Year-end Highlights

Hundred Man introducing himself to the
Kindergarten/First Grade students.

So I did a terrible job of keeping my blog updated last year!  I am hoping to do a much better job and be more faithful this school year.  Goodness knows, it's already been a crazy school year with plenty to blog about.  Before I start in on the recent, though, I'll quickly cover the highlights from last year.

We had wolves hanging out in the village over the winter, which served as another reminder of why I did not bring my favorite puppy with me.  I know he's not smart enough to know they are NOT here just to play with him.

We had a couple visitors in the classroom.  Mr. Reinseth wasn't feeling well and had to go home early on the 100th day of school, so Hundred Man came to school to substitute in his classroom.  A student of Pythagoras also came to the middle school and high school classes to share some math insights.

Pythagorean student sharing her wisdom
with the class.

Nanwalek was just a few miles away from the epicenter of a 5.8 earthquake.  I remember wondering how people in California could respond so quickly to earthquakes while in Missouri we aren't even sure it was an earthquake until after it's over.  Well, I discovered after sitting through one earthquake lasting longer than a quick second that is all you need to know and respond without thinking.  We were sleeping when this earthquake happened.  I had time to wake up, realize what it was, get up and in the doorway, and still have time to wait for the shaking to stop.  I didn't think to wake Mike up until the shaking was over, however.  I'm guessing that means I still need to work on my responsiveness.

There's a lot of cool and fun stuff that I'll leave out for the sake of time and space.  There was also lots of whining about too much or not enough sun that I'll summarize with "Why can't the sun just be normal?!" and leave at that.

Unkind Thoughts

It's so close!!

I am vividly remembering some of the unkind thoughts I had about sunshine a few years ago.  Winter in Alaska is so dark for so long that it feels like it will never end.  I convince myself that sun all night is better than dark all day and beg the sun to return.  I watch the tip of the point with each sunset waiting for the sun to finally touch the ocean as it goes to bed each night.  It doesn't actually mean anything, but it makes my heart feel like we are finally escaping the clutches of darkness when the sun hits that point.

This was taken at 9:00.  Even though the sun
is down, there's still plenty of light.

Alaska, though, is a land of extremes and the sun refuses to break that pattern.  It's like the sun spent the winter hibernating and then, once we changed our clocks for Daylight Savings, it woke up and decided to stay out and party all night.  Okay, so it's not out all night just quite yet, but it is still very much messing with my sleep schedule.  The sun is rising around 7:30 in the morning and setting around 9:00 at night.  Throw in twilight and we have visible light for almost 15 hours a day.  With the sun so high in the sky when we come home, our brains do not realize how late it is and they are not ready to go to sleep when it's bed time.  Not only am I having unkind thoughts about the sun, my screwed up sleep schedule is also making me have some very unkind thoughts about mornings.

Sunrise.  There's a magic window in the spring and fall when
the sun is at the right angle to make the snow look pink
at sunrise.

I may have an on again, off again relationship with the sun of Alaska, but I can't deny the beauty that comes with sunshine.  How blessed am I to get to experience this part of God's creation!  (But it would be nice to experience it without messing with my sleep schedule.)