I'm not an addict, it's cool. I can stop anytime.

There's a problem with some satellite somewhere, so right now, our internet is pretty sketchy. Hopefully this will post today.

It is on days like this that I realize just how much the internet has played into my life. I realized that tomorrow is a work day for teachers at the school, and if I can't get online to use our electronic gradebook, I'll just work on y forums for my online class. . . Oh, wait. No, that won't work. Oh well, at least there's Facebook to . . . Oh, right. Not that either. Skype? Blog posts? Comics? Lesson planning? Nope, no, nada, hunt-uh.

Turns out that I use the internet a lot more than I thought I did. And when I realized that I might not be able to upload my paper, I realized I could have my buddy in the class tell the teacher. Until I realized that I'm only friends with this woman through the class, and on Facebook, and we've never met in real life, and I have no idea how to get ahold of her otherwise. I guess I could look up her phone number, but since she doesn't live in western Alaska, I'd have to use the internet to look her up anyway.

There's some irony for you.

Signs of the Times

When I was young, a woman from the church complemented my sisters' eyes. She said they were gorgeous blue eyes. Then she looked at me, and said, "Not you, Colleen, you have poopy brown eyes." And it hurt. I don't know why. She was a silly woman who wasn't thinking. When I got home, my mother reminded me that I had her eyes, and while I knew that was true, it didn't make me feel any better at the time.

Now I am older, and as I smiled at myself in the mirror tonight, my eyes crinkled in the exact same way my mom's always have. Mom, I wouldn't trade my eyes for all the blue eyes in the world. Thank you for giving them to me, I cherish them.

That's my mom with her first grand-daughter, Kendall. And the crinkles around her eyes make me feel loved, and connected. I didn't like them when they first started to show up, but I've grown up a bit since then, and I even sort of like them now.

The simple things in life

Hello devoted fans. We just finished our first week back from Christmas break. We started school on Wednesday, but had Saturday school, so we still got in 4 days. Not me, I took a sick day because I was sick. We're passing a cold around, and it's taken me this long to realize that the school will function without me for a day, and I can be off if I'm sick. I mostly rested, and called my mom. That's what one does when they're sick, right?

Also, I took a shower. Now, this may not seem like such a big accomplishment, but it really is. Especially now. As some of you may know, our water is stored in a giant tank at the other end of the village. Twice a year, a hose is run to the school/city, and our tanks there are filled up. When we need water at the house, we run a hose to our own tank, in a little side-room off the arctic entry:

This is one of the biggest tanks I've seen. It's 500 gallons, and will last us quite a while. You may remember the day someone else overflowed the tank, and I had to stand there with my hand over that hole in the side, to keep the water from all spilling out, while little kids ran around with buckets and pitchers to collect the overflow.

Normally, this water pump keeps the pressure in our house up. It just hangs out there behind the tank, kicking on whenever we need more water. But now it's broken. It had been dying since October, when they ordered us a new one, but it has finally given up the ghost, and we can't even use it a little. 

Also, that is a window on the left, which used to go from the bathroom to the outside world, but now goes from the bathroom to the storage shed, and actually has been blocked by the walls of a shower. This house was built in bits and pieces. I have a similar window in my bedroom, which looks out into a storage space. 

Since the pump died, we were trying to figure out how to scoop or syphon water out of the tank, so we could function. Denis Davis, a man in the village, was over getting some eggs, and he noticed that there was a spigot on the bottom of the tank. We were able to attach a short hose (10 feet) to the spigot, and can now pull water out whenever we need it. However, it is cold out in those sheds, and I don't want to have to put on shoes every time I need water. We were going to fill up our big pot, some of the larger bowls, and all the water pitchers in the house, when Denis pointed out that we had two coolers, and they hold water very well. So we filled those up instead.

The water coming out of this hose is pretty clean right now. The big tank has been sitting, undisturbed, for about a week, and all the particulates have fallen to the very bottom. From here, we can scoop out of these coolers and get water for our day to day needs.

The distiller heats water up in its internal tank, and the steam collects on the top, condenses, and drips clean water into containers, so we can pour it into our 5 gallon tank, and have clean water for drinking, and cooking with.

Here it is, being heated on the stove in our biggest pot. I'm so glad we have this giant pot. It's enough water for one quick wash-down, or a sinkload of dishes. 

And then I get to take a shower. Or, more appropriately, a sponge bath. Also, if anyone remembers what it was like to wash our hair on pioneer trek, they'll understand what I'm going through. Also, I don't know where those yellow lines came from, there wasn't anything wrong with the iPad I was using to take pictures, or the tub itself. Huh, weird.

Light, Part 2

Here we are, sitting in the classroom at the tail end of lunch, and the sun has made an appearance. This photo was taken at 1:05 p.m. As you can't tell, because I used PhotoBooth, which is for taking pictures of your own face, the sun is actually visible above the horizon:

Why have my last two blog posts been about light levels? Because it's dark most of the time. The sun sets, and two hours later I'm ready for bed. Except that it gets dark up here around 4, which means I'm ready for sleep at 6 p.m., and that's really not good for my social life, or sleep patterns.

Oh, darkness induced hibernation. It's a fun game.

Light

We have reached that point in the year where the light is pretty much gone. Don't get me wrong, there is still some, in fact, outside it looks like this:

But this is about as light as it gets. We've had dense cloud cover for most of the week, and while the sun comes up and goes down, I don't see it, buried under all these clouds. At least it's stopped snowing.

According to the internet, the sun rose today at 12:23 in the AFTERNOON!!, and will set at 3:30, also this afternoon. That gives us a total of 3 hours, 7 minutes of sunlight. Except, of course, we haven't seen the sun in a week.

Trudging to and from school has become just that: trudging. There is a lot of new, fluffy snow that must be navigated. My boots are more than adequate, but I continue to wear skirts to school, and sometimes the snow gets higher than the tops of my boots. Or else my skirt is too long, and drags in the snow, and then I have a wet skirt slapping against my ankles when I get to school and put on my sandals. 

Soon, Christmas will be here, and I won't have to leave my house for days on end. Don't mock, it's a beautiful thing.

Update on Life

I'm working on my online class right now, and am doing this as a break between writing my personal opinions on the forums. So, to relax from that, I'm going to... ummm... post my personal opinions on this web log.

Oh, I see the irony there.

My class is asking me to give my opinion on war, gays, Market-Capitalism, and philosophy. I find that as I get writing on these topics, that I am a lot better at telling stories about my ideas than actually telling my opinion. And for those of you that know me, you'll understand that I don't often have a problem sharing my opinions.

So here, in my blog, I will share some straight up opinions about my life:

-I don't care that I'm not the favorite teacher. I just care about that moment when the light goes on in a kid's eyes, and I realize that they suddenly understand what I'm talking about. It's glorious.

-I don't understand how a flight to Nome can cost $340 round trip, but a trip to Brevig can cost as little as $200, even though they're ridiculously close together.

-The older I get, the less my eyes, ears, and joints work. I've got three fingers now that make clicks or stall when I try to bend them. I don't know who said 40 was the new 30, because 30 is starting to feel significantly older than 20 did.

-I finished my Christmas shopping, but am concerned that I spent a lot more on some of my siblings than others. I find myself worrying that I should buy more presents for these people, so they don't feel left out, even though they don't really know what their presents cost.

-Sleeping in a room that is too cold is easier than a room that is too hot. One can always pile on more blankets. One cannot always take more off.

-Some authors seem to write more to show off how smart they are than to share information. (Stephanie Meyer is not one of these authors.)

-While movies labeled "Adult" are inappropriate for everyone, movies labeled "Children" are good for everyone.

Okay, I'll go back to my class now.

Not another apology

I feel like I've started every post lately with an apology about not posting often enough. So here it is: sorry.

I've been reading the blogs of some of the new teachers in the district: Stacey from Wales, and Mike and Lisa here in Shishmaref. Their posts are adorable, and funny. The thing is, I've already posted on the topics they're posting on.

I've talked about visitors to my house,
Walking with kids
Halloween traditions
Cheerleaders
Snow
Snow
Snow
Melting Snow
Blowing Snow
The joy of produce,
and countless other things.

We had a woman come up here in the fall of '04, and long-term sub for five months. She still occasionally e-mails, looking for information on some of the kids. And I've been known to say this: I know that we were the most exciting thing to ever happen to her, but for us, she was a blip on the radar, and has been gone so long we sometimes forget about her entirely.

I've also heard that when ones goes on a foreign mission, they should take pictures of all the weird and wonderful things when they first get there, because after six months, none of it will seem that odd. I've become this way about Shishmaref. I was talking to someone this morning about whether the coffin got here on the plane today, so we can have a funeral this afternoon. I'm sure that for most of you, the idea of holding a funeral because the coffin hasn't made it from Anchorage yet is shocking and unique. But for me it's become old hat.

Well, it's time for me to go get my sex-ed unit lined up for health class. The kids are pretending they're not excited about it. Uh huh. Sure.