Last week everyone from my district flew to Bethel for a week of training. Last year in State College, Pennsylvania we would all just drive 10 minutes to a school to have inservice days. Here in Alaska, we fly on planes to all be together for trainings! They only do this once a year, but it's very expensive for almost 500 people to fly to one place. Some people travel more than 1 hour to get to Bethel!
Our ride to Bethel was so short..only about 6 minutes or so. However, it was a little frightening! The plane was old and duct taped in some places.....
Definitely something I never experienced before!
Here's a view from the plane. You can see so many small bodies of water all over the tundra when you're flying.
Some sunsets in Bethel. Believe it or not there is actually a movie theater in Bethel! I went to the movies two nights while I was there with tickets for $13 each. It was worth it for a feel like home.
Circle time! :)
School has been challenging, but also rewarding. We've had great conversations this past week about the tooth fairy, trampolines, jump roping, kangaroos, and ferris wheels! My Smartboard is coming in handy quite often to show pictures and videos! One of my first graders also shot a moose last week with his dad..he was so proud. Life here is definitely different from State College.
We've also been talking about Bigfoot! Two of my students said they saw Bigfoot outside of their house a few days ago. Many of my other students had stories to share about when they saw the large creature. I wonder if I will see him during my time here in Napakiak...
I have an interesting story from this week. I was at the store when I saw one of my second graders with her two friends. She came in and said, "Miss Stephanie, my mom told me to come to the store and get the things on the list." She showed me the list which had 4 Pepsi, 2 Gatorade, 2 bags of chips, and 4 candy bars on it. She had her mom's credit card and it was completely normal for her to do this. She probably does it once a week or more.
I had a cultural experience two weeks ago at church. The service was about 2 hours long and almost all in the Yup'ik language. I was happy to see 7 of my students there and was lucky enough to see 2 of my students sing! The church was pretty large, but there were only about 30 people there. However, the village has such a small population that 30 is actually pretty many people!
Hopefully I'll be able to move into my house this week!!! I'll post pictures of my classroom and house for my next post!
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