One semester down

The end of the semester is near my friends.  Only today, Tomorrow and half of Wednesday left to go.  The kids are restless and so am I :).  Christmas is only 6 days away and wow so much Christmas cheer in the air!!  The drama club is setting up/getting ready for the Christmas program tomorrow, which means that Christmas music is blaring from the gym into my room this morning.  Not too horrible.  I did happen to come down with the worst case of a head cold I could though.  Totally sucks right before my big 20 hour travel.  That's right folks it's going to take me a total of 20 hours to begin and finish my travel home.  It so does not seem like I'm that far away from my family/friends back in Illinois/Indiana.

Speaking of end of semester, Grades snap shots will be taken on January 11th, that means I have until then to get all of my grades done.  That seems like a good thing right?  Wrong!  that means I either have to get ALL grades done before I go on Christmas break, or do them while on Christmas break.  I have been slowly milking the students for all of the late work they owe me and in the process getting all those grades caught up, but some students just don't turn in their work!  It's actually very frustrating.  I'll tell them I have an assignment missing and they will be all "but I did that" and I'll have to say, well then please turn it in because I am missing a grade on it.  ugh...high school students should know to turn in work they complete right?  Is it asking too much???  I thought so.

Then there is the little matter of the puppy.  No I did not get a puppy.  I wanted to though.  Those pictures in the last couple blogs of the really cute puppy, no not the one with the shield like patch of hair on it's head the cuter one, I wanted her, but then I came to my senses and decided the first year or two in Alaska I didn't want anything tying me down.  I want to be able to explore!!!  It's not like  I wouldn't be able to explore with a puppy, but the chances are less and the places I could go and the length I could be gone would not be as diverse.  Yes, I know it sounds a little self-centered, but haven't I earned the right to be a little self-centered my first year of teaching.  Besides there will be a puppy in the house I can play with, just not own.  Felicia is getting the one with the shield like patch of hair on it's head (yes the cute one referred to earlier), and so I'll be able to play with him when he gets big enough to stay at our house.

Guess who came home sick from work today....yup that's right me.  ugh so bad timing!!!!  I tried to make it work too but I ended up going home at lunch.  I decided when students started telling me my face was red and I looked horrible I should probably stop trying to tough it out and just go home.  I have this horrible guilt every time I call in sick.  Doesn't matter the job.  So of course coupled with my ever present need to be in control of my classroom, I definitely did not want to throw in the towel.  But sometimes ya just gotta do what you gotta do.  So here I am about ready to go to bed so I can rest up for tomorrow...hopefully I'll be able to go to work tomorrow anyways.

Baby Shower and Walk in Carharts

Felicia smelling the poopie diaper (a.k.a. melted candy bar)

Everyone trying to figure out what is in the diapers!!!  That's Alison in the middle on the couch :)

We all made her bibs!!!  don't worry, mines the one that is very unartistic that says I heart mommy

Aunt Mary..you'll never believe it....Marsha makes holy smoke too!!!

Alison with all of her treats....doesn't she look lovely :)

This is how I walk....My glass kept steaming up from my breath so I put them over the neck gator and i looked like a total dork, but it worked :)

That's the tundra...oh...and the windmills

That's not tundra out there, it's the ocean!!!  All those black things are chuncks of ice

More Ocean

This one just looked cool

Felicia perched on top the huge ice chunk we found

that's the huge ice chunk..it was washed ashore during one of the storms

There are huge gaps between the ice chunks...this picture does not do it justice to show how far down it is

yup...ocean

me, next to the ocean (a.k.a. ice chunks)

at this point we were just being silly

Felicia trying not to fall into the water on the walk home (don't worry mom it wasnt even an inch deep)

that's the town all the way back there

our christmas tree (thanks mom!) Felicia and her new puppy!

And me standing next to the huge ice chunk!! hahaha

This was when the snow had let up sometime either Monday tuesday or wednesday...it was the day we had the blizzard

The entrance to our arctic entryway....yes that's snow inside! and yes we close our door

Two of the cutest puppie!!!  the darker one is the one I want

Felicia and her puppy!

me and my puppy!

Isn't she just cute!!!

all 8 of the puppies :)

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??????

Manic Monday

Newsflash!!  Alot of my students were absent today due to a funeral in Eek.  What's that like?  well it goes something like this:  "If you were here last week and your group is here today, find them and move your desks together."  "Kristen, my group is missing!" "If you were absent last week, or ALL members of your group are missing, then come to the front of the room."  "But Kristen! My group is ALL gone! What do I do?"  "If your group is missing, come to the front of the room" "But my group is missing!" ugh!!!!

I would love to tell you that today was a great day, it wasn't bad, in fact it was a good day.  However, it was not a great day.  Those are few and far between.  I did look at my gradebook, again.  Though I have to say, Heather Diamond, I am jealous of you that you had an animal related delay.  Where else could you have a delay because of brown bear sightings?!?!?!  ok probably other places, but seriously, a delay until it's daylight...no where else could get away with having things that vague. 

Totally have the student council involved in my baby project!!  If the kids leave their babies unattended, they will get "snatched" and they will be brought up on charges by the student council.  The student council teacher sponsor is going to be our judge while the student council is our jury.  They will have guidelines to follow and will actually affect the grades of my PLS students.  This project is going to be so much fun!  :)  Students and Teachers are all excited for this to happen :).

Oh and classical music in the mornings is making a comeback!  Student cries to turn it of to be ignored! :) hehe I am an awful teacher :).  But seriously, I do add some other music in too. 

Oh I know what was bugging me and made me write this.  To set the record straight (family) I am not looking for a job back home!  I do not know who is telling everyone that I have applied for jobs and that I am looking for a job at Christmas, but I am not.  The last time I put an application in to a business back in Illinois was before I moved to Alaska.  So no, I AM NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB BACK IN ILLINOIS/INDIANA!  I know that the person saying this might just hope I get back home, but it is not good to go around telling lies and quite frankly it is annoying having to tell everyone that calls me because they are concerned I am giving up to soon that no it's not me.  K thanks.

And with that note maybe I should sign off before I get to angry about the situation.

Of Mice and Babies

I thought I would write this because well let's be honest I have a lot to say, again.

First the babies.  I broke the news to the class today bout the babies by writing on the smart board that they are ALL pregnant.  Yes even the guys.  That definitely shocked some students.  and who knew it was the talk of having to take a baby home that would get the class interested in actually paying attention?!  So a little information, the baby is American Indian because obviously we live in Alaska and the students are native.  The question I get from the students (almost every single one of them at a seperate time), "Why is the baby black?"  Apparently the baby is more dark than anything. 

Anyways, I could go forever on that class but, I have to get to the mice part of this post.  I was watching the Gilmore Girls dvd and kinda paying attention to my computer at the same time when I noticed a movement from the corner of my eye.  I looked over at the trash can and had thoroughly convinced myself it was just the piece of paper on the floor (totally not realizing that the paper shouldn't move on it's own) when out of no where there was a mouse!!!!  I just start screaming ew ew ew ew ew ew!! and of course felicia seemed concerned, though still totally sitting in our recliner only looking concerned or should I say confused?  Well anyways, the hilarious part is that she thought I would protect her from the mouse by standing in front of her as we lightly, slowly and carefully made our way into the kitchen for her empty coffee can to trap the mouse in.  Of course the mouse had already vanished behind the cabinets by that time.  Rats, I guess it will have to wait until next time.