NO NEED FOR A GOOGLE ACCOUNT

There are still several people who have said that they havent posted comments on my blog because they dont have a google account. You dont need one...I turned that feature OFF a long time ago...just post as anonymous and be sure to leave your name at the end so that I know who the comment is from.

Also, you dont just have to comment on the contents of the blog (brian). Feel free to say just about anything. I'd love to hear what's happening in all of your lives too...please....I feel sometimes as though I've moved to a third world country...it would be great to hear about the happenings of people who are still members civilization. :)

Beechcraft 1900D

This is the building that houses Era Aviation in Bethel. This is where we checked in for our flight to Anchorage. No metal detectors or security guards here. No scales for weighing the bags. The plane that we were scheduled to leave on was about 45 minutes late.This plane that we flew in was a 19 seater plane without a cockpit door, the Beechcraft 1900D. We could see everything that the pilot saw because Chandra and I were in the first two seats. It was pretty amazing to look out the front window and see the runway as we were landing. We would be headed straight for the runway, then all of a sudden a cross wind would blow and the plane would veer off to the right...it was pretty trippy. It made me queasy to watch, but I just couldnt tear my eyes away from that front window. It was also neat to get to watch the pilot flip all the knobs and levers to get the plane going. I could see all the gages clearly...altitude, pressure, everything. It felt like going back in time...this must have been what it was like to fly back in the 60's and 70's? Our flight attendant was also the copilot. The pilot and copilot were both female. It's the first time I've ever been on a plane the started and killed the engine while the passengers are on the plane.
The plane was full and they could not carry our luggage. They had to put in on an Alaska Air flight to Anchorage later that evening, which meant that we had to go back to the airport at 11 o'clock at night to pick up the luggage.
The flight home only had five people on it and all of our luggage made it on the plane, thankfully. I brought home a big rubbermaid bin full of supplies and a bookshelf for Avery. Those were my two checked bags and then I had my same carry on that I had taken with me. So, that all worked out well. The weekend was too short and we're already looking forward to the long Thanksgiving weekend. We already have our flight and hotel booked for that. We will have more time and are planning to do more "touristy" type stuff, depending on what's open, but hopefully there will be snow on the ground so I can take Avery sledding. I am also hoping to get out to see a glacier, but we'll see. It was a nice break to get out of Bethel for the weekend and go out and pretend we have a social life. Now...back to the regular grind.

Cabelas girl, Bomber man, and BooBoo boots

We got all of our winter gear from Cabelas in today. I got Avery a coat, snow bibs, a facemask, and a fox lined bomber hat. For me ...a knit hat, fox fur lined gloves, snow bibs and boots. I think we are now officially ready for winter. I just heard the word snow in the weather forcast for the first time this morning. We have had 5 record setting days for rain this month. It has basically rained nonstop for the entire month of September. The average temp for this week was 53 degrees. This morning on my way to school it was 44, but it's really strange because it doesnt really seem cold, just chilly. My friend got a Cabelas card, so we ordered using her card so that she can earn Cabelas points. Here are the three of us with all of our new winter gear on. Much sweating was done to bring you this picture!!!
I already have a coat that I think is heavy enough to get me through the winter and we already had picked up some boots for Avery at a garage sale this summer when we first got here. My boots are so bulky that I feel like I have on moon shoes...they are rated to -60 degrees. That should keep my toes warm. There is a little pocket in the boot liner that you can stick in a hot pack!
Couldn't forget Taboo...I ordered him some dog boots so that he can keep the snow and ice out of his fragile little paws when he has to go outside. He was so funny when I put them on...he pranced around the house lifting his feet way up in the air with every step...he didnt know what was going on. It is already cold here at night...I hooked Taboo up with a heating pad between the layers of the blanket that he sleeps on to keep him warm. I'm hoping his arthritis won't act up too much if I try to make sure and keep him warm. Although, I'm betting he'll learn to be a fast peeer.

GO PACK GO

just in case you dont know...the packers are 3-0. hah! Two out of the last three games have actually been televised here, so I get to see them...the downfall? The 1 o'clock game...comes on at 9am here. It really sucks to have to get up at 9am, but I guess it's worth it if I get to see the packers win. It's definitely different cooking breakfast while watching the game. Last night was Monday night...so after dinner i was like...oh, let's watch some Monday night football...NOT! Because of the time difference...the monday night game comes on at 4:30...it was already over. More like Monday afternoon football.

Well, I'm on my way to anchorage for the first time this weekend. This will be the first trip that i'm taking into anchorage. I'm going with another new teacher and we are going to spend the weekend just having some fun and doing some shopping. We got really cheap tickets, only $169 round trip...usually it's about $300 round trip. so we're cutting out of school early on Friday to go live it up in anchorage for the weekend and pretend we have a social life. I've also already make arrangements to fly to anchorage for thanksgiving weekend. I'm taking avery for his birthday...by then there will be plenty of snow, so we are thinking of doing some sledding and maybe go skiing. we'll see.

I love and miss everybody...leave comments so i can hear from you...

Too funny

This is a post from my friend's blog. It was too funny...I just had to share it with you.

You Weren't There, So We Just Left It In Your Truck

Last week I ordered a couple things, and some of them were due in the mail Friday. Friday came and went- nothing. On Saturday I went to the UPS store and was told that they had nothing for me. I went over to Alisha's and checked my stuff's progress on the online tracking thing. According to that, not only had my stuff reached Bethel, but it had been delivered. I called the UPS store, where the lady said that maybe all my stuff was still in the delivery van, and that she'd call the driver and have him call me. He called me about 5 minutes later. The conversation went something like this:
Him: You live in city sub, right?
Me: Yeah
Him: Yeah, you weren't there, so we just left it in your truck.
Me: I don't have a truck.
Him: Oh, maybe I don't remember then. Let me call you back.
I never heard from him again. Was I ticked. It turns out he had left my stuff in my landlord's truck, but who does that? Seriously.
Well, after I made that call I decided to go back home, so Alisha drove me back. But on the way we saw these little kids playing in a drainage ditch. They were sitting on a piece of Styrofoam, oaring it around, as if it were a boat. It was pretty comical.

Tundra of Change

Fall officially settled into the tundra sometime ago. Mornings are quite chilly and there has been fog on several occasions (fog that would have delayed or cancelled school back in Ohio for sure, but not here). I wore my coat for the first time this week to school in the morning. It is still warm enough during the day for a person to easily forget their coat at school when coming home. My heat at home has started to kick on now on a daily bases. I am told there will be snow within a month...definitely before the end of October.

One thing that I miss being here in Bethel, are trees. There are no trees here and, therefore, no leaves to change amazing shades of red and gold before falling to the ground. You can imagine my awe, then, when I was driving out to the airport last week and noticed that the tundra had changed.If the river is the heart of this place then the tundra is the lifeblood. The people live off of it in so many ways. From the tundra, the people collect berries, herbs for tea and healing, eggs, and even bigger animals such as moose and caribou. I have been berry picking on several occasions. One time, we collected about a gallon of blue berries and had a huge blueberry pancake breakfast for ourselves and the neighbors.
If you look at the previous blog post entitled Our House...you will see pics of the tundra when it was green this summer. Now it has exploded with brilliant shades of red, orange, and yellow. I miss seeing the leaves change and fall, but I will not miss raking them up! Go tundra!

Moose for dinner

My neighbor in the classroom next door at school is a great person. She teaches junior high science too; four sections of 7th grade life science, one section of 8th grade physical science and one section of Yu'pik multimedia. Her and I have shared many lessons and ideas about teaching already. She is native Yu'pik and speaks Yu'pik fluently. She is a great teacher and I know this because I can tell the difference between the 8th graders who had her in 7th grade and the ones that didnt. She is such a great person to talk too and fun to joke around with too. I feel very fortunate that she is my school neighbor. We have a door that adjoins our rooms and we talk daily.Last week, she told me that she was going to clean out her freezer and wanted to know if I wanted some Salmon and Moose meat. "Absolutely!" I said. She stopped by Thursday night and brought over a ton of stuff. She brought me 3 huge salmon, two packs of mooseburger, one pack of moose steak, two pack of clams, and two packs of salmon strips. Awesome! I get to have local foods. Tonight I used some of the moose hamburger to make a spaghetti bake. I put noodles, moose meat, diced spinach, mushrooms, and spaghetti sauce all together and baked it. It was very good. Moose hamburger tastes much like regular hamburger except its much less greasy/fatty and a bit more chewy. It's just like venison...I think.

Chef Avery

Since moving to Bethel, Avery has started cooking dinner one night per week. Sometimes I give him a recipe and just walk him through it. Other times, he chooses a recipe from a cook book. I thought this would help him to gain some cooking skills, teach him to appreciate how much food costs, help teach him about measurement, and help him to work on being patient....among other lessons.Thursday night is Avery's dinner night. He picks the recipe, shops for the ingredients, and does all the prep/cook work. I am just there to guide him and answer questions, but I do not do any of the work.

This week he made Potato Soup-Florentine Style. It was scrumptious. Last week he made Baby Bam Burgers. Baby Bam is a special spice that he made from scratch using a mixture of other spices.

Once he learned how to handle a knife, it was all good! He's a great cook and does any awesome job. Everything he's made has been wonderful.

Yum!

$1654

The amount for this years PFD (Permanent Dividend Fund) check come out yesterday. Alaska residents will receive their checks sometime in October. I will not be receiving a check until 2009 because you have to be a resident for a FULL calendar year before you will receive a check. This years check is a pretty good amount. Record low was around $300 back in the 80's and record high was $1900some in 2000. Apparently Alaska Air runs some really great specials in October so that people will spend their money on airfare. Maybe I'll buy use tickets to Hawaii or something. Hawaii is the place to vacation when you live in Alaska because it is relatively close. Around the lunch table the other day, the guys were telling me that tickets from Anchorage to Hawaii are sometime cheaper than the flight from Bethel to Anchorage.

Also announced yesterday...crude oil has set a new record again...$82 a barrel for October.

You must be new : )

What do Lysol and Listerine have in common? They both start with "L", right, but not what I'm looking for. Actually, they both contain a fair amount of alcohol and can apparently "do the trick" if you're really in need of a buzz.

On our third or fourth day in Bethel, I was at the store looking for lysol and I couldn't find it anywhere. On my way through the check out line, however, I noticed that all the Lysol was stacked on a shelf behind the counter being guarded by the cashier. I asked the cashier, "Why is the Lysol behind the counter with the Listerine?" He looked up at me with an amused smile and said, "You're new here, aren't you?" With a chuckle I replied that, yes, I had only been in town a couple of days. He proceeded then to explain to me that these items were high theft items. I was surprised. "Why would Lysol and Listerine be high theft items?" I ask. (I have a picture in my head now of people stealing Lysol and running home and secretly disinfecting their houses.) The cashier explained to me that these items have alcohol in them and people steal them to drink them when they run out of booze. They call it booze here alot. Cooking wine is also kept behind the counter, but it is in pretty limited supply.

Bethel is a "damp" community. This means that it is illegal to buy or sell alcohol, but legal to drink it and possess it. All of the surrounding villages are completely dry. There is an alarmingly high rate of alcoholism here, even with the laws. For me it means that if I want to buy alcohol, I have to order it from Anchorage or somewhere and have it shipped or I can bring it home with me if I happen to be somewhere to buy it. There are also regulations on how much you can bring in, but I'm not sure of those details yet. I have signed up for a wine club so that I can at least keep a couple of bottles of wine on hand. I brought a bottle of Absolute with me on the barge, but it is almost gone now.

This also means that if you are feeling especially nice or needing to do a good deed for the day/week/month, you can send me a bottle of any kind of alcoholic beverage and it would be much appreciated. Just make sure you send it UPS...it is illegal to send alcohol through the United States Postal Service. Who knew? I would never have known that if I didnt come here...the things I've learned...character building life lessons here folks.