Fishing!!

The first week of school is over! Only 164 school days to go...haha. Last year went incredibly fast for most of the year, so this year probably will, too. 

I was able to go fishing with some other staff members on Wednesday. I made sure to layer my jackets and pants so I could stay warm. I also loaded on the bug spray because they are terrible here this time of year. The staff split up into 3 boats and our goal was to catch 20 fish for each boat. I went out on the boat with Norman, our maintenance man who is native, and our new SPED teacher, Ron. We didn't have to go far up river before we set the nets out. Norman is a pro at fishing so he let Ron and me do all the work. We had the net out for about 20 minutes and then Norman told us it was time to pull it in. The net was so big!! We spent probably around 30-40 minutes pulling in the net with all the fish. I think our boat caught around 40 fish. Ron and I did all the work, with Norman helping if we needed. Norman was our photographer and videographer. He told us we did a great job. :) All 3 boats caught a total of about 90 fish!! Keep in mind we were only out on the river for approximately 1 hour!

The boat we used to go fishing. 

I was wearing a lifejacket AND rain gear on top of a jacket, sweatshirt, and long sleeve shirt. I still smelled like fish after I showered...

Here's a long, embarrassing video if you're interested to see how it went. Some fish are easier than others to get out of the net. My finger got caught a few times, but no big injuries. You can see the school in the background of the video!

Since we caught so many fish we were allowed to take some home. I don't care for salmon, but I'm traveling back to Pennsylvania on Wednesday so I took some to take with me! Hopefully my dad will be able to cook it while I'm home and enjoy fresh salmon.

I actually enjoyed fishing. It was fun to see so many salmon in the net as we were pulling it out. Some of them were so large and heavy! It was also a good workout! I was tired by the time we collected our 40 fish, but the work wasn't over yet. Once we got back to the shore we then had to move the fish from the boat to another container so we could take them to the school. Then we had to cut the fish and freeze them! Sometime later in the year the school is going to have a gathering with the entire community and serve the fish for dinner. It's neat to know that the fish we caught is what people will be eating. 

I was lucky enough to help cut some of the fish. Everyone does it a bit differently, so I tried a few ways. I used an Ulu, a special knife they use to cut fish which is extremely sharp. After all 90 fish were cut, they had to be washed and packed away for the freezer. It only took us 1 hour to catch all the fish, but it took about 3-4 hours to cut, wash, and pack it away! I was exhausted by the end of the day. 

I was definitely cutting off the head in this picture. It was hard!

Watching Anna's technique for cutting the fish!

Lots of blood!

Besides fishing this week, we were busy in our classroom doing some community building. Here are some pictures from the first week of school. We have a new rule of no cell phones allowed during school, so I took these pictures on my computer. They aren't very good quality, but I need some pictures!

I was at the store earlier looking around and I thought I would take some pictures of prices. Don't feel so bad when you're in the lower 48....

$14.59 for this bag of coffee....

$9.19 for that small bag of cereal.

Our current preschool teacher is a native and the grandmother of 3 students in my class. She made me some beautiful earrings. 

On Wednesday I'll be leaving Napakiak around 5pm to start my long journey back to PA. I'll spend around 4 hours in Bethel and arrive in Anchorage at 10pm. I then leave to go to Seattle where I have a 4 hour layover and then I will finally arrive in Philadelphia at 4:30 on Thursday. That's a total of 4 airplanes and 19 hours of travel! I hope I'm awake for the wedding!