Thanksgiving

Fish rice

Our last night of Thanksgiving break is nearly over, drawing a close to that holiday and a small pause to our gluttony.  We've had several opportunities to eat more than we should beginning with the community meal the school hosted Wednesday.  They served the traditional American Thanksgiving foods as well as some traditional Alaskan dishes such as fish pie and fish rice (the rice has seaweed, fish eggs, dried and smoke salmon, onions, and cooked salmon).  We had a few members of the school staff to our house for more food Thursday and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to relax and visit.  The 3-5 grade teacher invited us to his house last night for some Mexican food so we again stuffed ourselves.  He's from Mexico so it was pretty hard to resist and we had another enjoyable evening.  The village store also gave us a food basket with a 20lb turkey and tons of fruit so we'll have more opportunities to eat.  We also spent time with James and Carol playing cards (I totally beat Mike in Phase 10) and Mike helped them cut wood today.  They got to use the wench several times as the deep snow caused problems and the ice across the creek broke under one of the 4 wheelers.  While the 4 wheeler is embarrassed, no one was hurt so all is well.

We've had never ending snow for over a week now.  I'm reminded of my dad who tells of 3 separate times it started raining and never stopped - he has some great logic to it, but I can never remember it.  We're beginning to wonder if this will be the time when it started snowing and never stopped.  We've had over 40 inches of snow according to a weather site on the internet and it's still coming down.  Being the season of giving thanks, I am reminded to be thankful that I enjoy snow because I know I would be quite unhappy right now if I didn't.  We have also thought of some other things we are thankful for.

1. Ice cleats and whoever invented them

2. Given how much of it there is, we are thankful that we like eating fish.
3. The Wright brothers for inventing the airplane - even if it does encourage conversations with Jesus
4. A shelter that always finds its way home after wondering away late at night
5. That our answer was "Yes" to the first interview question we had for these jobs: "Do you like each other?"  We get a lot of together time here and enjoy it very much.
6. A Ranger that has a wench to pull us out of deep mud holes and icy creeks
7. The Internet without which we'd have little connection to all our friends and family back home.
8. Back up generators to keep us warm during power outages.
9. We'll be thankful to the phone company when they get our phone lines fixed - but they didn't get it done in time to make the Thanksgiving list.  Maybe by American Christmas.


And last, but certainly not least:
10. We are thankful that God provided us with such wonderful friends in the village.  We are truly blessed to know such great people and have the opportunity to spend time with them.  We have much to be thankful for, but great friends make the inconveniences sometimes experienced living in the Alaskan bush much less painful.