Tundra life

Well,
We had our Saturday school yesterday, it turned out to be a pretty good. Out high school girls basketball team had games here this weekend. Two visiting teams flew in on Friday afternoon and they played three games friday afternoon/evening and three games yesterday.

The weather is still chilly but MUCH warmer. Today is pretty nice with the temperature being about -18 and a windchill of about -25. Last Sunday was crazy, all the pipes in the school froze so our site administrator and maintanance man spent all day working on the frozen pipes. There were three houses in teacher housing that had no water. Kat and I were very blessed that we had water and had plenty to share with some of the other staff.
On thursday our house was a little chilly the furnace wasn't working properly, I guess there was some leak, the site administrator came and checked things out, and they got the heat working. When Mark (our maintanance man) came to look at the furnace he discovered a leak with our hot water heater and turned off the hot water--no big deal, we can live with out hot water for awhile. On Friday night our principal, called and said our sewer system was frozen....so we cannot use our water. It is great that we live so close to the school so we can just dart over there to use the bathroom and shower.

Last night, we came home exhausted...it was a long week (six days of teaching is too much :) ) We had a messy house, and we started playing baseball with balls of tin foil, and paper. Kat decided to start flinging things, using a spoon as a slingshot, she picked up a little ziplock bag of flour and was going to fling but decided not to. I dared her to fling it, and to make a long story short, we had a flour fight that entertained us through a power outage and for about an hour. :)

This week will be our first week back in the regular routine since before Christmas, and as Kat says "it won't be as long, we only have to work 5 days". Days are getting noticably longer, this morning, I saw a sunrise around 10, and it is still bright daylight right now at 4:00.

I will update again later this week, and add some more pictures. Have a great week. :)

Saturday School

Well..you know you are in the Alaska bush when.....you have Saturday school...you know you are in the bush when Saturday school is cancelled.

Last week Monday (our first day back after Christmas/Slaviq break) school was cancelled, due to the Volcano planes were delayed/cancelled from making flights in and out of Anchorage. Our teachers were stuck...then they got to Bethel and were stuck because of snowy weather. So 8 of our 10 certified staff were not here for school last monday, and the principal said we would have saturday school. This morning Kat and I were getting ready to leave for school when the phone rang. Our principal was calling to say that Saturday school was cancelled due to the cold and we will make up the day next saturday. So to make a long story short...you know you are in the Alaskan bush when Saturday school is cancelled.

Kat and I thought about flying out to Bethel for the day, to do some shopping and some other business however not all planes are flying due to cold weather, and we didn't want to get stuck. The Kuskokwim 300 (300 mile dog sled race) is also scheduled to begin today in Bethel, and it would have been exciting to see that.

Not much else is new here, it has been very cold. When I checked the weather earlier this morning it was -20 degrees F. and -56 with the windchill. It should warm up a little bit next week. It was good to be back in the routine of school, and the kids were all ready to be back, even if they weren't all ready to learn.

Will write more later, have a wonderful day :)