The story of a guy who moved to Alaska to teach a few kids in a small Yup'ik community. Turns out, I'm learning a lot. Here's a few things about my adventure:
I'm planning on doing a lot of reflection over the summer about this whole experience and an experience it has been. But I will save that for a later post. I'm going to keep this one brief with a few videos and a recommendation to view some pics on my facebook page.
First, I took a stroll through the abandoned mining town for the first time. I posted some pics on my facebook, so check em out! Here's a video too:
On the way back I took a ride along the beach. It was super beautiful out. Steam was rising off the beach with a nice cool breeze blowing, pretty ideal. Come and take a ride with me:
Video taken while I was in Goodnews Bay (12 miles inland).
Wow, I've really neglected this blog the past two months. I could try to write it off and say that "time escaped me" but the truth is I just chose other things to do, like watch TV shows, read books and attempt to hunt.
Wow, its hard to fill in this large gap of time which has flown by. Lets see, the big things would be coaching NYO, summer/next year plans and being a complete bum over spring break.
Going chronologically since the last post, the weeks have zipped by. It is unreal, I don't feel like I've been here for months after Christmas break but maybe the days have been plain. School days seem to move much faster, maybe its due to the longer hours of sunlight. Nothing too eventful happened those last weeks of February and beginning of March. My spring break began on March 10th and lasted for the week. I decided not to travel anywhere due to the unknown weather and the cost of travel is high ($380 round trip to Bethel!) Unfortunately the weather was pretty crummy too and I didn't do much hunting or exploring. Definitely got my money's worth of Amazon Prime though. I decided to delve into some sci-fi and watched all 3 seasons of Falling Skies. I wasn't too sure about it at first but got hooked. I also caught up on some of the popular movies from the fall that were releasing on to DVD: 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Thor, Catching Fire and Frozen. I wasn't a complete TV/Movie couch potato, I also did some reading too: Maniac McGee, The Fault in Our Stars, Narrative of a Slave (Frederick Douglass) and a book titled "Camelot's Cousin" written by my pastor David Stokes. All great reads and highly recommended.
After break I had 9 weeks until the end of year. I didn't really start counting down the weeks quite at that point but over break I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do over the summer and next year. I'll go ahead and spill the beans: I am planning on returning to Platinum next fall and continue teaching the secondary group. This has been a tough decision to arrive at. Both the principal and elementary teacher are retiring and moving on. I feel like if I were to leave and the kids getting a whole new staff would continue the cycle of uncertainty and everyone is at square one. (This also means that I declare myself the "senior" faculty member, a feat not many first year teachers can claim!)
As for the summer, I will be spending it once again in the woods of Northern Michigan at Camp Barakel. This was also a challenging choice, but at the same time, it isn't. The big fear/concern is/was getting enough time to relax and not do "teacher stuff" over the summer, take a break. However, with this career and stage of life, working at Camp also just seems so right. My desire to serve and love kids doesn't really take a break and Barakel has such a special place in my life and its hard to turn down any opportunity to be there.
I will be the Men's head counselor again, training, mentoring and encouraging guy counselors through the summer. I plan on being there Memorial Day through most of July.
Shoot, totally disregarded the whole timeline approach. Lastly, NYO happened. It was an amazing experience and I'm excited to take another shot at it next year. Here's a link to some videos I captured: NYO VideosI also uploaded a bunch of pics to Facebook so you can check there.
While there I judged a few events (that was nerve-wracking: judging events when I had no clue what to look for going into it, but it turned out ok). I also tried to spend a lot of time with other coaches and observed skillful competitors. The great thing was that all 3 students placed in an event. One student got 2nd in the wrist carry, another 2nd in the Eskimo stick pull and another got 4th in Eskimo stick pull and Seal Hop.Overall, I think my students and I are much more prepared to compete next year.
Ok, its now past 11pm and I've got a whole week of school ahead of me (4 weeks left, 19 school days; I'm counting now). Can't promise when the next update will be but I'm hoping to get out and shoot some waterfowl out of the sky, I can always write about or take pictures of that.
Hello from Platinum again! The absence from blogging has been multi-fold. First, the business of wrapping up a semester of school consumed a bunch of time. Tack on some testing and that was quite the icing on the cake.
Once the semester finished I was dead set on making it home to Michigan. Remarkably, traveling went VERY smoothly. I got out of the village (first hurdle) on time. I allowed a day and a half to leave before my connecting flight to Anchorage from Bethel. I was able to fly out of Bethel early and booked a hotel in Anchorage for some relaxin'. Then it was a not so bright but very early flight from Anchorage to Minneapolis. I had a 1.5 hour layover and then flew into Grand Rapids around 5pm. It was so good to see family waiting for me at baggage claim.
My time in Michigan was just the right amount of down time with family and traveling around to visit friends all over. Here is a map of my travels:
1. I went to a wedding at Camp Barakel (shout out to Mr. and Mrs. Pierpont, Doug Daveless, Keith "The Cook" Boeve and Randy Harris among many, many, many others)
2. I met up with some friends at Barakel again to do some shooting and broomball (Titus, Tyler and Eric)
3. I then shot up to the Yoop for a weekend. (Holla at my boys Dan, Ben, Steve, Aaron and Matt)
4. I then met up with some friends in the Lake Orion area. (Cletus and Kay-Kay, the Moosetons and Bam)
5. My sister and I spent my remaining days down in the Kalamazoo area. (Grandma, The Kents, Dave, Jenn, Justin and Skittles the cat)
6. I shot up to Grand Rapids on New Years day to meet up with some more peeps. (Dilly's!)
7. Lastly, was the the trip to the Grand Rapids airport (after hitting Cabela's for some fine hunting equipment) (None other than Teriyaki Trent)
A total of almost 1400 miles travelled just within Michigan!
The weather here right now is unbelievable. While the midwest is having a Snowpocalypse, it's currently raining outside. There is no longer any snow and most of the ice is now melting. Freezing temps seem to be on the horizon and are forecasted to drop quickly but it sure is odd weather around here.
Anyways, here's a video wrap up with a tour around the newly arranged classroom and some random talking. Oh, I'll also throw in the family holiday video we made in an attempt to win free stuff from Bubba Watson, the pro golfer. I guess our moves were just not good enough.
