Quite a week!

It was quite a week! We had two days of PEAK training at inservices followed by a day of smartboard. Finally on Thursday we had a workday to work on decorations in our rooms and prepare for the first day of classes on Friday. They were good days and the inservices were very helpful but it will make the teaching this year very challenging. It's hard for me to know that I could do better if I just had more time. But I'll just do the best I can. After all, that's all I can do.

Classes began on Friday the 14th. Whew! I was exhausted by the end thinking to myself, "Wow and I am going to be doing this everyday for how long?" My throat hurt too a little bit from speaking a lot of Cup'ik. Actually I was speaking something in between Yup'ik and the divergent dialect spoken here called Cup'ik. But who's counting? I had my students come in and on an index card write some info about themselves, and on the back either draw a picture or tell a story about something they did this last summer. Then I introduced myself in Cup'ik first then in English as most could only understand a little. Before finishing the day with lateral thinking puzzles, I shared with them my commitments to them as their teacher.

I'm working hard at writing lessons and mapping my year long curriculum. Therefore, I will know where I am going. I've found it very difficult since I don't really have any structure, i.e., I can do pretty much whatever I want. With 5 preps-I teach 1 geometry class, 1 Cup'ik language class, 2 Algebra I classes, 1 Precalc/trig class, and 1 HSGQE (High School Graduation Qualifying Exam) prep class-I imagine that I'll be more than busy this winter, especially considering I'm really learning Cup'ik, too.

The X-country team did some good hard runs last week. We started off with a 7-mile run basically going all over town: school to dump to airport back to dump passed the school to the old airport and back to the school. It was a be-A-U-tiful day. On Tuesday, after a 1.5 mile warm up, we ran 1/2 milers as fast as we could along the old airport. A couple of times the thoughts of giving up and/or puking came to mind, but I hung in there with the guys and even got stronger by number 5 almost being able to keep up with the speedster of the team, Harald. Wednesday, we ran the figure 8 X-country 5k course twice. I didn't run with the team unfortunately but had fun anyways and the breeze was stiff and cool. I figured I'd run barefoot the last two miles so I took off my shoes and socks and ran up the hill past a family out for a walk. They must have been thinking, "What a crazy dude!" Finally on Thursday we went out to the pit to run fartleks: 1 minute all out followed by 1 minute easy, 2 minutes all out followed by 2 minutes easy, 3 minutes all out followed by 2 minutes easy and so on and so forth to 5 minutes and back down the ladder to 1 minute again. Whew, what a run!

This weekend Chevak had a dance group from Nome over for Tundra Fest. So from 8:30-11:30 PM there was dancing, yuraq, at the tribal hall. The King Island dancers from Nome were great and very fun to watch. They often put on masks and made animal noises as they danced. It was a kick for everyone. The Chevak dancers were also very good and people from Niugtaq came over to join in the celebration and dance as well.

I still haven't left town since arriving, which is rather unfortunate. However, I haven't really had the time to anyways. I am thinking that eventually-maybe next spring-I'll make a wooden qayaq then I could really get around out here and that'd be a blast. Next week we will be leaving the whole high school for a week out on the Bering Sea at a site called Nunaurluq "poor land". I really look forward to getting out there and getting to know the students more and the land of course. And it will be nice not to have to be "on" and write out all my lessons for one more week.

Piurci
(I'll be using this Yup'ik/Cup'ik word for good bye. It comes from the stem pi- which doesn't have any meaning; it's empty. The closest thing would be "do". Then -ur(ar)- means to keep on V-ing. Last, the suffix -ci means "you plural 3 or more". So piurci means "keep on keeping on, keep doing what your doing, or carry on, etc.")