Storms, Speech's, puppies and black friday

It has been a while since I blogged, so I thought I should get down to business.  The last couple weeks have been crazy busy and, on top of that, we have had storms upon storms upon storms. The first storm we had was just a crazy wind storm.  I heard from someone that the winds at one point were 89mph.  The second storm (mind you these were blizzard warnings), occured the day the wrestling team was suppose to have a home meet.  Unfortunately we suffer from the Quinhagak curse.  Every time a sports team wants to host something, there is a storm or a death or something that gets in the way.  That night (the second storm), Connie (the sped teacher that works with Felicia) called and told us that we might want to get up to the school as the old part of the village was flooding.  We got Sheri's attention as she was trying to figure out what to do, and apparently none of the guys were concerned.  Apparently because of the way the town was built, the school would have been flooded before us since we are on the other side of town.  Yes that's right folks, both ends of the town flooded.  Boats were literally moved, huge chunks of ice were next to houses.  Really it was a miracle there wasn't more damage done than their was.

   The high school students went to Bethel for their speech competition.  I had 5 students total who made the trek to Bethel with me.  At one point I was driving the students in one of the schools suburbans to a store, and one student made the comment....SEAT BELTS CHANEY'S DRIVING! yea I guess it's safe to say they don't have confidence in my driving.  It's ok thought I don't really either, it was the first time I drove in Bethel and there was lots of snow and ice on the road.  We made it to the store and back to the school though, so it was a successful trip.  I had one student make it to the finals and this student gets to represent Quinhagak in anchorage at the states speech contest.  I am so proud of ALL my speech students!  They have made leaps and bounds in improvements this semester.  Speech class has been improving as well.  I actually had students debating! I gave them the topic of Should students have to wear school uniforms.  I assigned the groupings, and the class was split into two.  I had the principal and the special ed teacher sit in to judge the debate.  It went well, and next time I expect much better :).
  
      Eric and Sheri's dog Jet had 8 puppies!!  I have become attached to one that is a mini seeker (seeker is another one of their dogs).  The puppies are just so cute!  I'm thinking about taking one, but I just don't know how logistics will work and when I take the puppy home for the summer if s/he does not get along with Sophie and Hercules that will be an issue.  It is husky, so it would be able to be outside during the day and I could just take it into my bedroom at night, but still i duno.  
  
       I spent Black Friday in anchorage/Wasilla this year with Amy, Jill and Felicia, almost Heather but she came down with the stomach flu :( .  I managed to snag an ipod (8 gb) with a gift card deal and a camera (packaged with an sd card, extra battery, hard case, and free picture book deal.  I also got a couple christmas present for other people, neck gaitors to keep my neck nice and warm, yaktracks, Christmas decorations for my classroom, candy land for our house when little kids come over, and party favors as mystery motivators for my classroom.  All in all, it was a good day.  Tomorrow (saturday), we are shopping in Wasilla for groceries to put in our bins to take back to Quinhagak with us.  The place we ate lunch at today had an AMAZING view!  oh and, the ice spa at the sharitan had an amazing view as well.  Don't worry I got pictures on my new camera that are below. 

Felicia (the first one to get her picture taken with my new camera = ) ).

All four of us girls out to lunch at Simon & Seaforts in Anchorage AK :)

Our view from the table (don't worry those things in the sky are not UFO's, just the reflection of the lights)

This is Jill, an Amazing person and teacher

Another Amazing person and teacher Amy (also expert Alaskan driver!)

So the coffee drinkers had to hit several starbucks on our black friday shopping spree, That's Felicia ordering and Jill and Amy checking out the merchandise!

The Ice spa had a great relaxation room, fireplace and fur on the couches to sit on, under i suppose if you wanted or just near.

View from the Ice Spa's relaxation room, I just kept staring out the window thinking this is amazing

Our fearless driver for the weekend Amy!!

At the end of the black friday shopping, we had to stop here so they could get directions to the nearest star bucks

On the right is all of our stuff from black friday, on the left is my bed, yes this is the living room!! it's ok i have a fireplace hahahaha

Speech's, costume contests and trick or treaters oh my!

Last week I took the Junior High Speech Team into Bethel for their speech competition.  We left on Tuesday morning (after the weather delay) and finally arrived at the D.O. around 1250.  It was a long day of travel, but it was not over yet!!  The girls I took had speech's that day at 2pm!!  They were troopers though and both made it into the second round of speech's for that night.  One even improved her score 40 points! :)  The other one made it to the third round and beyond!!  She got two third place wins for her speech's out of the whole district (16 schools total and 83 kids total in all categories)! I was so proud of both of them!!  The weird thing though, while they were giving their speech's I was so freaking nervous for them!  I'm not sure I could have been any more nervous than I was during the second round though, maybe that's because both my girls were the most nervous I've seen them.  Oh there was also a dance on Wednesday night (the night before we went back to Quin).  That was fun, I even had the girls do the friday morning dance to record on my phone and sadly forgot to show Eric.......I'll get right on that!  I mean it's not everyday that the friday morning dance makes it to Bethel.

It was also the carnival week.  On friday of last week we held the carnival to raise money for our classrooms.  I was in charge of blongo ball or ladder toss if you prefer to call it.  It was a jolly good time and I collected 305 tickets for my efforts :)  Got to meet alot of the community and spend time with students I don't normally see in a given day (I.E. the lower grades).  It was just a blast.  At any given time during the carnival, I had little kids coming up wanted to help out in my booth (and how could I say no?!).

The costume contest was the following Monday (yesterday), and believe you me, you have not seen a costume contest until you have come to Quinhagak AK!!!  Let me tell you though, the pumpkin contest (although has to be rigged) is a real serious competition!  My 8th graders decided to carve a puking pumpkin.  I thought it was hilarious.  I even had them use the juice jug as the toilet so people could see the puke.  It was definetly disgusting, but apparently not disgusting enough.  You just wait till next year though, it is so on!  :) :) :) I joke!!  It was all in good fun :).

Trick or Treating is a HUGE deal here too.  I mean at a quarter to 10 there was people knocking on the door for trick or treating!  We ignored that one as I had turned out our light around 9pm.  Thank goodness I had candy sent up from my family!!!  :).  Don't worry I got to eat some of it too.  Every time I would come back into the house after passing out candy, I would steal a piece.  No wonder I woke up with a headache this morning.

I had my first evaluation too.  Not so sure how that went.  Totally did not get done what I had hoped, and on top of that it was a last minute plan!!  I had the plan made this weekend, then I had to switch it to make it more of a co-teaching plan, well I didn't have to, but the other teacher had some great information I felt needed to be heard so I made it a co-teaching lesson.  Only problem was, I sacraficed some things I wanted to get done today.  Don't worry I mean I'll get to them tomorrow, I duno it just didn't feel like it went as well as it could have.  I mean after it was done I was left with this feeling of, well I just flunked that evaluation! ugh.  But I always feel like the lessons could go better.  I am definetly in the survival mode right now.  Living day to day lesson to lesson.  It does get better right?  Logically I know it does, but sometimes I just wonder.

OK well I think it's time for bed and I think it's probably time I stop rambling.  Just wanted to update everyone out there since I hadn't written in well has it even been a week??????