island living. valentine's day. oogruk!

Well, I wasn't able to go to Brevig Mission. Weather wasn't good on Friday, so the flight was canceled. Adrienne was supposed to return to the island yesterday with eight students, but we had bad weather again. And it doesn't look so good today either. Something I am learning about traveling in Alaska: don't plan on traveling unless you are in the plane and up in the air.

Mail is so slow even though we have plane service now. I am still waiting on stuff to arrive that I ordered a month ago. Speaking of plane service, we've had some strong south winds which have pushed the northern ice even farther north. I wonder if our ice runway will last long, if we keep getting these south winds. Apparently, a few years ago the ice runway floated away. And how appropriate -- I read this verse this morning: "Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns" (Ecclesiastes 1:6).

This semester is going to fly by. February is already almost over, and I can't believe it! During March, I will be going to Nome as a middle-school chaperone for a week at NACTEC. We will also have a visiting teacher come give lessons in geography and art to the students. And if the sun shines, the school will go crabbing one Saturday, which I am really excited about. In April we will have state testing and then our big student trip to Anchorage and Fairbanks. Once we come back from the student trip, we'll only have 5 weeks until the end of the semester. Of course, on all of these activities, there is a big fat label that says "weather permitting" stamped on them.

 In January our school had its annual Island Living celebration.

 Writing a story.

 The students were able to make their own monster pillows, which they had a lot of fun doing.

 Dance contest!

 

We also had a few races and competitions.

 You can see the road that leads out to the ice runway.

 Polar bear meat! Yum.

 Going to school early one morning.

 Snow...so...much...snow...

 At religious education class, we made Valentine's Day cards.

 Speak from the heart.

Roses are red. Violets are blue. U are sweet like hard candy.

One of the teenagers caught an oogruk -- bearded seal.