One dog of a weekend

The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences—Into the Wild

Whew I survived week number five, its so exciting being a teacher—rewarding and exciting.This week has been tough because I lost my voice and struggled with talking a bit. Those who know me know I LOVE to talk but guess what I did not let this stop me. Part of being a teacher is learning to overcome little obstacles. A very wise man once told me, teachers are problem solvers. We find problems and students that need help and we solve them! So not having a voice for a few days was overcome by my excitement and perseverance to still have a great week.

So this weekend has been so exciting!! And I am writing with excitement as I sit here after a fun filled day. Allison and myself were kind of “in charge” while everyone else was either in Bethel or camping and you know what? I think we did a pretty darn good job of being responsible!! We dog sat three dogs and had quite the adventure which will come later…..

DINNER PARTY FOR…THIRTEEN? So Friday night we decided to have my class over for a spaghetti dinner. I was having a little bit of difficulty with the students turning in their homework. After five days of everyone turning in their homework we decided to throw them a dinner party! Before the children arrived I baked a cake. Anyone who knows me knows my cooking skills are not quite to where they need to be right now—and I accidentally put in too much water—OPPS but no worries after an hour and fifteen minutes of baking the cake was quite a success! Baked perfectly and beautifully—I could probably be the next CAKE BOSS!! The cake was so delicious and one of a kind! We then got our jumbo size pot out and began to cook. I buttered the bread while Allison broke up our jumbo sized spaghetti (we are quite the team I might add) The kids started to arrive at 5:45 and played games, played with playdough, and entertained themselves which the chefs were busy at work! We served dinner and hung out and it was a swell time. If at least one of my students left happy, then I know I did my job! The kids left with their bellies full, smiles on their faces, and with brand new stickers and silly bands.

So then the real fun began: DOG SITTING. Now our goal this weekend was to be responsible and prove we can take good care of dogs. Our goal is to be able to babysit the neighbor dogs (Bela and Marley). So this weekend we had two goals 1.) Not to lose a dog 2.) Survive having three dogs at our house. After countless hours of chasing them around our house while they had various items in their mouths, and almost wiping out several times while walking…WE DID IT!

FRIDAY NIGHT WAS A TREAT! It was just Me Allison and then three dogs (Tucker Riley and Ani). Now Tucker is quite the playful dog who likes to eat…ANYTHING…We found this out when he took Al’s shoes and started to nibble on them. She tried to put them away, but the clever fellow always found a way to find the other shoe. We spent some time chasing him while he ate tissue, post its, pens, rubber bands, a plastic cup, headphones and several other random household items. No matter what we put away he was always a step ahead of the game. Around ten o clock the dogs decided they wanted to chase each other all around our house. CRAZY YET FUNNY TIMES. If we didn’t have our Quinhagak friends to hang out with us, I am glad we had their dogs! Watching the dogs gave me the ability to just laugh because of the things that just kept happening and happening. Reminding me of being a child and how my parents probably felt when I would be mischievous and just kept going and going. After countless chasings and begging the dogs to sit down we decided it was bed time. OH WHAT A DELIGHT…we wanted the dogs to just get into bed and fall asleep, but they had other plans. Allison finally just shut them in my room and I had the pleasure of entertaining our new house guests....all I have to say about it is WHAT A NIGHT…Makes me appreciate the cats I had at home…all I know for sure is that I am fine with NOT having a dog anytime soon.. =) I am thankful for the dogs though because they kept us entertained and laughing our entire Friday night.

IT WAS A SAD NIGHT IN QUINHAGAK….The slushie machine was not working and man oh man it broke my heart. We had been looking forward to a nice cold slushie all week. Who would have thought a slush puppy would be what I was looking forward to on the weekends (Only in Alaska!)

Saturday was yet another room mate adventure. We decided to take the three dogs down to the beach. Now we knew this was going to be tough, but we wanted to prove to ourselves we could do it. So we set off dogs in hand and walked down to the beach. It was quite relaxing and beautiful. I am proud to announce we made it all dogs came back happy and exercised—which brings me to another adventure. Walking back with three dogs in hand, we see yet another dog (which is another teacher’s dog) just roaming the village, but this one doesn’t have on a collar. So there we are holding three dogs trying to figure out howwe are going to get this one too. Which brings me back to my point about teachers being problem solvers. We handled it and safely with a mix of chaos got all dogs back into their respectable homes. But as we were taking Ani back, we noticed there was some random dog in Ani’s house. It was shaking and looking like it was going to die. We just began laughing and thought someone was playing a joke on us. After that dog adventure it was just timeto relax. I was DOG GONE TIRED!

ALWAYS SUNNY IN QUINHAGAK—Boy oh Boy the sun was shining and we decided we needed to get our tan on. So Allison and I got out the lawn chairs and got our sun on. It felt so nice again to be in the sun (we are pretty used to rain around here- so the fact the sun was shining was HUGE . I am proud to announce if you look VERY VERY closely at our faces we got a little kiss from the sun. I think I even saw a freckle popping out. One thing I am still adjusting to is the PASTEY SNOW like features my skin is starting to have!

After our tanning session we set off to have a bonfire at the beach aka the BERING SEA. We had a legit buffet down there! We had pop, hot dogs, polish dogs, onions, cheese its, pasta salad, cake, and smores. Better than any buffet in Ohio I’ve been too. So the ones of us left in Quin built a fire and just enjoyed the beautiful environment Quinhagak has to offer. I put the 12 years of girl scouting to use and collected some wood for our fire. We ate dinner and HOT DOG HOT DOG HOT DIGGITY DOG IT WAS GOOD. I ate til I felt I was going to burst.

PHOTO SHOOT AT THE BEACH—Connie told us how she used to take the pictures of when you try to jump in the air and how cool it looked. So me thinking about my blog and how much fun it would be gathered the gang together for one heck of a photo shoot. Now close your eyes for a minute and imagine 5 grown adults jumping frantically in the air yelling did ya get it? Did ya get it? (QUITE THE SCENCE) There we were jumping up and down up and down like crazy fools. I don’t think I have laughed so hard. We would jump and then look at Connie to ask if she had captured the moment and every time she just started to laugh. Needless to say after about 50 jumps in the air and a belly ache later we got some GREAT ONE OF A KIND photos! Just doing the little things like that really makes me appreciate the people that are going through this journey with me.

That was pretty much the extent of our weekend, and we were worried we would have nothing to do this weekend! Which brings me to my final thought. Out here we really have to work together and see the positive side to things. Sure we could have just sat in our house bummed out because everyone was gone. But instead we took the time to explore the surroundings and have a good time. We used the resources around us like the beach, the sun, etc to have a good relaxing weekend. Being out here makes me appreciate everything it has to offer. Honestly if you asked me a year ago if I would be living in bush Alaska using a honeybucket, riding next to caribou, paying fifteen dollars for a pizza while being pale as milk I would have laughed at you.

But I am sticking by the mentality that everything happens for a reason and there are bigger plans for me being here this year. I really am beginning to see a bit of a change in my willingness to appreciate things around me and trying to be more positive. I’ll update you on that thought though when its-40 and I have windburn instead of sunburn!

That’s it for now! So happy our family Steph and Jim are back and its Sunday! Thanks for reading my blog =)

Miss you all