Cool Runnings

Although it's been a rather cool, wet summer here in Chevak, recently the clouds have parted leaving a light blue sky and the sun. When the sun is shining, it's bright and I need my shades to keep from squinting. The terrain is a beautiful brown and green, full of tundra, or nunapik "lit. real land". The land rolls over hills and down to ponds, lakes, and rivers. I thoroughly enjoy looking down little hills down on translucent meandering rivers glistening in the sun. It really gives the land a holographic look. And no trees! There are no trees to block your view or the wind to anything, quite the opposite of the Panhandle.

As a side note, what is your idea of tundra? You probably think of a large portion of land that goes on and on. You might consider it as continuous and you could continue travelling over the land by foot pretty much as far as you may want. The Yup'ik/Cup'ik word for tundra nunapik, however, refers to an isolated island-often rather small, e.g., football field size-surrounded by water. Often you need boots to walk in as well. Basically, nobody gets far in this terrain without a boat.

After an excruciating day of paperwork on Friday for my first inservice, I joined the Xcountry team for a 5k time trial. As I hadn't been running much this summer, 4 runners demolished me. I finished in 22:45. I think that I'll be able to give them a run for their money by the end of the season. I might get to join the team as an assistant and travel to Anchorage, Seward and the like for their races. Maybe. I also enjoyed an eight miler yesterday running over the same course a few times, the cool breeze blowing over the tundra.

I've met most of my colleagues. A few have invited my roomie, Ken, and me over for supper or dinner. There's only 3 new teachers so it should be a good year. The past 3 years have seen huge turnovers of 12-13 teachers each year. So, it's a good sign. I'm working on envisioning how my classroom should look like, my classroom procedures, rules, and just the general structure of my classes' lessons. As far as I know, I'll be teaching 2 Algebra I, 1 geometry, 1 Cup'ik language, 1 Precalc/Trig, and 1 remedial/HSGQE (high school graduation qualifying exam) classes. As my grandpa says, "I'll be working to beat the band this year." Most of my texts aren't very helpful for the structure, so I need to do something about that...SOON.

I went to a Catholic church this morning. The Jesuit missionaries brought the Roman Catholic church into this area and along the Yukon. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the Scriptures in both English and Cup'ik and greeting the other people. We prayed and sang in both languages, too. However, out of a village of about 1000, we had a dismal turnout of about 25 or so. That's not to say the people are at all dismal, they aren't. In fact, as Tony the Tiger says, "They're great!" And it was really nice meeting some elders and people of all ages at the church. They have an evening one as well but I didn't go.

Piurci