From Anchorage to Alakanuk

Sunday was D Day and it was time to fly off to Alakanuk. I strongly dislike flying and got to endure my first experience with bush planes. NOT FUN!!! But thankfully i have amazing friends like Jana and Sammy who were extremely supportive and limited the amount of times they laughed at me. We took one plane from Anchorage to St. Mary's which is a medium size barn. From there we took a small (very small) plane to Alakanuk and even though it was tiny I loved being able to see everything. After we landed our very sweet Assistant Instructional Leader (Assistant Principal) picked us up and had dinner waiting on us. Throughout this whole experience so far i have met some of the most amazing people that have been more helpful than i could ever imagine.

Beauty!!

Payback sucks!!

Can you tell I love flying??

My sweet friends making fun of me. :(

Welcome to the Bush!

Monday started our inservice and it was long and exhausting. My brain was already on overload from the info we got the week before and lack of sleep. We did inservice from 8 to 3:30 Monday and Tuesday. Each night I tried to work a little on my classroom but only made it worse each time. Finally on Wednesday we got to have two work days in our room. I'm proud to say that it no longer looks like a tornado hit it but like a place where children can learn. The teacher left so much stuff in the room that i shouldn't have shipped anything up here, but i'm glad I did. It allowed me to put my touch on the room and now I have a dinosaur themed room. As of right now I'll only have 12 students, but i foresee that going up or down many times before September.

Sammy and I were offered positions to do an after school Learning Lab that starts in Mid Sept. It'll be for third and fourth grade and i'm excited. It'll be fun to job share with her and get to know more students than are just what are in our class. Best part..... We get to go to Anchorage for four days for training. I'm excited bc that means we can get things we need with out giving up our first borns college tuition. Ha ha. We are currently fighting with a bush company who has all of our frozen food and wont ship till we send more money ONCE AGAIN. UGH!!!! It has cost so much money to get food out here and it is taking forever. It'll be worth it tho.

The highlight of the week so far has been that after four days we finally get HOT SHOWERS!!!! So excited!

Everybody in the village has been so sweet and getting to know the locals has been amazing. They have let us try foods i would have never guessed and been such a help with setting up the classroom. I would seriously be lost without them!!

The kids have started to come up to us and ask our names and what grades we teach. They are so hilarious and keep asking us if we want to race. They have more energy than anyone i've ever met.

We are headed off to go sight see. Write more later! :)