Nearing the End

It i very exciting that we have only two weeks left of school, but that means that we will be very busy because there is a lot to do in the next two weeks. We've also been extremely busy over the past few weeks again because the end of the year is fast approaching.

Three weeks ago we started Friday clubs. Each teacher came up with a fun, hands on project based club and students signed up for the club of their choice. We meet for the last two hours every Friday until school is out. I am running "The Racers." We build things to race like CO2 cars and gliders. Molly has a movie making club and her kids are making music videos. It is a lot of fun to work with a different set of kids for this time. . .I have nine kids between 4th and 12th grades. It's also nice because the kids in each club are really excited to be there. Although, it makes for very long Fridays.

We held an Education Fair yesterday. My science classes displayed their science projects and gave demonstrations for the younger kids. Things like poking a skewer through a balloon without popping the balloon, a simple machine catapult, etc. Molly's art classes displayed their paintings and self portrait drawings. And all the other classes displayed some of their work as well. I had judges come in and judge various projects and we will be giving out awards next week. It turned out well and I think the kids got a lot out of it.

In the next two weeks we have only two regular school days. The other eight days have something going on where we get out early or do not have certain classes. CRAZY!! AHH!! At least the time should go by quickly!

The last thing I wanted to mention was our messed up weather. We are still below freezing most of the time and the river only has a little bit of overflow flowing. Last year, The river was flowing with a lot of ice chunks in the beginning of April. Hopefully we thaw out soon. All the kids are ancy to get out hunting ducks and geese. A few high school boys pushed their skiff across the ice to the overflow water, crossed the river, and hiked to an open creek where ducks and geese have been accumulating since they have no where else to go.

The very last thing! I bought a brown bear tag yesterday! Hopefully I can find a bear in the next couple weeks since it will be my last chance to ever shoot a brown bear. It's illegal to hunt without a guide if you are a non resident and guides cost upwards of $15000 for bears. Basically, I am never going to want to pay that much to come up and hunt bears. I don't plan on really hunting for bears, but at least if I see a bear this spring while fishing or camping I can shoot it legally.

Pictures

I just added a whole bunch of pictures to our snapfish page. I added a Christmas album and a Winter 2008 album. The Christmas album has. . .you guessed it. . .Christmas pictures!! And the Winter album has a whole bunch of different pictures of winter camping and trapping stuff. Check it out!

Back to Wisconsin

It is official, we have decided that this will be our last year of teaching in Koliganek, Alaska. There are a lot of reasons on both sides of the debate, but the primary reasons we want to move are to buy a house and start a family. Those two things are on hold while we're up here, but hopefully they will be in progress in the near future. School gets out on May 16th and we will be flying back to Wisconsin on the 23rd. Then, I plan to come back to Koliganek for a couple weeks with family to catch king salmon again in July!

Bad Weather

The weather and I have not been getting along this month. We had almost a foot of snow early, but then it all melted away in a short warm spell with rain. A week and a half later we started getting cold and got more snow. Little by little we made it up to another foot or so with snow falling and melting a little here and there. Then we had a week where it began staying below 32 all day and things where freezing up nicely. Ron and I went out and were setting traps for wolves and wolverines. We still needed more snow, but at least we were staying cold.

Then a few days ago, the temperature spiked up again and almost all of our snow has melted. The river, which was near freezing, is now flowing freely again and it's not looking to get cold until early next week. I can't even get out to check traps with my snow-go anymore. Everyone says that last year the river was already froze over by now and that this is a very unusual winter we are having.

I can't wait until we get some real cold weather so I can get out and do some trapping.

Congratulations to our Volleyball Girls!!

We hosted the district volleyball tournament here at Koliganek. It was fun, but it made for a very busy weekend with teams flying in and getting ready to play. Koliganek took first place in the district and is now in Unalaska for the Regional Volleyball Tournament. The top three teams form that tournament will go on to play at the state tournament next week. I have a good feeling that we will make it to state. The only problem is that the high school is very small while they are gone.

Seven of our 23 high schoolers left on Tuesday to go to the regional tournament and the won't be back until Sunday. If they make it to state, they will leave again some time next week (Wednesday maybe). Because the PFD checks have come out we are also missing several students who are taking trips to Anchorage or Dillingham. It's really hard to get much done in class when more than half of the students are gone. The nice part is that because Molly and I are the only high school teachers, we combined our first and second hour classes so we each have one class period off every day this week. Flexibility is great!

Crazy Week - Halloween/Sports/Snow

This week has been nuts! Monday was the only normal day we had. Tuesday we began planning the haunted basement, Wednesday we decorated and ran the haunted basement, Thursday it snowed and we finished watching a movie we had started on Wednesday, and on Friday the sports teams are leaving to go play. Because we have to fly to other schools, our teams sometimes leave as early as 10:45 am.

Right now we are in wrestling and volleyball season. There are 9 volleyball girls and 6 wrestlers. That means that every Friday when they are traveling we lose 15 of our 24 high school students. There are always a couple students gone, so we are usually left with maybe 7 students! It's not always that bad because most Fridays we try to schedule one team to come to our school and one of our teams goes to another school. However, lately it seems like both teams have been leaving to play in tournaments which last for a few days. I can hardly remember the last time I had afternoon classes!

It has snowed several times in the past few weeks, but has not amounted to much because it continues to melt. Yesterday it snowed all day and we have a solid 4 inches, maybe more. The kids, and myself, were so excited about the snow and when we heard snow-goes outside they all went nuts! A bunch of kids left at lunch and didn't come back because they wanted to go ride around. After school it seemed like everyone was out riding around, including myself. It's supposed to be warmer over the next few days, so we'll see if this snow stays or melts. Hopefully it stays and we can add more to it because it is not enough to go anywhere exciting.

Haunted Basement

On Tuesday, the day before Halloween, Molly, the high school, and I decided to have a haunted house in the school. We began planning that afternoon. The next morning we began rearranging and decorating the basement of our school. We decorated four classrooms and the entire hallway with spider webs, bats, spiders, streamers, and a lot of black paper. By the end it was a pitch black maze of terror! We announced on the radio for the community to come up it they'd like and had the two elementary classes come walk through. It was a blast! We did send a bunch of little kids out the entrance crying because it was too scary, but most enjoyed it. The best part was when it ended and all the students started cleaning up right away. They had all the classes back to normal in a matter of minutes! Not a lot of academics on Halloween, but a lot of good teamwork.

Trick-or-Treat
We saw almost all of our students out trick-or-treating and most came by twice. Molly and I were talking about how it is funny to think about us trick-or-treating when we were little because we would plan out how we could get to as many houses as possible in a night. Here, it doesn't matter because everyone can get to everyone else's house in 20 minutes! Molly dressed up as me and I dressed up as her to go trick-or-treating at our neighbors house, but I changed out of my costume right away after that. Her clothes were a little too tight. Hopefully, I'll get th pictures put on this weekend.

Congratulations Tim and Beth

Tim and Beth were married on October 13th and being that I am such a nice brother, I flew to Wisconsin for a week to be there for this. Of course it was a lot of fun to visit with friends and family and I was sad to come back to Koliganek. If I hadn't come back Anuska (my sub) would have killed me so I guess it is better that I'm back! That said, it is nice to be back into my regular flow of craziness. . .school, sports, water/power outages, weather. . .

I also got to see their new baby Della!!! And hold her!! And feed her!! And pretty much hog her to myself because I was only there for a week! She's very cute.

Vince

For those that did not know, Vince was hit by a four wheeler in September?? I was moose hunting for the weekend and Molly was with Vince when it happened. He had broken his leg so Molly flew to Dillingham with him and put him on a plane to Anchorage. In Anchorage a vet picked him up and did surgery to remove the bone fragments and insert a new ball joint to fit in his socket. Two days later he was on his way back home and we picked him up at the airport. For the next few days he didn't move much and would hide under blankets. After that he was back to normal except he didn't use his back leg much. Now he is using it almost like the accident never happened. It's not fair, my dog got to go to Anchorage and I didn't!!

Our once free dog has become one of our most expensive possessions!! It wasn't as bad as it seems because we have had to fly him to Dillingham anyway to be neutered and get some shots, but he had all this done in Anchorage.

Molly in Juneau

I had to fly home after Tech Camp, but Molly flew to Dillingham, to Anchorage, to ???, to ???, and to Juneau. She is in a program taking a set of math classes to get her math certification. She'll have to tell more, but she went to Juneau for these classes and it sounds like she had a great time learning and getting free stuff! She was supposed to come back yesterday, but was weathered in in Dillingham so hopefully she will be back today.

Only two planes came in yesterday and they were filled with our volleyball girls and wrestling boys coming back from tournaments. They told me that they were flying really low and could still only barely see the ground because of the fog. Scary!

Tech Camp

Last week Molly and I went to New Stuyahok with the entire high school for two nights for a technology camp. We flew there on Sunday and went to different technology sessions during the school days on Monday and Tuesday. We learned about podcasting, web design, book making, and photography. The sessions were great and we learned a lot. However, the evenings were not so much fun.

We slept in three classrooms in the school which was ok, but we had to pack everything up each morning before classes could begin. This wouldn't have been too bad, but it is very hard to get all the high schoolers to go to sleep by. . . ever! In the future I hope we have our own tech camp at our school because this was a bit of an overload for Molly and I.

2007-2008 School Year

School has been cruising along since mid-August now and we just finished the first quarter. It's a little different from last year because the middle schoolers stay together all day with one teacher and the high schoolers switch between Molly and I. It's funny to think about the fact that Molly and I are the only high school teachers. It's really nice on days when we want to rearrange the schedule because we don't have to worry about anyone but ourselves.

All in all there are 24 high school students that we share. I teach physical science, government, algebra 2, health, and keyboarding. Molly teaches English (1,2,3,+4), art, pre-algebra, algebra, and Russian. It's enough to keep us busy.

Caribou

The day before I shot my moose, we saw a heard of about 20 caribou crossing Cranberry Creek. As the ran up on to the shore I shot this small caribou from about 3 yards away. It was really neat to see the caribou so close, but it isn't exactly what I imagined when I though of shooting a caribou. The picture shows Ron's son Conner who was with us that day.

Moose Hunting

I was fortunate enough to get moose this fall!! He's not exactly a monster, but he sure tastes good! I got this moose in the last hour of the last day of the season. Ron was driving the skiff and I saw him up a small slough. We approached to about 75 yards before I was sure it was a bull. I lined him up in the scope, pulled th trigger, and heard a "CLICK." Crap!! I didn't have a shell in the chamber!! I frantically put a shell in and opened fire. He ran 15 yards back into the willows and I had him!!

Picture Update

I finally have all the pictures posted and they are organized into different albums. Because I was taking pictures from three different cameras, the pictures in each album are still jumbled. And because we had a bazillion pictures to post, most are not labeled. Don't worry though, you will get over it! I'll let ya'll know if/when I label all the pictures, but for now you can practice finding all the different fish we caught.

Just like a word find, here are the fish we caught and have pictures of.
Rainbow trout
Dog/chum salmon
King/chinook salmon
Red/sockeye salmon
Sculpin
Dolly varden/arctic char
Grayling
Cooked salmon
Northern pike
Whitefish
Pop can (there are two varieties of pop can)

Happy picture hunting!

Pictures

Our Photo link should now be working again and I am uploading pictures from the fishing trip as I write this. Hopefully, I will have time to label and arrange them tomorrow as they are currently a bit jumbled.

Pictures

Our old picture archive is being removed and we have to start a new one so we will let everyone know when we finally figure this out and can show all the fishing pictures.

Where to Begin?

It has been more than two months since I last posted and a lot has happened! Molly and I were in Florida for a week in May, then Wisconsin for three and a half weeks of June, and in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for a week in the middle of it all. Basically, our trip was a lot of fun and it was great to see our family and friends after being out of the loop for a while. On July 1st we were on our way back to AK and spent a excellent night in Anchorage. . .I will let Molly tell all about it because I think she already started.

Now to the important stuff. . .FISHING!! I had only a few days to find some fish to catch before my dad, brother, and grandpa came to visit/fish. Ron and I spent many hours fishing for king salmon, but never really found a good way to catch them. There were not many fish in the river yet because they began coming up river very late this year. It also turns out that the total number of kings was at about 20% of what it was supposed to be. Despite this, I new we would be able to catch some fish.

The day they were supposed to arrive our power was out, we didn't have our VHF, and we were expecting Dad, Tim, and Grandpa to arrive around 3pm. That reminds me, the reason we did not have our VHF. . .The day Molly and I came back we caught a ride from the airport to our house and upon arrival we were told, "I hope you guys have some where else to stay." WHAT!! Our house was torn up because we were getting a bunch of work done like new carpet, paint, and new windows. Somebody was supposed to let the workers know that we were going to be back on July 2nd, but they thought we were going to be gone all summer! Crap! Our principal had told us that if we needed to, we could use her house when our guest came so we moved into her house for the time being and scrounged for stuff as we needed it from our house.

Anyway, I was out fishing and Molly was going to call the airline we thought they were flying on, but without notice my family showed up at the door. They got a ride from one of our students! Needless to say, I was very surprised when I got back from fishing! The good part about all this is that our principal has a larger dining room table and three single beds in her place so everyone was a bit more comfortable. . .Except Molly and I because your own place is always better, but it worked.

To keep from an overly long post, I am going to stop and start a new one.

Update

I didn't realize how long it has been since I last made a posting! Let's catch up.

We signed papers for our half of a skiff (we are sharing it with Ron) and have been out cruising around several times since. The first time I took it out I saw somewhere between 30 and 40 moose along the river! I guess they all congregate near the river to eat the willow buds early in the spring. At that time there was still a lot of ice flowing down the river making driving a bit tricky, but that has all disappeared now. The moose are also disappearing now. Two days ago I saw only three moose even though Ron and I drove around 30 miles up into the Nuyakuk River.

A few weeks ago we ordered an Ally Pak canoe. It's made out of aluminum rods with a canvas-like shell and can be taken apart to fit in a large duffel bag. . .This way we could actually have it shipped here cheaply and now will be able to take it to the lower 48 if we decide to. We've been out in it a few times, paddling up river until we are tired and then floating our way back down through various sloughs. This river is swift! Molly and I are surprisingly strong paddlers, but even when paddling our hardest we do not move forward when in the middle of the river. The only way we go up is to stick right next to the shoreline, picking our way along and crossing only when we have to do so. It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. We are hoping to catch rides up the river in a skiff and then paddle down camping along the way if we are far enough up river.

I went duck hunting with some of my high school students. Although this seems like it would be very awkward because they are my students and will still be next year, I had a blast. I think that in a community this size everyone is so used to knowing everything about everyone already, not to mention that everyone is related to everyone else, this sort of thing works out a bit better than it would in a larger setting where rumors tend to start.

Our puppy, Vincent, learned to walk just a few days ago! Before this, I would say he was kind of crawling, but then he learned that he could get in and out of his box. Both puppies began going in and out, in and out, just because they could. Now he is able scamper about and it is very cute. The two puppies are also starting to play with and chew on everything. We visit them every day, play with them for about 10 minutes and then they go to sleep. We will be taking more and more pictures of them so expect more puppy updates soon.

I caught my first Alaskan fish! Ron and I went out fishing and I caught 3 grayling, each about 12 inches, an a fat rainbow trout. We only had to travel almost 2 hours up river to get the trout! Apparently, the trout are up rivers and streams spawning. . . I think they should be done now because I thought trout spawned under the ice just before it melted, but it could be different. I am told that in June the trout will migrate back down the river and we will start catching them next to the village.

To be continued. . .

Pictures

Although we have not been writing much, there has been a lot happening as usual. Here is the super fast update starting with today and backtracking. As of today the snow is almost gone except for some old snow drifts. . .Yippee!! The temperature has been hanging around 40 degrees and I don't think it is getting below 32 at night anymore. The ice on the river is trying to go out and I try to help it as much as I can by watching it closely. . .This is kind of like watching water about to boil, but more fun. There is something fun about watching large chunks of ice float and crash into each other! The river has broken up in front of our house, but up and down still have ice. Somebody was out in their skiff yesterday! By the way, a boat is a vessel typically larger than 20 feet and probably can go in the ocean. Everything smaller is a skiff. That is the definition I have come up with for Koliganek anyway.

Yesterday, Molly and I decided to get a puppy! We had tried to get one earlier this month, but the girls who owned them decided we couldn't have one after we had it at our house for about half an hour. . .Its brother was lonely. Anyway, we noticed that my favorite dog in the village, Luda, was pregnant about a week ago. She is my favorite because she loves to play fetch to no end. For example, Molly and I were walking and she came to see us, not having a stick she tried to take one that was still attached to the ground. Unable to detach this stick, she settled for a rock which she brought to me so I could throw it for her. I did. Molly thought it best to pick a stick for her so she went about breaking a stick off of a nearby bush. Seeing this, Luda got extremely excited and could barely contain herself while Molly fought with the bush for a very long time (maybe 2 minutes?). This is the dog that would put a particular chunk of ice into my hand so I would throw it for her earlier this year. I can only hope that her puppies will do this with ducks and geese!

Back to the puppy, I talked to my students to find out Luda's owner and told them to let me know if they heard that she had her pups. One of our students told us on Saturday that she had her puppies and where we could find them. They were three days old when we saw them and we arranged with their owner to let us take one when we get back from Wisconsin. Now we just have to pick which one we want. They are all black except one brown, which is already claimed. They are labs in case I did not mention this. We basically just need to decide if we want a male or female. Any thoughts? This dog will be part of my bear protection plan while I am hunting and fishing and will serve as a reason to go for walks every day.

As of sometime, I have a boat! Ron and I are buying a boat together from a friend in town. All we need to do is pay for it! Look out fish, here I come!

Molly had a birthday! I am uploading pictures as we speak that include the kids that came to visit her. They all sang Happy Birthday to her outside our window!!

We hiked to Ketok. There are pictures of this adventure as well.

I think that is basically all. I will put pictures of the puppy and boat on as soon as we take them.