Settling in to the bush

I am approaching a month in Alaska, and life is starting to fall into a routine again. New teacher orientation and district trainings are over (for the moment) along with the flights to and from Bethel. School has begun, my boxes I shipped have arrived, and my food I ordered is now here. Life in Alaska has begun.

Up until the last moment my teaching schedule was in flux. But on that first day of school it looked like this:
Period 1 - HS Math
Period 2 - HS US History
Period 3 - HS Math
Period 4 - HS Writing
Period 5 - JH World History
Period 6 - JH Math
Period 7 - JH Art
My classes have between 9 students in the junior high and 15 in some of the high school classes. Almost all are from Tununak with a few from nearby villages (Newtok, Toksook Bay, etc.). Getting acquainted with the curriculum, materials, and routine has consumed nearly every minute of my previous two weeks. Each day my grasp on all of that has become a bit tighter. I hear by the tenth year it is quite a bit easier.

In postal news, all of my boxes (I mailed six) arrived. Cookware, clothes, books, bedding, alarm clock, and all my other things arrived over the course of two weeks. Of course none of them made the eleven day estimate (calendar or work days) that the post office made, at least they made it.


My food also arrived, again over the course of two weeks. I am becoming increasingly interested in being able to see the journey my packages make. For one, why would boxes shipped at the same time arrive days and, at times, weeks apart, looking anywhere from absolutely perfect to absolutely appalling. But it is all here, and I guess that is something. And I acquired some bonus products. One company (Span Alaska) accidentally shipped me a box with nine bottles of vegetable oil and a 25lb bag of white sugar - yippee I guess. Azure, the other company I ordered from, added a 5lb bag of muffin mix - a bit more exciting, especially with the prospect of picking some of the wild blueberries that are growing in the tundra.

Food items that invoked unexpected emotions are thus:
12 - 12oz bags of Ghiradelli chocolate chips (Extreme joy)
25lb bags of kidney beans, black beans, and dried corn (Um...that is a lot of small things)
4lbs of yeast to share with my neighbors (Hmmm, look at all those creatures)
the unexpected veggie oil under the 25lbs of sugar (Wait, there is no way I ordered this!? Or did I? Nope, definitely not.)

Other than school and unpacking boxes I spend quite a bit of time hanging out, eating, talking, and everything else with the other teachers. Walks up the hill to the stone people, or over the tundra to the cross, or along the beach in search of fossils also dot the weeks. I have been making a conscious effort not to think that it is cold or windy. Because from what I hear, this is not cold, and this is not wind. That will come. Until then, I am going to go fishing, and berry picking, and hiking, and save my comments on the weather for the times that actually deserve the observation
.

I understand the physics of flight, but...

but in a plane the size of a mini van barreling down the runway, prop spinning, engine roaring, pilot pushing buttons as various bells and dings go off makes one question Bernoulli's principle informing me that a couple thousand pound vehicle can leave the ground in a controlled manner. And then on top of that you know that your flight is at its weight capacity because you have been forced to leave behind all but two of your bags to be sent out on a flight the following day.

Sure enough though, regardless of my skepticism, the small plane's nose begins to lift and then the wheels, which I have been watching with with nervous anxiety leave the ground and away we go, the rapid acceleration as the plane climbs pushing me back in my seat. As I begin to relax a patch of turbulence throws me back into thoughts of plummeting back to Earth.

It really is an amazing way to travel though, all things considered. On one hand it is the only way to travel to Tununak - there are no roads leading here, but it offers a glimpse of the landscape, untouched by humans in any way except for the occasional village or fish camp scattered about the tundra. This is such an awesome sight for me that all three flights I have now taken keep my eyes glued to the landscape beneath me.

Tununak lies within the Yukon-Kuskokwim Wildlife Refuge, a 19 million acre refuge home to a wide range of wildlife - migratory birds, ducks, muskox, caribou, bear, moose, many types of fish in the rivers and streams, along with the marine life that thrives on the coast such as several type of seal, walrus, whale, otter, beaver, and halibut to name a few. Approximately 25,000 people share this land as well, primarily located in small villages like mine. Of that number the majority are Yup'ik Eskimos.

Week One

I flew in to Bethel on Monday the 3rd of August. Bethel is a small town of about 6300 340 miles west of Anchorage on the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta. The town is situated along the Kuskokwim River, the lesser known of the two rivers the delta is named after.

New teacher inservices started the day after I arrived. I am one of 53 new teachers to the district - out of 350 teachers total. We are told that this turnover rate is good for rural Alaska districts. Most of the new teachers are from the northern of the lower 48 states, a few from Arizona or California. Those from Minnesota are not hard to come by. Apparently we think that our winters are no different than the ones here. I am starting to question that assumption.

After three days of inservices I flew out to Tununak with the two other new teachers at my school and our principal. We flew out on a Cessna 207, a single prop plane that seats six. This truly is a fantastic way to travel - 500 feet above the green tundra potholed with meltwater lakes and ribbons of blue water going here and there. At one point a small group of musk ox inspired our pilot, knowing that this was our first flight, to circle back, getting low to the ground to get us a better look. This act of kindness acted on my stomach more than anything. In about an hour we landed on a gravel strip in Tununak. We walked along the beach to our housing arrangements that are a converted BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) school. Our housing sits less than one hundred yards from the water and at the bottom of a hill that has our school, Paul T. Albert Memorial School, at the top. Not a bad spot at all.



That night, without any of my boxes having arrived yet, I went out cast netting with one of the teachers who grew up in a village nearby called Newtok. I watched him throw the net bringing up one, two, and even three whitefish at a time. In about ten throws I netted one. Apparently fishing is more than luck.