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