewhat subsiding and most of the snowmobile trails are packed enough to where I don't sink in up to my knee when I go strolling down them. Our secretary at school also finished up some spectacular moccasins for me not too long ago, they are absolutely perfect for the weather this time of year. Here are a few pictures and a couple of videos from the walks I've been taking up the river. The second video was shot after I decided to make myself a cozy little spot in the snow (the moccasins are also in the video).

This is on the Koyukuk River, opposite bank of Allakaket.

This video was taken on the Koyukuk, it's just a quick look at where the it splits off with the Alatna River.

This is the video from the "sit-down" I decided to take on the Alatna.

This is a nice little sunset over the Koyukuk.

After the weekend of some quality time spent between my couch/bed and the outdoors, I was ready to dive right in for some spring cleanup on Spring Break. I may have mentioned this a long time ago, but I have been trying to make some time to clean out an overstuffed shed at the school site. By overstuffed, I mean tremendously crowded with old textbooks, student work, maintenance supplies, and anything else you can imagine being in a storage shed; this shed is the product of many, many, years of pack-ratting (as a pack-rat myself, I was pretty impressed). On Monday, I drove up to the gas pump and filled up the snow-go so I could begin hauling stuff to the dump. I completely underestimated how much junk was actually in the shed, and it ended up taking me until Wednesday to sort through and haul everything to the dump (which is a delightful two and half mile ride up the hill). I would have to say that the rides were enjoyable, but I got a little sick of fishing through dusty old boxes. We at least have a lot more room to store things, and I've only got a couple more days of work in there to clean and organize what is left. One quick story about the junk hauling; I learned a valuable lesson about how to pack a dogsled with dump run materials. After the first time of picking up three sets of 1980's textbooks off the road and re-packing them, I quickly discovered that the weight needs to be packed in the rear.

Thursday arrived quickly and I was boarding a beautiful, Wright Air Service plane to head to town. I had decided to spend my last four days of Spring Break in Squarebanks with Derek, who was already in town. I arrived on Thursday around three thirty and took care of some quick banking business and then checked into my second home in Alaska, Sophie Station Hotel. We didnt do a whole lot on Thursday night, just hit the hotel bar up for a couple of drinks and chance to catch up on the teacher gossip. Friday, we woke up fairly late and decided that it was time to take a nice little road trip. Our road trip took us on a three hour journey southward, to Denali National Park and Preserve. I can't begin to explain how breathtaking and amazing it was down there; I'm a flatlander from the Dakotas, so the mountainous terrain was awesome to take in. Here are some pictures and a few videos from inside the park, the pictures definitely don't do the scenery justice, but they're still pretty sweet. Both of the videos and some of the pictures are right here, but there are a bunch of other pictures at the bottom of the page.

This is me in front of an unlimited amount of interior Alaska.
In front of the Denali Park sign.
A beautiful, but windy section of the Alaska Highway.
One of the many, awesome mountain views (the rest are at the bottom).

We arrived back in Fairbanks around 8:30 that night and decided to just do our grocery shopping since the drive was a little tiring (I've spent waaaaaaaaaaaay more time in bush planes this year compared to time in cars). We finished up the shopping that night and spent the remainder of the evening packing our totes to take to the post office the next morning. Saturday flew by as Derek and I finished up our leftover errands on the last day in town. We met up with Branden and Caitlin (the lowly district office employee, ha, and his wife) to go out to eat that evening. It was nice to try out an eatery that I hadn't had the pleasure of yet, Ivory Jacks served up a delicious steak and I enjoyed the atmosphere (could have done without all the Yankees crap on the walls though.....sorry Dad). After the tasty supper, we went back to Branden and Caitlin's cabin and watched a movie, it was a relaxing way to finish off my stay in town.

Derek and I took off from there around 11:30 and arrived at the airport to pick up Pete (The Finnish Warrior) after his long flight from the U.P. (the upper peninsula of Michigan). We ended the Spring Break town trip in our usual fashion, a disgusting amount of Taco Bell food at an hour of the night at which you should not be eating. It's become a bit of a tradition with us, a tradition that has helped me to pack on enough winter weight to make it through the long, cold winter (I think it might be time to slow down on the tradition).

That brings me up to date with today; I got back to Allakaket this morning around 11:00, and have enjoyed a peaceful day of resting and getting ready for an important week of school. OH MY!!! I almost forgot to mention that I'm finally going to get back in my classroom this week!!! If you need a refresher, just go check out the pictures from several posts ago; the cleanup was finally completed and the new carpet was laid at the end of last week. I'm truly looking forward to getting back to our regular classroom and re-creating our inviting learning environment that we once had. I'll make sure to let you know how well we dive back into our routine.

Hope everyone is happy and healthy. Remember to smile a little extra this week, Spring is officially here.

Peace and Love,
Nicholas

Finally Home....For More Than Four Days In a Row

Greetings and salutations to all of you delightful folks out there! Man, do I hate to have to start this post by apologizing, but the rate at which I'm producing posts lately is surely a little on the weak side of things (have you ever noticed that a lot of apologies are directly followed by lame excuses). I'll have to blame my unbelievably busy schedule for the blogging hiatus, but that busy schedule has finally wrapped itself up and it feels awesome to come out of it unscathed. I haven't been home on a weekend for seven weeks in a row, and my life has definitely been a little chaotic over this stretch of time. To stick with what's worked so far, I'm going to pick up right where I last left off, which would have been the night before I went to the Tanana Basketball Tournament (Feb.25).

I would have to describe the Tanana Tournament as one of the more hectic times during my 3rd quarter travel extravaganza. The day before we left I found out that three of my players weren't going to be making the trip (various reasons for that); this meant that all of the other players from the other villages would HAVE to get there in order for me to have five players (oh the joys of coaching a multi-village ball team). I arrived in Tanana with my one player that morning, and met up with two of the Huslia players at the gym. It was all coming together nicely and then I got the news that Ruby's flight didn't take off until 2:30 and our game was at three......yikes. Well, it came down to it and they had to delay the first game for us and my two Ruby boys got to come into the gym all Superman style and go from their winter gear straight to their jerseys (they acted like they didn't think the were cool too). We won the first game versus Nulato and then it was on to playing Minto later that evening. Minto proved to be a worthy adversary and ended up beating us by 25 or so. I was proud of how my boys played, but no subs and our second game of the day was just too much for them. The next day we played Tanana in the afternoon and again took a beating; they beat us by 28 points (keep this in mind for later in the post). We finished up the tourney playing Nulato again, and we beat them to finish up with a tournament record of 2-2. We didn't place, but my players received the Sportsmanship Trophy, and I was very pleased because they 100% deserved it. Now to the truly fun part of the weekend. On Saturday after the awards, the players elected to have a dance...and fortunately (or unfortunately) for them, there was one coach that was waaaaay more than willing to chaperon. My players had been giving me a hard time all weekend, and this was my chance for sweet revenge (little side note on myself, I generally don't feel embarrassment). The dance started out like any typical dance at the B-Ball tourneys..........no dancing; the first half hour was filled with the kids doing a lot of sitting on the bleachers and hoping that the dance idea would fade and the basketballs would come back out. Not going to happen on my watch, failure is not an option. Myself, and Mr. King (a totally cool teacher from Tanana) started walking along the bleachers and picking out the kids that we thought could dance. I saw a couple of guys that looked like they would have some moves and encouraged them to get out there and bust one.....no luck. Then I decided to do something that my players definitely wished I wouldn't have done.....started dancing. I started off with a little Jim Carrey tap dance from Dumb and Dumber and then just went into a few simple dance moves to demonstrate to the boys that it was easy as pie. Most of them had nothing to do with it, but after about twenty more minutes there were about 20 to 25 high schoolers actually dancing (VICTORY!!!). I couldn't have been happier that quite a few of the kids got out of there comfort zone and decided to just have a good time.

Here is a couple of pictures from the Tanana Tournament. This first one is my typical bed at the basketball tournaments. Next year I'm definitely getting something that more accommodating. By the way, in that plastic bag on the right side is a frozen fish. It was given to me by someone in Tanana to take back to someone in my village (bet all coaches can't say that).
This next one is just a view from in front of the Tanana School; it's right on the banks of the Yukon.

I got back from Tanana on Sunday (March 1st) and was absolutely feeling the effects of the long and sleepless weekend. I believe I napped for a good five hours or so, and then popped up to get ready for the Monday of school. A small side note here, I am still not back in my classroom. The carpet people came out last week and as it turns out, weren't able to do their work. Why you might ask??? Well, the heat went out in the building the night before and the carpet was basically one big frozen tootsie roll. They are supposed to be back tomorrow and it sounds like I will be back in my own classroom (it's euphoric to think about) when we get back from Spring Break. So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday flew by last week because I was getting ready for the Regionals Basketball Tournament that took place in Fairbanks. We left on Thursday morning in a bit of a blizzard and arrived in town around noon.

WOH WOH WOH, getting ahead of myself here. I would like to take this time to address a problem that I slightly addressed in the last post. Coaching has allowed me a remarkable opportunity to spend time with "some" of my students and get to know them in an entirely different capacity. I fully intend to coach next year, but I've had a huge problem with my high school students back home while I've been traveling. At first I was somewhat angered by this, and then I started to realize what it really meant. Throughout the year my students and I have built a solid relationship and figured out how to co-exist happily while still pounding out the schoolwork. In some ways, because my students don't work as well when I'm not there, it's a very flattering compliment (I wish they could figure out a better way to flatter me); in other ways, it's upsetting that they don't perform to their abilities just because I'm not there to be the vigilant and high-expectation-having teacher that I've become. Either way I look at it, I need to figure out a way to solve the problem for next year, because I really dislike to hear negative reports from Nancy or my sub.

Moving on....so we arrived in Fairbanks for the Regional Basketball tournament on Thursday last week. My three boys and I got there and scored a ride to the district office from Branden, a lowly district office employee (hahahaha, totally joking there, but Branden would think that it's funny, too). From there I went and picked up our 15 passenger van that we would be cruising around in for the weekend. Let me tell you, driving a gigantic van with four people in it during a blizzard is really not a "fun" thing to do. We dropped by Freddies (Fred Meyer Grocery Store) to grab a quick bite and then it was on to the hotel to check in and get ready for our first game. That's when I got the news that I really didn't want to hear. The Ruby boys and Pete "The Finnish Warrior"/assistant coach were snowed in at Ruby and weren't going to be there for the first day of the tournament....ARGHHHHHHH. Despite the downer news, we needed to pull it together and play our first two games of the tourney with five players. We faced up against Nulato and beat them pretty badly for the first game of the tournament. Our second game was later that evening versus the #1 seed, Minto Lakers. Two of my guys fouled out in the third quarter, so if you're doing the math, that left us with three players for the entire fourth quarter. We ended up losing pretty badly, but I was damn impressed with my boys. They didn't quit when the odds were definitely stacked against them, and the two on the bench never stopped cheering their teammates on. Friday was awesome because we didn't have a game until 9:00 pm that night. The Finnish Warrior (I assure you that that IS his preferred nickname) and his two boys finally got into town around five o'clock and it was great to have two more players and another chaperon. After getting them settled in at the hotel, we started getting ready for our big rematch against Tanana (the team that stomped us by 28 the week before). I could tell my boys were getting amped up for the game, because I constantly reminded them that if they lost, their season would be over. The game was a defensive battle as both teams came out shooting pretty flat. Before we knew it, there was two minutes left in the third quarter and we were down by six. I called a time out and decided to rally the troops. Those are the moments that I really love about coaching; a perfect opportunity to get the group fired up for one cause, a satisfying victory. They went out there and captured a two point lead by the end of the quarter; there was no looking back after that point. We ended up beating Tanana by eight points, and in doing so, completed the upset of the tournament and by far our best game of the season. It was a feeling of pure joy to see the elation on my players' faces when the final buzzer went off (those looks continued well into the night). Awesome.......only way to describe it. We continued our tournament life and faced off against Fort Yukon the next morning. Unfortunately, we expended all we had the night before and Fort Yukon gave us a pretty good whippin'. My players played tough to the end despite the blowout that they were on the wrong side of.........and just like that, our season was over. As always, we didn't let the long faces last too long and we spent the rest of the night joking around and looking back on all the fun times we had. To sum up my first basketball coaching season, I would have to say that it was a mixture of happiness, frustration, confusion, and chaos, that culminated into a very joyous and satisfying experience...can't wait for next year.

I have another part of the last day of the tournament to talk about, but it will come to you briefly at the very end of this post. We got on the plane on Sunday morning and I was just exhausted (horrible weekend to spring ahead an hour, landed smack dab on the last night of chaperoning a basketball tournament.....errrrrrrr). Being so tired, I was looking forward to the flight so I could catch a nice hour of sleep in the air; I then learned a valuable lesson about chewing gum on the bush plane. I always throw in a piece of gum to help my ears pop and then keep enjoying it throughout the flight. Well, this time, I fell asleep with my head straight back and we ran into a little turbulence, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what happened next. I woke up with my piece of gum lodged right in my throat and squirmed around a little until it shot back up (luckily no one saw this, as I'm sure it looked sufficiently silly). Lesson learned, from now on, my gum is going behind my ear when I decide to take a little snoozy on the plane (okay, I'm not really going to save my gum behind my ear, but people used to do that.....crazy huh?). I got home and paid homage to the SADS gods with a solid, five hour nap. I woke up groggy and disoriented and definitely feeling like I just finished my seventh weekend of consecutive travel.

Yesterday and today were shortened by Parent/Teacher Conferences and I enjoyed some awesome conferences. Now that I'm getting to the end of the year, I'm really coming to terms with some of the spectacular progress that my students have made. It filled my heart with happiness to be able to tell their guardians about the educational milestones that I've got to watch them reach. One specific success this year has been one of my sophomore boys. At the beginning of the year, he was a struggling reader and somewhat of a constant problem in class. Over the course of the year, he has pulled a complete 180 and become a hard working and on task student. He also improved his reading so much that I get a little emotional when I think about it. I also learned that two of my high schoolers, whom I thought were moving soon, are actually not moving at all. This really pumped me up; one of them had a really bad problem with missing school in the years past. He is now up to about 80-90% attendance and doing awesome in class. To loose him at the end of this year, after watching pull such a remarkable turn-around, would have been disheartening for me; so I couldn't have been happier to find out that he, and his siblings, are staying in school at Allakaket. Simply put, these things are what make my career spectacular (I still can't believe that I'm almost done with the first year of my career).

Okay, finally to the end of the post. I hope ya'll are still with me, because that seemed like a lot of typing. Here's the last little part about the last day of Regionals. I always make deals with my players about what I have to do if they pull off an upset or do something really great. All year long I have made fun of the style of hats that they wear. I'm sure you've seen them, they're generally either white or black, with a extremely flat/straight bill. Not only do they leave that bill as flat as possible, but the hats are inherently cocked off to the side or sitting way up high on their heads. It's my ongoing joke to tell them that a hat bill is for keeping the sun out, and a flat bill is just not doing the job. Alright, back to the story; so if they upset Tanana on Friday night, then I had to go to the mall, purchase one of the hats that I so despise, and proceed to wear it all day on Saturday, even for coaching. Well, you already know that they pulled of the sweet upset, so here it is.

Peace and Love,
Nicholas

Post Script: I wanted to take this opportunity to say hi to a friend and fellow teacher that I've gotten to know up here. Katy, is an awesome teacher down near the Alaskan Peninsula (her ego is going to get even bigger now that I said she's awesome). I hope things are going well down there in the tropical south!

Also, since I'm going to be home this weekend, there's a great possibility that I'm going to put together a solid picture post on Friday. Check it out if you get the time.