Praying for good weather

School for the year 2011 is wrapped up. I'm hoping that the weather stays clear for all the teachers trying to go out to the holidays during the "teacher migration." During this break, I hope to upload some pictures from seal hunting in the ice (yes, that was a while ago...), some outdoor pictures, and Christmas Program preparation.

A week of Bush-type events!

Today (Friday) my students were in the gym having an inside recess due to a wolf sighting near our school. A couple days ago a few wolves were spotted by the airport which is about a mile away. Parents were encouraged to pick up their child from school so there weren't kids walking around the village.

Also, we've got a storm warning for late tonight until Saturday afternoon of high winds and some fresh snow. After our last "Arctic Storm 2011" I honestly love the wind and the fresh snow, so I hope it won't be too bad. It's 7:30, we just ended high school girls basketball practice, and I don't see evidence of much wind yet. (Sammy is head coach and I am acting as assistant coach right now even though that isn't a real position.)

Earlier this week we've had plenty of issues with power and water outages. One issue the village had over Thanksgiving weekend were frozen water pipes and the city's main water pump burst. We conserved water in tubs and filtered water in pitchers and milk jugs. Then a few days ago during my prep time right before school started (8:45 am), I was just about to turn on my coffee pot when the power went out. Judging by how incredibly black it was, I grabbed a flashlight and went down the hall to find the kids who were all waiting in the gym for the bell to ring. For some reason our alarms started going off. I realized they weren't the normal fire alarms, then both were ringing, then it was just the fire alarm, and finally the all turned off. No one seems to know what other alarm system was going off.

Looking down the hall; my classroom is on the right.

We started school with no power. The kids enjoyed doing our normal check-in with only a flashlight as a spotlight for the student sharing. With hurting eyeballs the lights surged back on. I happily turned on my coffee pot just to have it stop mid-brew and the power went off again. The whole villages power was off for quiet a while that day. It turned on and off for us since our generators were having issues.