Oil Change and Mountain Range

Howdy!

Hasn't been that long since I last posted. A few things have happened:

• I turned 24 (Jack Bauer)
• I'm now the official Site Tech and Study Hall Fun Coordinator (the last one I made up, but it's true! Its my job to tell the kids how they will have fun after study hall. Typically it involves me dancing to Moves Like Jagger on Just Dance 4 on the Wii.)
• I spent an hour changing the oil in the four-wheeler (those hidden, enclosed oil filters...)
• I finally got out hike Red Mountain and rode to the southern tip of the mine

Birthday Pics

Linae is on the left, she is the Site Administrator and Henri, the elementary teacher, on the right

Ham, homemade applesauce, corn pudding, scalloped potatoes and a cake that my mom shipped! Yum!

I was able to pull the ATV into our shop. ALOT better than lying out on the frozen ground.

So, the drain plug and dipstick were easy to find in their normal places, but that elusive oil filter? Its not like your typical car one, its enclosed in the engine block. I had to watch a few YouTube videos and do some picture searches to find it. It is so great having a mode of transportation!

This is around 1pm. The sun is so low in the sky!

Part of the way up (I stopped to catch my breath, a bit out of shape). Looks like they mined or did something on this part of the mountain

Sorry about all the wind noise

Right at the end I was about to say, "That's Goodnews Bay village in the center."

Map of my adventure


Ever heard of Khan Academy? It started out with a guy taking a video of him solving math problems to help his cousins. His videos have exploded in viewer-ship and his site is now a full-blown educational resource. Since I'm teaching 3 math levels at one time I thought I'd try my hand at it, do some instruction on the SmartBoard and record it on video. Here's the result: (Don't feel compelled to watch the whole thing unless you want to take notes too)

Whoa, it's already November!

Time is flying by up here. I don't just mean that the days are getting shorter but that it's hard to believe I've been here for 3 months! I've got a few pics and videos for you all from the past week or so.

My part of a catch of ptarmigan (a close relative of the grouse). Two students took me on a spur of the moment hunt just a few hundred yards outside of town. It was a blast, to say the least.

Got the kids hooked on Bill Nye while learning about cells. Definitely brought me back to my childhood.

Coming up next is my adventure to Bethel last weekend. I was scheduled to fly in the early afternoon but the plane landed with no seats available, so I was bumped to the later flight. Bush planes are much more like a taxi service than your normal air travel. I was hoping to go in early, get a hair cut and get some shopping out of the way. But, I will be coming home looking like I walked off the set of Duck Dynasty.

I fell asleep after this picture.

When we fly in to Bethel for new teacher in-service on Fridays, we stay the night in the district office. Last time I stayed at someone's house on a nice comfy couch. This time, it didn't work out that way and I wanted to spend some time with the other new teachers. While packing, I remembered that there were these awkward poles in the middle of one of the conference rooms. Now, I knew that there weren't any tress up here but I still brought my hammock anyways (telephone poles? volleyball poles?) It beat sleeping on the floor.

A bigger picture of the dredge at the platinum mine. The maintenance man and I got an ATV started up that has been sitting in front of our house. The owner said we could use it if we could get it started. This allowed me and the other teacher the opportunity to drive up to the mine. She hadn't seen it yet and we finally got the chance the other day after school when the weather was decent. But, once we got behind the mountain without the sun, it was a bitter cold ride back to town.

Finally got some colder weather. It didn't stick around for long. Being on the coast is delaying the lasting cold temperatures but they will come and stay soon enough.

Mining, Oreos, Bird Barf, Dying Things and Church

Instead of sitting here and writing something I thought I'd try a new medium, vlogging (video+blogging).

Here are some pics over the past few weeks:

The old dredge used for mining platinum. Hasn't been used in about 30+ years. Really reminds me of the Copper Country in the UP. This was a part of a trip looking for an animal that two of my students shot the previous day. 

Oreo Math- building a tower, recording data and then finding the mean, median and mode

Examining owl pellets as a part of learning about food chains and food webs

 Fall on the tundra- compare it to how it was just a month ago!

 My highlight of last weekend- a church service! The staff and I were out walking around in the great weather after a week long of rain and heard the church bell ringing. A bunch of Hondas (four-wheelers, called "Honda" because its the most common brand) were parked outside. I went inside and sat down. The church is Moravian, which is similar to Lutheran. About 70% of the service was in Yugtun, the Yup'ik language. Scripture and hymns were sung in both Yugtun and English. It was quite amazing to sit and listen and hear God's word spoken in a language I don't understand, but He does. My favorite part of the service was "How Great Thou Art" sung by the choir in Yugtun, I recorded it below. I was singing in English in my mind :)

Yugtun is a guttural language which makes it very challenging to learn for me and "gusaks- outsiders". I'm trying to learn my students' Yup'ik names, which is a lot of fun for them because I'm quite awful at it. 

(I didn't feel like it was appropriate for me to hold up my camera to capture video, I was more interested in capturing the song.)

Sing to the LORD, all the earth! Proclaim his salvation day after day. Declare his glory among the NATIONS, his marvelous deeds among all PEOPLES. 

1 Chronicles 16:23-24

Monday Night Update

Howdy everyone!

Wow, I can barely believe a whole month has gone by without an update! I'm sorry for all of you faithful followers who have been checking in on the blog and finding nothing new. Let's just say its been a very busy month.

I'm going to keep this post relatively brief because its late here while I write and I've been at school all day long working. That actually is pretty accurate of how most school days are. My supervising teacher told me that the first year is EXHAUSTING, and man is he right. I was hoping to get into some sort of groove with planning, teaching and interacting with the kids, but each day is so unique full of a all kinds of emotions for everyone.

While some things come quicker now and the students sense the general flow of the day, I'm trying to take the extra effort to meet all of their needs. This is quite the difficult task because its hard to tell how the students will respond. I may come up with a great idea but it doesn't take off. Or, I stick to the scripted textbook plan (which happens often since I'm teaching everything) that I feel is going to be boring, and it's a hit! Trial and error I guess.

I haven't had a lot of free time to say the least. It doesn't really faze me sometimes because, well, there ain't exactly a social scene in Platinum. I couldn't imagine all of the pulls I would have if I was teaching a "normal" job in the lower 48. Many of you know that I love to be involved and I tend to overcommit, so being up here where not a lot happens, is in a way good for me. It may sound weird, but sometimes I like the planning times because I get to learn and figure things out myself, which helps me process on how my students will learn too. But, it does wear me down sometimes too. We shall see as time goes on.

I'm going through a sermon series and devotional book that is focused around the book of Acts. It has been quite helpful for me in the stressful and busy times during the day. Today I read Acts 3:11-16 where Peter speaks to a gathering crowd interested in seeing the man that was healed. Peter could have ignored the opportunity, to claim the attention for himself or brush it off and disassociate himself, like he did when Jesus was arrested. However, he boldly spoke to the crowd Jesus' death and resurrection as the source and meaning for the healing. I'm very encouraged by his boldness to step out and speak. A lot of days I want to simply float by and sometimes there is this sense of, "just get it done." It would be awful to give up on trying for my students. A lot of times it takes that extra effort so that something can "click" for them and gain a greater knowledge of something. That's worth it. They are better for it, and while I may be tired and exhausted, I gain too.

New Digs

I moved in last Sunday but I've been caught up in teacher training this week. Here's a walk through.

I'm currently spending my last day in Bethel for training. It has been a nice breath of fresh air to leave the village and hang out with other teachers. On the other hand, not much planning has been done for the coming week.

More to come about training, enjoy the weekend!

Back to School Night

It has been another busy week here in Platinum. Classes are starting to fall in place for everyone. Planning isn't soaking up as much time and the students are starting to get back into the swing of things. 

This past Friday was out Back to School night. We invited all the families to come out an join us for a meeting and then dinner to follow. I got to introduce myself to the parents and meet a few first hand. 

The elementary kids made story scenes about their families and shared them with everyone. The kids were really nervous and most mumbled, I guess they don't like the spotlight.

The meeting took place in the elementary classroom. After the meeting was dinner in the cafeteria but I was hoping the students would bring their parents down to my classroom to take a peek. I don't think anyone went down, we were all waiting to eat!

Here are some more pics from my classroom

This was our history project this week. Each student chose a region of Native Americans and drew about their region, making a pretty cool collage.

I've been waiting very patiently for this. It should be set up sometime this week.

This is our VTC unit, how students take a video course from the district central office. This allows my high school students to take an Earth Science class and lets me focus on just junior high Life Science.

The cleanest my desk has been since the beginning of the year. 

This week, instead of having school, the district is flying everyone to Bethel for more teacher training. The kids are pretty happy and it is a nice change of pace. 

Coming up later this week, a video of the house I moved into yesterday.

Friday Night!

Hey everyone, the weekend is here! Fridays are early release days here and we spend the afternoon together as a staff reviewing the week, upcoming events and district/school stuff. Right before our meeting, I wanted to run to the store to grab a few Cokes. I have been really CRAVING some home food, I would really love a burger. Right now the store is only open from 12-3:30, which means that Fridays are the only time I can make it. Its about a 3 minute walk from the school and as I walk closer, I notice the fish plant school bus is pulling in, and its full of people. Most of the people that work at the plant are young adults, who like me, crave the taste of beautifully concocted high fructose corn syrup-y goodness. They all pile in before me and raid the fridge (the drinks are literally kept in household refrigerators, frozen food right above). I decided on a 12 pack and grabbed a bag of chips for the other teacher. A can of Coke is $1.50, not bad all things considered. I figured buying a 12 pack would be more cost effective (pricetags aren't found on a lot of items, the storekeeper probably didn't have time to label them) Turns out, it was just $1.50 times 12, ( do the math children.) But I felt like I was back in line a supermarket, patiently waiting with my two items while 15 people ahead of me have armloads of stuff.

So here's my celebratory dinner:

I did make chocolate chip cupcakes, for the first time ever! Turned out pretty tasty!

Puppy break!

Newborn pups from one of the families.

Lastly, I went for a walk, heading for the beach.

And then, out of the corner of my eye, raspberries!

I picked almost a hat-full and then found a large patch. I figure I can mark the area and head back later.

The Powers That Be

Some might look at this title and think I may rant on about meeting standards, following challenging guidelines while teaching or something of that nature. However, this post will be about the source of our power and electricity in the village.

Since we live way off the road system, on the coast of the Bering Sea, the electricity we get comes from a few generators in town. So here's how it works: there is city power and school power. The school has two 60kw Cummins diesel generators that power the school and teacher housing next door. One generator runs and the other is meant as a back-up. Ideally, the generators are inspected annually and I believe they switch every year. So, in a "perfect" mechanical environment, both generators are up to date and operational.

Then there is "city" power (I call it village power because I have a hard time calling Platinum a city.) The city has its own industrial generator which supplies power to all the buildings, store, post office and homes in the community. The city also has a weaker back-up generator that runs if the main one is down.

So here's how its been. When we arrived a few weeks ago, both of the school generators were down. I believe that one generator was broken due to a melted piston. I'm not so sure about the other one, but it isn't running as well. In this case, the school switches power to the "city" grid. All is fine for a day or two. Mechanics are scheduled to visit to fix at least one generator and diagnose the other. But, a few days before school starts the city generator fails too. Power outages are quite frequent here and the lights normally turn back on after a few minutes, but this time they remained out for a few hours. The lights came back on but with a few restrictions. The weaker back-up generator was running which means that we cannot use any 220 watt appliances like stoves, ovens and dryers.

The past two weeks have quite eventful with at least a power outage everyday and always during school! With the constant overcast weather, it makes reading hard and makes one feel like they are trapped inside. I've learned to become quite adaptable to this and have been better at making activities up on the fly. I've also had to do all of my "cooking" with a microwave, which actually didn't turn out so bad because, well, I'm not exactly a top contestant for any cooking show. But. No laundry. I am fortunate enough to have a smaller water heater that I could keep on for showers. So I may have been clean everyday but the clothes I was wearing, sometimes not so much.

Until today! One of the school generators is operational and ready to pump some power. I currently am finishing up my last load of laundry and celebrated with a good ole out of the box, skillet rice meal, with tuna. Maybe, in the morning, if I'm feeling especially adventurous, I'll make pancakes.

I never thought I'd ever really have to worry about something like electricity in life. Spotty cell phone coverage in hills, sure. No access to internet all the time, probably good for me. But hours and minutes without power in a room full of junior high boys, time to be creative and flow with it.

Back to lesson plans. Here are a few random pics I've taken in the past week:

This is currently my desktop background

The whole village of Platinum

Decided to walk the beach toward Red Mountain. 30 minutes later I was still not very close and the sun was setting.

The road is traveled by villagers and a construction company. There is an active gravel pit on the left side of this picture, behind the hill.

Our dump. Haul it. Throw it. Burn it.

Across the bay

Salmonberries- tasty! There are also blackberries, not so tasty. Raspberries are around too.

A week from last Sunday, the fish plant (cannery) invited people from Platinum to a Sunday lunch. We loaded up in the school bus and drove a mile or so north from town to the plant. It sits on the end of the peninsula, or "spit" as they say. Easy unloading for caught salmon and freight. A lot bigger than I thought!

The plant is owned and operated by the local for-profit regional council. Alaska is much different when it comes to land ownership and management of Alaska Native land. In short, Alaska is divided into 12 regions, based on the different languages and tribes in the state. Since Native Alaskans technically owned all of the land in the state, a settlement was reached and they retained a certain amount of land, paid over $900 million and received other benefits. The cannery is a result of our region's for-profit corporation. They hire people from all over our region.

This is the inside. The food was FANTASTIC! Made me feel like I was back at Camp Barakel. Best part, we could help ourselves to mint chocolate ice cream. I thought I'd have to wait months to taste ice cream again!