Cold Hands, Warm Heart

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Nome, Alaska, United States
After getting burned out teaching high school in a tiny Alaskan town, I have moved on to being a child advocate in a small Alaskan town. The struggles are similar, but now I can buy milk at the store.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Time just keeps flying

The school attendance doc tells me that today is Friday. Who knows where the time goes.

There is no point to this posting except to say that I can't believe that today is the last day of the month already, and I'm confused about where the time went. Also that it's time to wash my sheets again.

We got snow last night. There's still some on my porch, which has been in the shade all day. Maybe I should stop wearing knee-length skirts outside. . .

Monday, September 26, 2011

First School Day of Fall

I'm not sure if this has been going on for a could days now or not. I just know that today was the first day since Thursday that I've walked to school in the early morning. (We've been in Stebbins for training.)

On the walk over this morning, I noticed that we had frost on the ground. FROST. This is, as usual, the beginning of the end. Wish me luck folks, it's all downhill from here.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

New School Year

Once I got back to Alaska, I helped out at the Bering Strait School District Welcome Wagon. (Find a longer title with more capital letters, I dare you.) While there, I helped the new staff shop, get drivers licenses, and set up accounts at some stores. Also, there is sight-seeing. On my last night, one of my graduated students, Katherine, came out to dinner with us. Full disclosure: I drug the WW teachers along with me to have dinner with Katherine. Afterwards, we went to (something similar to but not) Wildberry Chocolates. This is the home of the largest chocolate waterfall in the world, so we had to get pictures in front of it:


After Welcome Wagon, I had several days in Anchorage to play with the Guy family. (Yes, their name is awesome, they know.)

Then several days in Nome, and home to Shish, sweet Shish. Since Amy moved in, we've done an annual Polar Bear Dip. Most places do this in January. That would require us to drill a hole in the ice, so we do it on a sunny day in August. The water isn't freezing, but it's pretty dang close. This year we had several new teachers, along with some friends of the pastor to help us out.

Once we were all settled into our houses, our staff, along with Gabell and Stebbens were whisked off to Savoonga for additional training. We're on a grant for school improvement this year, and there are requirements involved. While there, we were given shirts, hats, clappers, silly putty, whoopee cushions, and an assortment of other things to keep us happy while we learned the new programs. At "graduation," we were asked to dress in our matching hats and shirts. Here is a picture of Erick (who wrote Nacho on his name tag the first day, so now we call him that) and Amy with me at SVA.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Back in Business

As it turns out, I am unable to be logged into my personal Google account, where I can write on this blog, at the same time I am logged in to my school Google account, which we use to do our attendance (through Goggle docs, it's awesome. But maybe they're getting a little too much control of my life? Nah).

The first week of school is now officially over. So here's the update from Summer:


Several areas of The Church have realized that there are a lot of single people between the ages of 30 and 40, who may not yet be comfortable jumping into the "Single Adult" scene, so they've started a "Mid-Singles Group." And this summer, one of these groups went on a cruise around Seattle. There were also dances, dinners, classes, and games. It was a good time. Mostly, I enjoyed hanging out with my sister, Crystal, and my good buds, Megan, Heather, and Amy. I also got to know Yvonne better, which was great.  Also: boys.


 The most awesome thing that happened was driving with Crystal down to Utah, so I could meet Kendall for the first time. I know everyone thinks the babies in their own family are the best, but really, the Deighton genes produce some pretty good looking babies. This one is also smart, nice, and strong. All wonderful traits for a baby. She walks, babbles, and dances to Elmo's Song. We had a lovely time.

Also, I started my next class towards my Masters in Humanities. It's the Evolution of Life and Intelligence. There's a lot of Darwin talk, which has been interesting, but unconvincing.  Enough said.

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted a real one. In a couple days, I'll get the pictures from training and the first week of school up.