Inupiaq Days

Inupiaq Days is officially over. The basketball tourny will go on tonight, and all day tomorrow, but as far as my part: I'm finished. Well, sort of. I'm tabulating the exit surveys the kids filled out this afternoon. More on that will follow.
One of the classes we had this week was butchering, and that was followed by cooking. Tonight, as part of tradition, we had the Elders Feast. It's held in the home ec room during the ballgames, and elders wander in whenever and eat. Then community members, and kids, and teachers, and whoever else is wandering around. There are FOUR giant pots of soup left. We could probably just drag those into the gym and start ladling.

I had dinner too:

Top left: Noodle salad. It's good. It's also the same thing you had at the last church potluck. The pan it came in looks surprisingly like one of the school bowls. When asked, the bearer of the salad changed the subject.
Top right: She-fish. (her-fish?) I don't know what this is called anywhere else, but it's light and flaky. Yum!
Bottom left: The school cooks made rolls today for dinner. Thanks cooks!
Bottom middle: Cake. You know, cake.
Bottom right: That's not the best picture, but that's caribou steak. One of our seniors cut it up and fried it up in the school kitchen. Then he loaded his serving platter up and walked away. I got to use my muscles to open the heavy duty cleaner so the cooks could scrub the grill. Sorry cooks.
Caribou tastes like caribou. It drives me slightly nuts when people say stuff tastes "like chicken." If everything tasted like chicken, we'd just eat chicken. (I'm not knocking chicken. I love those tasty little guys.) I'm just saying that caribou doesn't taste like cow. A bit like moose, yes, but cow? Not really.

I am just so appreciative of everyone who helped at Inupiaq Days. It was an amazing success.

And now for some specifics:

Dolly - When asked to teach Crocheting, she readily agreed. She brought her own hooks and when no one told her the box in her room was for her (full of yarn) she pulled out her own supplies. She required no supervision, and asked for nothing. She is my hero.

Bob- Speaking of heroes. Bob said that while he had no Eskimo skills, he'd do what needed to be done. We decided to have him haul trash for elders, but then it warmed up, and the roads got slushy and we couldn't drive the truck, so he had his eight classes clean out the trophy cases. Dusting, organizing, hanging plaques, and measuring all random pictures and certificates so we can buy frames for them. Bob also required exactly ZERO directions, help, or assistance. And the trophy case looks AMAZING.

Bessie- Bessie wasn't even planning on being here this week. She was supposed to be running her dogs in the city races. However, because of the same mushiness, the sleds can't go out on the lagoon. Bessie picked up wherever we needed her, taking over classes for a person who couldn't make it. Today, she took over the preparations for the elders feast, organized the helpers, and got everything ready. She is an amazing woman, and I couldn't have done this without her.

Bea - Bea had the same job on the elementary side I did over here. Officially, scheduling. In reality, scheduling, organizing, preparation, planning, procuring supplies, organizing supplies, and putting out fires when people didn't show up to teach their classes like they promised.

Floyde- For patiently listening to me when I cried in his office about how my job was too hard, and everyone was picking on me. And then telling me that he appreciates everything I do, which just made me cry again.

My parents- (okay, this is starting to sound like an awards speech) Why mom and dad, you may ask? Because they taught me to do what needs to be done. To step up and take on a project for the good of the community. To be organized, hard working, persevering, and capable of finishing a job. To schedule 45 middle and high schoolers in such a way that no one has to sit for too long, isn't with people they hate, and doesn't have to sew unless they want to. Watching my mom organize girls camp was a great lesson for this sort of work.

Okay, this has gotten wordy, and text-dense. Here, this seal was in the boys locker room defrosting before being butchered:

And here it is, being kupshuqed (Yeah, spelling. Whatever.)

One more semi-random thought for the day: There are several words in Inupiaq that have worked their way into our current speech patterns. To remove the blubber from the pelt is kupshuq.  To piggy-back a baby inside your coat is amuq.  This is not the weird part. The weird part is that most people I hear use current, English language suffixes on them. I have kupshuqed. I am kupshuqing. I will kupshuq tomorrow. No one really notices. It's pretty funny, if you think about it. Or maybe that's just my nerd humor.