Cultural Camp

So... I know it has been a while since you have heard from me and so much has happened. I still love my school and my town. I still like my roommate. We had a heaver snow, I went to bingo (which was actually a lot of fun), our school hosted our first farmers market (all fresh fruits and vegs), I started coaching cheerleading, Our prom committee met for the first time and I bought my plane tickets home for Christmas. Yes, I have been really really busy. But Today was a real exciting day. We had our culture camp and it was awesome! We started it by hearing about Atqasuk in the beginning how it was  started up as a coal mining  community, how the four-plex I live in now was the original school and how they only had 4 teachers here originally. We were then invited into the kitchen and we  learned how to make some traditional dishes like, bow head muktuk (aka.  is the outer covering of the whale. It includes the white skin, approximately 1-2 inches thick, plus a thin pinkish layer immediately underneath.),

 Tuttu soup (aka. reindeer soup), 

 

Beluga Meat and skin/blubber-

Eskimo doughnuts (aka. Fried dough)

I helped make these!!!!!

 Overall the food was different but it was all good! My favorite was the fried whale meat. But I did try it all and finished almost all my food.

 When we all had our fill we took the rest of the food to the elders.

After we ate lunch we talked about ice fishing and we made the traditional fishing rods. We made the notches on the poles and everything!

We then were awarded our Eskimo names. I was named Nauyna after one of the ladies Grandmothers. It is an honor to be named after someone and I am in awe that they would name me after someone so close to them. :) Oh by the way Nauyna in inupit means seagull which is an important thing for the inupits they even have a dance for them.

Seagull dance

Well ta ta for now I will keep blogging! I miss my friends and family very much but still loving it up here!

-Danielle

Internet Again!!!!!

WOW, I never thought I would be so happy for Internet! It really has been killing me not to be able to blog. But now that I have Internet I will be able to update you on all the things that have happened. I had my first day, my first observation, I'm all moved into my house and even my first snow. I still love it here! I have gotten use to getting up at 7 and walking to school every day an I have to say right now it is a nice walk. Walking to school in those temps feel really good right now and it wakes me up every morning. I thought it would be weird to be in a place where there are very little cars but to be honest I don't miss them. Its nice being able to walk everywhere. It has gotten to a point that If I see a car driving around it seems weird to me. I mean there really is no need for them the town. It is less than a mile from one side to the other. But all of three places that have cars , the school, the police, and one family that bought a hummer for some reason (don't ask me why you need a hummer in Atqasuk, AK but it is a really cool car!)

1st day of school

It want great. I love my class. I have 9 children. 3 are girls and 6 are boys. We went over procedures and the kids were rock stars on the first day. My goal for this year is to show them that school can be fun.  I have been offered the opportunity to be in charge of yearbook, helping Christine with the newspaper,  coach and director. I will be doing A Native Lad, by some lady in England it is about the  PFD (Public Fund Dividend) and Alaska's history. I am really excited about starting it. My boss even says that the lady that created the play will come if I put the play on.

Here are some pictures. :)

 

My first snow

I got to ride shotgun, in the airplane!!

My town from the sky

My picture is in the newspaper in Barrow!!!

Atqasuk and the house

More pictures from the plane of the Tundra

I could practly sit in his lap

the wall of clouds that prevented us from landing

again

 

Sign in barrow

After my great overnight stay in the city of Barrow, Alaska it was finally time to get on a plane to Atqasuk. I was loaded onto a small 9 seat propeller plane where Christine and I were the only two passengers,  well us and the mail. It was surprisingly smooth and fun to ride in a propeller plane. I thought that I would be very scared being in such a small plane but I was more interested than anything. I was able to see all the knobs, charts and lights that the pilot uses to fly. Anyway. we flew over the tundra and I really saw how cool the tundra is. From the air,the tundra looks like dinosaur skin. It has different textures in it, lots of lakes and still bodies of water. And, it is uninhabited almost completely. It is crazy to fly over land that has been untouched it really has a beauty about it. It was a short 20 minute flight to Atqasuk. We landed on a dirt runway and for the first time I got to see the town that I was to be living.  It was a cute town from a distance. I could see the fire station and a few houses but not much from the sky.  When we landed we were greeted by seven pick-up trucks racing to the plane. They quickly got to unloading the mail and supplies from the plane. We started to get off the plane, I kinda fell off the plane (it is very short and my posters got stuck on the top of the inside of the plane causing me to hit my head on the way out). We were greeted by the principal’s husband and were helped into the car and driven to our house. I have to pause for a moment and warn you. There is a running joke in Alaska that the mosquito is the state bird. I thought they were crazy. Well until I stepped off that plane. The mosquitoes were everywhere and they were huge! literally like the size of my thumbnail. We ran into the car and then went on a killing spree of the bugs in the car. After we fought our way into our house (we live in the 4-plex right in the middle of town between the post office, store and school) we dropped our things. Our house was HUGE! It made my apartment in Savannah look like a closet. We have a three bedroom one bathroom house. It has a huge kitchen with two stand-up freezers and a refrigerator, laundry room, arctic entrance, and a living room.

 

My house in the distance

 

SO the only problem about my house was that I only had one box there. Christine's boxes mostly all arrived and she was able to start unpacking. I on the other had had my suit cases (at least I wont be naked) and one box full of pans. The four boxes of food that I had sent priority mail had not arrived yet and we had no food at all. So after looking around our house we decided that It was time to go support our town by going to the grocery store and buy some lunch (seeing that we had only eating one meal the day before and were starving). The store was a very small store it sold chips, soda, some meats, and some caned goods ( I will get a picture of it later for you guys). We bought 3 days worth of food and set off back home feeling proud that we can support ourselves and work out our own problems. Can you guess how much it was? I will give you a hint. this is what we bought...

How bought a closer look?

yes this can does say $9.35

It cost us $103. Yeah crazy huh? Needless to say we needed my boxes to come stat. Anyways after a yummy lunch of grilled cheese we set off to explore the quiet town. It was beautiful. It was much like a ghost town. there was the store we had already visited, houses, a health center, and a baby blue post office. (PS you will see a blue house with a red roof. That one is mine)

There is one thing that we did find out quickly though. there was a reason that nobody was up and walking around. It wasn't the temperature.  The temperature was nice. I even put on short sleeves to go explore. Now lets see if you paid attention and see if you could figure out why no one was outside and not in short sleeves.... that's right mosquitoes. The wind was not blowing so the mosquitoes were out in full force. they were in our hair, ears, mouth, arms, we quickly changed our plans and ran back inside.











After becoming a little more smart with clothing choices we headed over to the school. When we first got there we go a key to the school but was not sure what door it went to. So there was Christine and me looking like we were trying to break into the school. We tried every door to get into the school and finally the key fit.

The 24 hour trip

The 24 hour trip

OK, I am so sorry. I have been without real Internet since I have been in Atqasuk. WE are having to get internet installed at our house. Now that I am in barrow  on my way to Anchorage waiting on a flight. SO I apologize to all of you for keeping you in the dark these days have been crazy and fun. I mean nothing has gone the way I have wanted or expected it to. But it is all part of the experience! I will be in Anchorage for for training this week so will post a few blogs this week!


The Long Trip-

I am excited, terrified, and so ready to take this adventure. I mean what can I say leaving home is always hard. I was going to travel 3,768 mi away from home. I was dreading the near 24 hours I had until I would arrive in Atqasuk Alaska. I mean how could I know that it would take us more than 2 days to eventually get to our house in Atqasuk? My first flight took me on a six hour flight from Charlotte to the very hot desert of Phoenix Arizona. after a layover of an hour I took another 5 hour and thirty minute flight to Anchorage. All went smoothly except for my two posters hanging out of my carry on bag started hitting people in the head as I would walk by (oops). After a grueling 6 hour layover in Anchorage and reconnecting with Christine we were ready to go start our journey onto the great bush Alaska. I am excited about moving into my house and my classroom and becoming a true Alaskan belle. (y'all I am so bringing the pearls and the word y'all to Alaska! mark my words) I took us four hours to fly from Anchorage to Fairbanks where two people in handcuffs being led by a state trooper got on the plane and sat all the way in the back, and then to Dead horse (yes this is a real town) but when we went to land there was a white blanket of clouds and the pilot was unable to see the ground.

 We were unable to land so they turned us around and sent us back to Fairbanks where we refueled and sent us right back to Dead horse. A 1 hour trip quickly turned into a 4 hour trip. We weren't even allowed off the plane! When we got to dead horse we finally Flew to Barrow. Barrow is beautiful in its own way. It is right on the ocean and has many nice people.

The airport was a one terminal and we were picked up by a lady in our school district. Because we had missed our flight due to the wonderful tour of Alaska earlier (thanks to the weather) we were unable to get to Atqasuk that day we were put up in a cute little hotel called the airport inn. We got a tour from the human resources director and got to eat at the top of the world hotel!

I cant wait until I leave  for Atqasuk tomorrow.


More to come shortly! (I promise this time)

 

The trip that changed it all

Finding a job and the 1st year

A few months ago I took the 10 hour long flight over to Anchorage, Alaska. This trip is what truly started the whole Alaska craze. I had always wanted to teach at a place that was exciting and new but also a a place that needed a teacher. A school that I would not only teach at but a school that I could also learn from and experience new things.
I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2013. I left that school with a degree in Early Childhood Education and the belief that the world was mine and that because I had a degree jobs would be easy to find. I believed that a job would just fall into my lap. Boy could I not have been more wrong. What they fail to tell you in school is how hard it will be once you get out of school to find a school. The middle of my Sr year I started filling out applications and attending job fairs. Each one harder than the next. I expected it to be easy to find a job like I would walk in and be able to scope out the different schools and then just choose one. sadly it does not work this way. Finding an education job in South Carolina is like finding a needle in a hay stack. But not only finding a needle in a hay stack but looking for that needle when 12 other people are too. (OK so that one kinda got away with me ha ha but you get the point). Getting a teaching job is hard. I mean who wants a teacher straight out of school? One you have to train and show the ropes? Long story short, I ended up getting a job at an arts and science charter school in Hardeeville, SC. It was an at risk school and I looked forward to teaching my first year. I had high standards for myself and for what I was going to accomplish. I was also really excited and nervous about meeting all 22 of my new children. Long story short I learned many things through the year, I had days where I loved my job, I had days where I cried myself to sleep, I had days where I wanted to quit teaching and days where I loved what I did. What kept me going was my kids. I loved my kids. Every single one of them I loved their attitudes, I love their smiles, their tantrums, their excitement and their creative spirit. It was this year that I also learned the importance  of teaching children that they have the power and ability to succeed in life and that they are important as a person.  As the year continued on I became more and more anxious. Even though I liked my kids and my job something was missing. I looked around one day and realized that I was unhappy. I was young I was suppose to be excited and having fun in life but all I did was look around and I could not find one person around who's life I wanted.  I was missing the wonder in life. I missed being in a place that you want to be in. I grew up moving around as a military child so traveling is in my blood. But I really miss being in a place where the culture is different than yours because it really opens you up to a new world and a new culture and that is how one grows. People love to say if you don't travel now, you never will. So I decided to change it.

Anchorage job fair

The trip to Alaska actually started with a joke. Christine and I were having one of those days. SO we started joking around and talking about places to go and have an adventure at. We played around with far away lands like China, Germany, India, and even Italy came up but the application process was crazy, you had to have 3 year of experience, or the programs were very intense. A few days later Alaska came into the picture and we started doing research. What does one really know about Alaska? I mean it was in the movie The Proposal right? I do know that there is lots of snow and it is cold, they have polar bears, Moose, reindeer and sadly they don't have penguins (yes, yes, I originally thought so too haha.) But other than that I really knew nothing about Alaska so I started digging. I learned about their need for teachers, the pride they take in their environment and keeping the beauty of the land, and I am not going to lie when I found out there was a 5:1 ration of men to women it made Alaska that more desirable. We talked about moving and laughed about it and did some more research even found a date of a job fair that we could attend but it didn't really become reality until I got a ticket to Alaska for my birthday from my parents.  So Christine and I decided why not? We packed up a suit case, our resumes, our little bit of knowledge, and high hopes. About 10 hours later we landed in the city of Anchorage. We got off the plane and from the instance we stepped off the cold air caught us. It wasn't like really cold like people think but it was nippy which surprised me because it is suppose to be ungodly cold all the time in Alaska right? See that is the problem with doing your own research online. You see so many websites that talk about the extremes of Alaska and we all know that the Internet never lies. Anyways we got out the airport got into our rental car, a   Malibu of all things and drove out to the street.  And that it the day I fell in love with Alaska. The scenery was beautiful, breathtaking, like nothing I have ever seen. It was like I was transported onto a movie set or like someone had painted these snow topped mountains. I knew at that moment I was home.

 

After we found our little hotel and decided to go in, because the outside looked kinda scary but inside it was quite quaint it even had a gastro pub that had great food. The next day we went to the hotel for the job fair. It was then that we quickly  realized that they had changed the date for the job fair moving it back a day so they could have professional development. It also allowed them time to setup which was all good except they had failed to update the website. So there you had it, two girls from South Carolina were in the hotel in full interview attire ready for the job fair but on the wrong day. Any normal person would have left after figuring it out. But not us. We were both hardheaded and we were both determined not to waste the day. Thus the Job fair game begin. You don't understand many people hate going to job fairs. But that is not the case with me. I love job fairs. I love the talking to people and trying to sell yourself. It didn't take a long time for it to get around the hotel that there were two highly qualified girls with no life sitting in the lobby handing out resumes. That is when the employers started to come and talk to us, taking our resumes, and even conducting interviews with us. Between me and my ability to talk to anyone and everyone (even a brick wall) and Christine's great intellect we were a great power team and we sold ourselves to each employer with success. By the end of the day everyone knew who we were, the people in charge of the job fair, the Alaska Mentor people, even the people who ran the hotel. We stayed until late afternoon and then decided to go and truly explore Anchorage. Later on that night we talked about the reality of teaching in Alaska. What we wanted, what we didn't even want to try. We decided that we were going to stick with the main cities. Bush towns were too scary and they were truly roughing it. We were scared to try something new and that was too hard  and it was something I definitely didn't want to do, right? Wrong.

Let me back up a little bit, 'Bush communities are defined as regions of the state not connected to the north american road network or ready access to the states ferry system. A majority of Alaska's native populations live i the bush and most parts of the bush can only be reached by small airplanes, snow machines, snowmobile, boat or dog sled.' (wikipedia)  Some of these bush communities don't even have running water, electricity, cars, or even toilets. They would use out houses or even honey buckets which are like bedpans. Me without a working toilet? Ha, don't make me laugh. The isolation was also a concern for me. I am young, I needed to party because I partied all the time.... oh wait no I don't. This all seemed scary and with little information available to us we wanted no part of it. We decided that we were going to take the safe option. The one where we would know how it would go, the one that was like home. The boring option.

 

The next day was the real day of the job fair (we were even early). We were anxious to see Martin, Holly, and all of our other friends that we had met the day before. We checked in and got our name tag (not that we really needed them) and stood in line. That day we pushed ourselves we went to districts that we didn't know much about an had an open mind. We talked to a lot of people, learned  about many different communities, their need for teachers and how not all of the bush communities are like we believed. Sure some of the bush communities are like what we read with no plumbing and such but most are not. The other Bush communities have been pouring money into teacher housing, convinces, training for their teachers, and also into resources for their schools.They have been updating and changing the curriculum by adapting new standards and making sure they are including the values of the people they serve. They were different, they were new, they were exciting, and they were the adventure that I was looking for. I instantly fell in love the comradely of all the Alaskan districts they had friendly competition but everyone is helpful and nice. The districts work together they all have their differences in what they teach but it was night and day between this job fair and the shark tank back in South Carolina.  I had gone from having to fight tooth and nail trying to find a job to having so many job offers that the different districts were bending over backwards to sell themselves to me (like they brought us drinks (cokes) and everything). I got to a point that I had a few job offers and who ever said that having more is better lied to you. It makes it so hard looking at pros and cons of each and weighing what I want to do. That is until The North Borough School District interviewed me and offered me a job. The second we started the interview process I was impressed. They were so focused on the student and protecting the culture of the different towns that they were in. They also worked well as a team. You really can tell a lot about a district from their interviews. They also seemed to enjoy their jobs and spoke highly of their schools and who they worked with and best of all I could see myself like them in the future. It was amazing how things fro, that point started to fall into place. I found a district that I loved, that would support me, that would challenge me, and would be an adventure in a borough without having to rough it.

I learned a lesson that day. Never say never. because the second you do you will prove yourself wrong. I now have signed a contract with the North Borough School District for 1 year. I will be in Atqasuk which is a bush community and I couldn't be happier or more excited.