Ice Rink Parking Lot

When the kids say they stayed up late at the ice rink, what they mean is the frozen over area of standing water downtown.  But I have an ice rink closer to home, formerly known as the parking lot.  In the past two weeks, we have had snow, melt, ice, freeze, more snow, more ice, just ice and freezing rain until now the parking lot is socked in with around 3-5 inches of solid ice depending upon where you step. 

Last week, I used a large cardboard box to assist me on the slippery way home after Open Gym and for two days I would not have even made it to school if not for a colleague giving me a ride on his 4 wheeler from my front door to the school front door, a distance of about 100 feet.  I tried every variation of shoe I had.  My rainboots?  Great for slushy snow and indeed are waterproof but no tread deep enough to keep me from flailing around.  My Doc Martens were the same.  I tried to "embrace the slide" and wore my treadless Topsiders but, again, barely made it.  Remember, this is my year to not break a leg so this ice thing is really getting me down. 

The guy with the 4 wheeler showed me his "creepers", a band of plastic spikes that slide with a Velcro strap around the toe of his boot.  I had hoped to avoid buying any until I got them at the awesome surplus store in Portland where I got so much of the other cold weather gear that has served me so well (Yay Andy & Bax!) but I fear I am going to have to buy some here in town first.  Until then, I finally had a moment of inspiration looking at all my leftover cans from my Thanksgiving meal.  So many lids.  So many Amazon boxes.  As I was putting my can opener away, it struck me that I could McGyver some creepers on my own at a minimal of cost to me, the sliding cheapskate.

Here is the result.  Sure, it looks ridiculous but it works.  I got all the way to school today in fewer than five minutes wearing one of these.  The design needs some work but for a short term fix, it'll do.

UPDATE:

My creepers showed up and now I am able to cross the ice with no trouble at all.

Thanksgiving, Yupik style

For some reason, Thanksgiving is a holiday that never really spoke to me.  Which is odd when I think about it, because I love food, cooking, football.  When I was a kid, my dad always took us younger kids to Green Lake to feed the ducks and get ice cream from Baskin and Robbins (and get us out of the house so that Mom could have an hour of peace).  I guess it was the forced BE HAPPY and THANKFUL Hallmark marketing that got me down, and once I learned the true story of the so-called Pilgrims and how much they sucked, most of the allure was gone.  Thanks a lot, Howard Zinn.

But this year, I spent Thanksgiving with real live indigenous people, and for the first time in too many years to count, I have more blessings than challenges.  At school, there was a potluck open to anyone on staff who wanted to attend, and about half showed up.  Of those, half were Yupik.  They brought things like dried salmon strips and frozen berry concoctions but also things from a traditional New England dinner like ham and pumpkin pie.  The guy from Minnesota made wild rice, the lady from Texas made green been casserole, the other lady from Texas made an upside down pineapple cake.  There was no moose or whale or seal, though I guess in the past there has been.

When deciding what to make, I looked at my stock of canned food to see what wouldn't make too big a dent in my stores and decided to make something easy.  And wound up making a pretty good corn and potato chowder which easily weighed twenty pounds in the crockpot as I staggered down the hall with it.  I had packed everything over to the school in a backpack so I could use the school's internet to Skype with friends while it cooked.

Deciding where to sit was a major dilemma for me.  Do I go for the new and sit with people I sort of knew but not really?  Or with those more familiar?  In the end, I kinda split the vote by sitting with the people who live in my building but I don't know all that well.  I was saved from having to be too social by a student of mine who was there with his "Amma" (a kind of grandmother relative but not an actual grandmother--relationships are hard to unravel here).  Roy is very sweet but does need to work on his social graces like any 11 year old.  He talked non-stop, ate anything with sugar in it, tried and spit out the wild rice, and tried to get the lyrics to the "Batman smells" version of Jingle Bells for so long, I finally told him to flat out give it a rest.  He grinned,  wandered off to get yet another soda and spent the rest of the time running around aimlessly with the other 6th grade boy.  When he first sat down, he had one plate that was filled only with desserts.  The rest of us laughed until he came back, loaded down with another plate of actual food.  Which he devoured, minus the rice, because he is, well, an 11 year old boy.

Although advertised as a two hour thing, after an hour, the Vice Principal very obviously started not only wrapping up the leftovers of the turkey he brought, but stacking chairs as well as tables.  So, we finished up, cleaned up and set up the Commons for the basketball tournament that was to start later that day and run all weekend.  Basketball bores me to tears, so I plan to spend the rest of the break cleaning my house, binge watching that new show on Amazon and sleeping up to 18 hours a day.  And for that, I am thankful.

Let it snow!

In the Pacific Northwest, there are two kinds of snow: the kind that sticks and the kind that doesn't.  Here in Togiak, that is laughable.  I now totally understand why it is said the Eskimos have 50 different words for snow.  It's because there are 50 kinds of snow. 

There is the heavy, soggy wet flakes that turn quickly into ice, causing me to do the Icey Snow Shuffle-feet stay on the ground going from one textured spot to another to avoid slipping.  There is the dry, tiny swirling snow usually accompanied by a fierce wind that prompts me to wear my goggles over my glasses.  There is the regular snow that piles up in drifts that is easy to walk on and squeaks.  I like the last kind the best when I am outside, but any variation makes me grin when I look out the window and see that it's snowing.

Last week we had enough snow to close schools.  In the PNW.  Here, it was no biggie.  Everyone got out their snow pants and went about their business as usual.  But there was enough of it, after two years of no snow, that the school secretary sent out an email asking to update the phone tree in case school gets cancelled.  Which it only does if the bus company decides it's too icy to drive. 

I have seen full sized trucks and 4 wheelers and one Sno go (a smaller version of a snow mobile) slipping and skidding all over our ice rink of a parking lot.  And all the kids are up late going ice skating on the huge puddle just outside the post office.  A puddle the size of a house lot that is constantly full; in the fall, kids played in the muddy water, now they slide along its icy surface.  There are no traditional ice skates worn for this, just regular boots and momentum.  I guess it is good that they are getting exercise in the fresh air, but I do wish they would go to bed before midnight!

So far, I have fallen once.  I was on my way home from Open Gym and didn't realize that under the crunchy snow was ice.  I had that odd experience of realizing half way, "Oh, there is no recovering from this fall so I had better fall the right way" in the nano-second before I hit the ground.  One of my personal rules for this year is to not break my leg again as I have the past two years.  So I flung out my computer bag so it landed soft side down, protecting my school computer inside, and fell face forward spread eagle.  Onto my tummy, my (now) wonderful corpulent tummy.  No damage done, especially since there was no one around to see me.

So yes, this answers the timeless question of if Amanda falls in the parking lot and no one is there to see it, she does make a sound--"ooooph!"

The Wheels on the Bus

You would think that in a village where all the kids go to the same school, the bus situation would be a snap.  Kids get on the bus in the morning, come to school and six hours later they get on the bus again and go home.  But you would be wrong.

Sure, every once in a while, children do not want to get up and go to school.  Some are chronically tardy.  This is as true in Portland as it is in Togiak.  But in Togiak, there is no backup system for kids who refuse to get up in time to catch the bus.  There is no public transit bus system, there are no taxis, and the walk in most cases is 3 miles uphill.  Sometimes parents are willing to bring the kids to school by car, or more likely, four wheeler, except for parents who work in the morning or don't have a car or a four wheeler or just don't feel like getting up either.

The buses are operated by a private company owned, I think, by the tribal council.  There is a contract with the school and someday I would love to get a copy of it because it gives a whole lot of power to the buses and their drivers, very little to the school and none to the teachers.  We truly are at the mercy of the bus.

For example, one day there was only one bus for pickup when usually there are two.  The driver of the other bus was out of town or unwell or just didn't feel like driving that day.  My students waited patiently for the bus to drop off all the primary little'uns, turn around and pick up the upper elementary kids.  But when the bus returned, the driver got out, told the teachers of upper elementary that it was his break time and that our kids would have to wait until the high school bus riders were ready to go.  Ok, no problem except that the high school bus leaves thirty minutes after the elementary bus is supposed to go and I have to stay with my kids until they are all physically on the bus.  This driver was unwilling to make a second round trip with them, which would have taken about ten minutes total because he was afraid it would cut into his break between the elementary and secondary runs, regardless of the fact that half of the elementary hadn't gone anywhere and his break was now extended by 25 minutes.  25 minutes that, by contract, are my prep time when I get the classroom ready for the next day.

Then there are the days when there are two buses but they arrive early, load up and leave before my kids have even left the classroom.  School is supposed to get out at 3:30 but more often than not, the buses leave anywhere from 3:18 to 3:25.  The only time my students get a full day of school is when we know in advance that there will be only one bus, and I keep them in the room attempting to learn until the official end time.  So much for having consistency in my daily schedule.  So much for the drivers taking any kind of head count or know the kids well enough to notice than an entire grade is not on the vehicle.

Once on the bus, the students are supposedly no longer our responsibility but are in the hands of the bus company.  The school takes this clause very literally.  I was told last week "that's not our problem, the driver will deal with it" when I came running into the office to tell the principal, the assistant principal, the counselor, anyone that there was a fight on the bus.  A fight on the bus going on right now!  Only when the counselor rushed out to help, did anyone else bother to move.  An adult witness to the fight was reluctant to the point of pouting, to write out a report of what she saw.  The adult actually on the bus at the time was too busy chatting away with the driver to pay attention to the students wailing on each other until alerted to the disturbance by a teacher outside the bus.  Oh, did I mention that part of the reason I believe the fight started in the first place was because no one told the school that there would only be one bus and far to many kids had far too much time (20 minutes) to wait for the first bus to return, during which they are expected to wait quietly in their lines?  I was feeling feisty and in the mood to fight by that time too.

The Halloween Carnival

One of the biggest social events of the year in Togiak is the Halloween Carnival held at the school on the Saturday before the holiday.  Luckily, this year Halloween was on a Saturday so we scheduled the fun for mid-day, giving teachers time to set up while still allowing for a sleep in.

My booth, shared with Colynn, was a game suggested to us by Tobe; Spot the Pop.  We ordered 200 mini-Tootsie Pops, 100 full size Tootsie Pops, 72 scary erasers and 72 spooky coloring books with crayons from that life-saver of teachers everywhere, Oriental Trading Company (your home for cheap plastic crap!), charging it to our classroom accounts.  Sam the principal didn't even blink when I gave him the receipt for reimbursement, even though roughly a third of the cost was shipping.

The game itself is easy.  Players pay us two tickets, pull a Tootsie Pop out of the board, if it has a mark on the stick, you won a prize in addition to the Tootsie Pop.  We scattered a few full size Pops on the board but none of them were marked.  It was my own version of the Marshmallow Test (more people will choose to eat one marshmallow immediately than wait an hour to have two) and it proved true.  The full size Pops were more likely to be picked, even when it became clear they were unmarked.

In total, we spent less than an hour prepping this game: marking the Pops (160 were marked so the odds were ever in your favor), making the board, loading it up.  I spent the most time poking the holes in the board but switched to Donna's drill when I realized the holes were too small to accommodate the sticks.  The drill made it super easy, which was good, because both Colynn and I were sick.  She has strep throat, and I have an undiagnosed sore throat, fever and one of the worst non-migraine headaches I have ever had.  We joked that our booth may give an unexpected surprise in the form of infection.  I told her while we set up that our booth was so lame it was scary, getting a big laugh from this generally quiet understated Yupik woman.

It turned out that our game was the perfect slow burn.  It took a bit for kids to give it a try because it was so low key, compared to the Haunted House or throwing wet sponges at targets.  But once we got going, it took less than 90 minutes to give away all the Pops and prizes.  There were a handful of students who returned again and again.  One Fourth grader must have come back a dozen times!  I am not sure how much the tickets were but I suspect they were a buck each.  This translates into more than a hundred dollars each for Colynn and me to spend how we wish on our classrooms.

On my walk home, I saw that the parking lot was as close to being filled as I have ever seen it.  I suspect that 80% of the village came to the Carnival. It is a huge money maker for the school but also a chance for everyone to have a good time.  The annual Dividend checks (more on this phenomenon in another post but basically, if you can prove you lived in Alaska for a year, they pay you.) came out earlier in the month so everyone is flush with cash.  All the dudes at Open Gym are sporting new gym shoes, fewer hand-me-downs are worn to school and kids with fistfuls of tickets were commonplace at the Carnival.  All of the costumes were store bought and there was even a Waldo among all the Elsas.  Really, so many Elsas!

Colynn and I left as soon as our Tootsie Pops ran out and our game put away.  But, lame as it was, I am keeping the Spot the Pop board.  Maybe next year, we'll dress it up a little but why mess with success?