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.