Fiddle dance

I went to my first fiddle dance on Saturday night. Most of the people their were native. It was so good to be somewhere with native people. I am frustrated with never being around native people. If I wanted to hang around white people all the time, I could have stayed in Ohio(dont get me wrong...the white people are great too). I have really been noticing lately that things seemed to be divided in that way. At the concert last Wednesday night, it was almost all white people and at the fiddle dance on Saturday night, it was almost all native people. It disappoints me that the community is not more integrated. One of the main reasons that I wanted to move into bush Alaska was to experience a new culture. I know that I am experiencing "Alaskan" culture, but I was really hoping to experience more of the Yupik culture of this region. I hope that I will have more opportunities to befriend native people. The native people that I do know are really great, caring, and interesting people. Going to the concert and then the fiddle dance was just some real, in-your-face proof that the white people and native people dont mingle as much as I had hoped.Being my first fiddle dance, I didnt do any dancing, but it was amazing to me that so many people knew such specific dance steps to songs that were being played. There was some heated debate about whether or not a violin and a fiddle were that same or different instruments. Bets were made by some and, after some online research, it turns out that a fiddle and violin are one in the same. Some fiddlers shave down the bridge of their violin, but the instrument is still a violin. Everything I read said that the main difference between a fiddle and violin is the players attitude.
Avery danced with the kids when they played a kids dance bunny hop type song. Can you tell which one he is? After we left the fiddle dance on Saturday night, I slipped on the ice in the parking lot and hit my head on a car really hard. I think I actually had a minor concussion, because i felt sick to my stomach afterward and I still had a major headache all day yesterday. Two whole days I had a headache and felt sick. Yesterday(Monday), I fell asleep on the couch at about 7pm and didnt wake up until this morning at about 7:30am! I felt so much better today.

While at the K300 this weekend, I saw one of the other new teachers from one of the villages. She was telling me that they have river taxis here in Bethel. So that if she wanted to get back to her village from Bethel, she could take one of these river taxis instead of flying. Apparently it's fairly inexpensive too. The taxi drivers have to get an endorsement on their license to allow them to drive on the river highway. This is a pretty good idea since many of the villages in the region are connected through the river system. I've been wanting to go out to one of the villages...maybe I'll give the river taxi a shot. Of course, if i ever got up the courage, I could just drive my own vehicle out on the river.

Here's another pic of Bailey and Taboo. They both have their own tie-outs on the front porch now. Bailey has been going potty outside more and more lately. She's turning out to be a really great dog. She's a little crazy, but in a very fun way. Taboo is really getting used to her now and I think maybe even starting to like her. Although, he's still totally jealous too. You can see that their is NO snow on our porch. We lost it all when it got warm this weekend.
Weather update: It's 11 degrees right now. It looks like its going to be below freezing, but above zero for awhile. Hopefully that means we'll get some snow. Last night and this morning, we had a crazy, fierce wind. It was strong enough to blow a person over. It was strong enough to blow shingles off a roof, i'm sure. Maybe that's one of the reasons why all the roofs here are metal.

Sunlight update: We hit the 7 hour mark today. Wooyoo! We had exactly 7 hours of daylight today. Tomorrow will be 4minutes and 40seconds longer.