My first period class should have 20 students. Today, I have three. I teach at a school that is a combination of the city school (Sidney Huntington School) and a boarding school (Galena Interior Learning Academy, or GILA). SHS is a k-12 school serving the students of Galena (a town of less than 500 people). GILA is a 9-12 boarding school for student from all over the state of Alaska. We hold classes on two campuses: the SHS campus (where the k-8 classes are also held) and the GILA campus which is a former Air Force Base. The two campuses are about 3 miles apart with SHS often being called the city school because, among other things, it is located inside the town of Galena while the Air Force Base is (sort of) outside the town (officially it's in, but it definitely feels out).
In the evenings and on the weekends the dorm staff takes care of the GILA students, but during the school day they are in classes that are mixed together with the SHS students. This means that we can't cancel school because during the scheduled school day the dorm staff are sleeping. However, sometimes situations arise that require flexibility. For example last fall we had no water at the SHS building. The elementary classes were canceled, but the high school still had classes. All of the SHS teachers had to travel to the GILA campus and find locations to work. I and two other teachers were working in the dining hall. Obviously, it's not the best situation, but we make it work. It has happened this year, but sometimes the roads are too icy to transport the students. In these cases the teachers travel to GILA (if they can't make it the school provides transportation) and classes are held wherever we can find space like the day we were out of water.
Most of the time, weather that would cause other places to cancel we consider normal. We don't blink at -20 and -30 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures. When it starts getting to -45 or so transportation is provided for teachers whose vehicles won't start. At -50 the local kids aren't required to go to school, but most do.
Today, however falls into the category of unusual. I woke up this morning to the sound of snow hitting the windows and the wind howling. I could feel the house shaking (granted our buildings shake a lot more because everything except the Air Force base, which is protected by dikes, is on stilts because of flooding). I wondered if this would affect school. It did. Shortly after arriving at school I heard the rumor that one of the buses had gotten caught in a snow drift. Meanwhile stories start coming in on cars being blown across the road. Most of the trouble was between the former air force base nd town because this is a wide open area (and also the location of the airport). The first bus that should have dropped off local kids ay 7:45 am arrived about 8:10 which was the same time the first bus of GILA kids arrived. The drivers said it wasn't safe to drive the route with kids, especially for the new bus (we have two buses one is new this year) and that driver was hanging around school. Meanwhile, we have an issue. It's not safe to run the buses, but we have kids on both sides who should be on the other (city kids who need to go to GILA, GILA kids who came over for swimming or other things and then GILA kids who need to go to SHS). It was announced that students would go to classes if they were on the correct side and that students on the wrong campus would find a teacher's room to go work in. Seeing as we have about 30 city kids and 230 boarding students, I know the other campus must be pretty crazy today. Life on this side is pretty easy. Most classes are averaging 3-4 students. One of the lunch ladies came into my first period class for lunch count. She told me, "It's pizza day and we have enough pizza for the whole high school and most of them aren't here." They make the pizza from scratch and its pretty good. I'm guessing there will be a lot of leftovers.
We're waiting to see if/when the weather improves and just playing the day by ear.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Friday, January 11, 2019
Life at 50 below
First, let me start that saying, yes the temperature can get to -50 degrees Fahrenheit (-45.6 C). The coldest temperature I have ever personally experienced was -65 (or so because most thermometers stop working at these temperatures).I didn't realize how shocking this was to people until I talked to my mother today. Matter of fact, I didn't realize our temperature was quite so low. My parents were apparently out shopping today and my dad kept showing people how cold it was in Galena on his weather app. Seeing as how my parents live in North Carolina this sparked a lot of interest even from people who just overheard what he was saying. My mom texted me in the middle of class saying, "-51 brrrrrrrrr." Last time I had looked it was only -47.
At these temperatures there are a number of challenges. First, the boiling point of propane is -43.6 F (-42C). This means that at these temperatures propane is no longer a gas, but rather a liquid. Matter of fact propane pretty much stops flowing at -40 (by the way -40 F = -40C). Many of the stoves here in Galena are propane (including our school ovens) so you have to have a back-up plan. For example, school lunch was baked in the former home ec classroom ovens (we don't have home ec classes, but call the room the community kitchen and use it for a variety of purposes) which are electric.
Another issue at these temperatures is many vehicles won't start. We have engine block heaters, battery heaters, and oil pan heaters (one time in the summer I heard a couple of tourists say, "wow, so many of the cars in Alaska are electric" while pointing at the car I was traveling in. I replied, "that's not an electric car." "Why does it have a plug then?" I explained that the plug was for the engine clock heater. Here in Galena, because it gets so cold the school has plugs so that people can plug in while they're at work so that their cars will start after work. Nonetheless, at 50 below or so some cars simply won't start. Yesterday, I got a text from one of my bosses which read, "-47 but we will run a van for teacher pickup for those who need it. Otherwise school as usual. Please text if you need a ride." I didn't go to work yesterday because I was sick, but I rode the school bus to school today.
Besides propane being a liquid and vehicles not starting we have a few other interesting challenges at these temperatures. As a fly-in only community we are reliant on planes for everything. Of course these planes are affected by the usual weather conditions like visibility and winds, but they are affected by the cold. We have three types of planes that fly into Galena: Navajos, Caravans and 1900s. All three are prop planes, but they have different temperature tolerances. Navajos can only fly to -40, while Caravans and 1900s can only go to -50 (Navajos and Caravans are a lot "leakier" than 1900s so you definitely want your cold weather gear on those flights).
In Galena we also have a lot of houses (including one I'm moving into soon) that are not on piped water and sewer. The water is delivered and the sewer is a holding tank that the city will pump out. The city (we're classified as a first-class-city although with a population under 500 we think of ourselves as a village) this week posted reminders that the don't deliver water or do sewer pick-ups at temperatures lower than -40. It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow (-30 or so) and they've announced that if it in fact is warmer they will run tomorrow (Saturday) which is not a usual day for delivery without a $100 weekend surcharge.
Finally, its also too cold for garbage pickup. Here in Galena we have dumpsters around town and everyone puts their garbage in these. The city empties the dumpsters and takes the refuse to the dump, but alas it is also too cold for this equipment. Therefore, they have sent a message asking people to please hold onto their refuse until it warms up and they can empty the dumpsters. Right now the birds and animals are picking open the garbage and making a big mess of it (the dumpsters close, but as they get too full people usually stack the garbage next to the dumpsters).
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Lost in the dark
I'm going to start this post off by reassuring you that I was not lost in the dark. We just started having yoga classes at my school. The yoga classes are for anyone in the community, but they are held in my school building (actually starting tomorrow they will meet in my classroom). It's a small community )not counting the 230 or so boarding students, it's a town of less than 500 people, accessible only by bush plane) and so like any small community (at least in rural Alaska) the school is the lifeblood of the community. I had only done yoga once before, a little more than 13 years ago and it was in Chinese. I'm not the biggest fan of yoga (although actually I did rather enjoy it last night), but this is the only group exercise class here in Galena (we do have a swimming pool though so I do lap swims Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings and now Yoga Tuesday and Thursday evenings).
By the time yoga ended we were approaching dark (next week when we are no longer on daylight saving time it will definitely be dark before yoga ends at 6 pm) and I needed to talk to the custodian and gather up my things before starting home on my four-wheeler. I put on my winter gear (coat and rain paints - because it isn't cold enough for my snow pants yet) since the temperature was somewhere in the teens and then went outside to start my four-wheeler and get it warming up while I finished putting on my gear (hat, gloves, scarves). I then drove about 2-3 miles home.
When I got home I reached in my pocket for my keys and they weren't there. Panic set in. I raced back to school thinking I had probably dropped them in the parking lot when I pulled my gloves out of my pocket. Unfortunately, it was mostly dark by the time I got back to school. I looked through the parking lot, but couldn't find them. I went back into the building (which was still open because there was middle school basketball practice going on in the gym). The custodian had closed my door when he finished so I couldn't get into my classroom, but I share a back porch with two other classrooms. One has the entrance directly across from mine and was clearly locked so I went to the other on. That teacher had a post-it note on the door which said not to disturb him unless you were his wife. Obviously, I'm not his wife, but I walked in anyway. He was apparently taking part in a webinar or something. I simply told him, "I know I'm not your wife, but I can't find my keys" as I walked though his classroom, through the porch and then into my classroom. I checked my desk (hoping I'd simply forgotten to pick them up) and the drawer where my four-wheeler key had been (hoping I'd dropped them when I picked it up, but no luck.
I then started driving slowly back toward home checking for my keys. Part-way there I had some other thoughts of where they might be at school (I really couldn't figure out how they could have fallen out mid-route). I went back to school, looking once more in the parking lot before going back into my classroom (I had left the door cracked open just in case) and checked on the floor around my desk. I thought, "maybe I missed my pocket altogether." Still, no keys. I pulled the door shut and drove home at 10 mph searching the ground the whole way. The further I got the larger the pit in my stomach grew. I got home and knew I had to find our how to get a new key because I couldn't get into my apartment. I live in a building that use to be the officers' quarters when it was an air force base and the students from the boarding school live in the next building in what used to be the enlisted mens' quarters. I walked over the student dorms and explained what happened to the front desk and asked the lady working there if she knew who I needed to talk to. She did and his office was just down the hall (the answer was the director of residence life). By this point it has been more than an hour since I left school the first time. I'm cold, hungry (it's 7:20 pm), frustrated and depressed. Luckily, the director was able to find another set of keys (both front door and my suite), but he did have to walk over there with me (not that he complained a bit).
After I got into my apartment, I sent my principal a text message telling him that I had lost my keys. My heart was in my stomach. He never answered and I don't think I slept too well last night. This morning while I was swimming I could feel the tension in my shoulders. After getting to work I went to talk to my principal. He was really cool about it and really calmed me down. He asked me what keys they were and what they looked like and then told me we'd try to find my keys and if we didn't we'd get me some more keys. I still wasn't happy about losing my keys, but at least the panic subsided.
My principal asked me where I thought I had lost them and I told him that I thought they had probably fallen out of my pocket in the parking lot when I took my gloves off, but in the dark I couldn't find them. He said what I'd been thinking which was to check the parking lot once it got light again. Unfortunately, school starts at 9 am (I start work at 8 am) and this time of year it isn't light yet by 9 am. However, partway through first period he came into my classroom and tossed me my keys. I started to ask where he found them, but then I realized there was still snow and water on them.
I was so happy to have my keys back! What had started as a rough day became a good day. We had an early dismissal (at 2 pm) and then a community Halloween Carnival (in the school gym) from 3-5. I don't live in an area where people can go trick-or-treating, but apparently all the local kids go. One of my friends had invited me over to pass out candy at her place, but after yesterday I was too tired and so I didn't go (plus I'm presenting about China tomorrow night and so I will have a really long day tomorrow and still have to finish preparing my presentation).
By the time yoga ended we were approaching dark (next week when we are no longer on daylight saving time it will definitely be dark before yoga ends at 6 pm) and I needed to talk to the custodian and gather up my things before starting home on my four-wheeler. I put on my winter gear (coat and rain paints - because it isn't cold enough for my snow pants yet) since the temperature was somewhere in the teens and then went outside to start my four-wheeler and get it warming up while I finished putting on my gear (hat, gloves, scarves). I then drove about 2-3 miles home.
When I got home I reached in my pocket for my keys and they weren't there. Panic set in. I raced back to school thinking I had probably dropped them in the parking lot when I pulled my gloves out of my pocket. Unfortunately, it was mostly dark by the time I got back to school. I looked through the parking lot, but couldn't find them. I went back into the building (which was still open because there was middle school basketball practice going on in the gym). The custodian had closed my door when he finished so I couldn't get into my classroom, but I share a back porch with two other classrooms. One has the entrance directly across from mine and was clearly locked so I went to the other on. That teacher had a post-it note on the door which said not to disturb him unless you were his wife. Obviously, I'm not his wife, but I walked in anyway. He was apparently taking part in a webinar or something. I simply told him, "I know I'm not your wife, but I can't find my keys" as I walked though his classroom, through the porch and then into my classroom. I checked my desk (hoping I'd simply forgotten to pick them up) and the drawer where my four-wheeler key had been (hoping I'd dropped them when I picked it up, but no luck.
I then started driving slowly back toward home checking for my keys. Part-way there I had some other thoughts of where they might be at school (I really couldn't figure out how they could have fallen out mid-route). I went back to school, looking once more in the parking lot before going back into my classroom (I had left the door cracked open just in case) and checked on the floor around my desk. I thought, "maybe I missed my pocket altogether." Still, no keys. I pulled the door shut and drove home at 10 mph searching the ground the whole way. The further I got the larger the pit in my stomach grew. I got home and knew I had to find our how to get a new key because I couldn't get into my apartment. I live in a building that use to be the officers' quarters when it was an air force base and the students from the boarding school live in the next building in what used to be the enlisted mens' quarters. I walked over the student dorms and explained what happened to the front desk and asked the lady working there if she knew who I needed to talk to. She did and his office was just down the hall (the answer was the director of residence life). By this point it has been more than an hour since I left school the first time. I'm cold, hungry (it's 7:20 pm), frustrated and depressed. Luckily, the director was able to find another set of keys (both front door and my suite), but he did have to walk over there with me (not that he complained a bit).
After I got into my apartment, I sent my principal a text message telling him that I had lost my keys. My heart was in my stomach. He never answered and I don't think I slept too well last night. This morning while I was swimming I could feel the tension in my shoulders. After getting to work I went to talk to my principal. He was really cool about it and really calmed me down. He asked me what keys they were and what they looked like and then told me we'd try to find my keys and if we didn't we'd get me some more keys. I still wasn't happy about losing my keys, but at least the panic subsided.
My principal asked me where I thought I had lost them and I told him that I thought they had probably fallen out of my pocket in the parking lot when I took my gloves off, but in the dark I couldn't find them. He said what I'd been thinking which was to check the parking lot once it got light again. Unfortunately, school starts at 9 am (I start work at 8 am) and this time of year it isn't light yet by 9 am. However, partway through first period he came into my classroom and tossed me my keys. I started to ask where he found them, but then I realized there was still snow and water on them.
I was so happy to have my keys back! What had started as a rough day became a good day. We had an early dismissal (at 2 pm) and then a community Halloween Carnival (in the school gym) from 3-5. I don't live in an area where people can go trick-or-treating, but apparently all the local kids go. One of my friends had invited me over to pass out candy at her place, but after yesterday I was too tired and so I didn't go (plus I'm presenting about China tomorrow night and so I will have a really long day tomorrow and still have to finish preparing my presentation).
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Sometimes you just have to be flexible
This morning I went into work and was expecting it to be business as usual. I had my mind on what we were going to do in my chemistry class, but when I walked into my classroom I saw a couple of test papers sitting on my desk. The tests were for a World Geography class and one of my academic support students had taken them yesterday. I decided I should immediately get them into the interdepartmental mail (World Geography is taught on our other campus) and so I went to the office to do that. I'd never sent anything via interdepartmental mail before so I asked the principal how to do so. He was speaking with the assistant principal, but that isn't an unusual thing so I didn't think anything of it. He told me the drop box was in the district office so after I filled out the envelope (I did know how to do that it was more that I didn't know where the envelopes or the drop box were), I headed to the district office. I asked the ladies there where the box was a popped it into the bin. Then my day began to change.
One of the ladies, C, told me that we had no water and wouldn't for at least six hours. I replied that I'd been at the doctor's office one time when they lost water and had to shut down. Surely, as a school we couldn't, by law, have school without water. I, then told me that in the past when we were notified in advance school was canceled. C and I told me that they would still have to work, but they thought school would probably be canceled. I went back to my classroom to work because no matter what happened, I had plenty of work to do.
As I was working I got an alert of my watch. It was through my app for the local radio station and it said, "No school at SHS in Galena today due to water issues." At first this excited me because I could really use an extra day off. Then I went to talk to my coworker, K. We hadn't heard anything official yet, but she suspected we would have to go over to the other campus and hold classes there. That didn't seem possible to me, but I started think we might still have to do something on the other side (that's how the campuses are always referred to as this side and the other side, depending on where you are when you say it).
I went back to my classroom to continue working and then a few minutes later the principal came in to officially tell me the plan. We would go over to the other campus and basically babysit the kids when they didn't have classes for the other side. He asked me if I had any educational movies that would still hold the students' interest and I said I had The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. So I was going to head over there soon and pick up the movie on the way (I actually live in an apartment on "that" side).
Now you might be wondering, "didn't she post about a message saying school was canceled?" Well, I did, but it isn't that simple. The elementary school (prek-8)was canceled. The high school is actually two schools run sort of like they are two schools, but at the same time run like they are one school. Officially in Galena we have two schools (the Galena City School District also runs a boarding school and some of those kids live in Galena as well): Sidney Huntington School (the aforementioned SHS) and Galena Interior Learning Academy, better known as GILA. SHS is a prek-12 school for kids who live in Galena. GILA is a public boarding high school for students from anywhere in the state of Alaska. While the campus in town gets called SHS and the campus that was made from an old Air Force base gets called GILA the reality is the high school students enrolled in SHS and the high school students enrolled in GILA attend classes together and on both campuses. Thus, there are two issues with canceling the high school classes: 1) Only part of their classes are without water and 2) 230 of our 265 students live in a dorm. When they are not in class they have resident advisors and dorm aides who look after them. However, since this was a scheduled school day they are almost all off duty (there's one who runs the wellness room for sick kids and someone who runs the front desk, but otherwise it's an empty building during the school day). There's nowhere we can send them "home" to if we cancel school.
Thus, I took my papers and my computer to the other campus. I had just arrived and was about to head to my apartment to get my DVD when my principal stopped me. Change in plan. He'd had students asking about where I was because they wanted to ask questions on how to do academic things. He decided he was going to set me up in the dining hall and have me help students during the periods that they had me. Unfortunately, I had brought no books nor whiteboards (I have individual whiteboards that I use a lot during academic support since in academic support I am helping individual kids with whatever they need help on, mostly math). The dining hall director had a big easel pad of paper (because the GILA side is an old Air Force base the buildings are all separate buildings so the dining hall isn't next to any classrooms) and the art teacher was going to be working in the dining hall as well having the kids were on some art projects. She had some markers.
As the day progressed it eventually morphed into the kids attending their regularly scheduled classes in a variety of different locations. For the classes we made due with what we had available (Which was sometimes difficult because often the kids don't carry books around. For example the have a copy of their math textbook in their dorm room and then use another copy in class. I have additional copies in my classroom that they use when they come to academic support). Sometimes we had to get creative. For example, I had a student who needed to work on Algebra II. He didn't have a book, but one student had a book. So he used his phone and took pictures of the problems that he needed so he could work (actually several students did this). In another case a student needed to study for a trigonometry quiz (I was helping her). We started with practicing the problems on a worksheet she had previously done, but had with her and then I googled worksheets on the material she was studying and we used those problems to help her study.
Lunch was a bit challenging. Normally only about half of the students eat lunch on each side. Today all the students and staff ate lunch in the GILA dining hall. We started lunch ten minutes early serving the kids who were already in the dining hall first. Then the kids were dismissed to lunch by building to stagger their arrival in the dining hall. The food was a wider variety of items because more people had to be fed then were planned on. The dining hall manager kept encouraging people to leave the dining hall as soon as they finished eating. Before long we ran out of trays and people had to just balance their food in their hands (they were served in disposable serving dishes, but the individual items had to be balanced). Then, we ran out of seats and people were told to take plastic cutlery and eat outside in the grass (thankfully it was a sunny warm day, although warm is relative. The high today was about 55 F which for Alaska in October is quite warm). After a while she was kicking everyone out because they had to get the tables cleaned off to turn the dining hall back into classrooms (there were three classes, including mine, using the dining hall as their classrooms).
By the end of the day I had filled pages and pages (front and back) of the easel pad with lots of math and a decent amount of chemistry. Sometimes I had two or more students working simultaneously on different parts of the page (and on different subjects), but overall it worked.
After school was over I had a student asking me if first period academic support would be in the dining hall tomorrow morning. I told him the water was supposed to be back on by 2 pm (school ends at 3:55) so hopefully everything would be back to normal tomorrow. When I went to the SHS campus at 4:30, there it was still without water. I do hope everything will be back to normal tomorrow, but if not, I now know what I need to make the day more successful. I think everyone has learned enough that tomorrow will be an educational day even if we still have no water.
One of the ladies, C, told me that we had no water and wouldn't for at least six hours. I replied that I'd been at the doctor's office one time when they lost water and had to shut down. Surely, as a school we couldn't, by law, have school without water. I, then told me that in the past when we were notified in advance school was canceled. C and I told me that they would still have to work, but they thought school would probably be canceled. I went back to my classroom to work because no matter what happened, I had plenty of work to do.
As I was working I got an alert of my watch. It was through my app for the local radio station and it said, "No school at SHS in Galena today due to water issues." At first this excited me because I could really use an extra day off. Then I went to talk to my coworker, K. We hadn't heard anything official yet, but she suspected we would have to go over to the other campus and hold classes there. That didn't seem possible to me, but I started think we might still have to do something on the other side (that's how the campuses are always referred to as this side and the other side, depending on where you are when you say it).
I went back to my classroom to continue working and then a few minutes later the principal came in to officially tell me the plan. We would go over to the other campus and basically babysit the kids when they didn't have classes for the other side. He asked me if I had any educational movies that would still hold the students' interest and I said I had The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. So I was going to head over there soon and pick up the movie on the way (I actually live in an apartment on "that" side).
Now you might be wondering, "didn't she post about a message saying school was canceled?" Well, I did, but it isn't that simple. The elementary school (prek-8)was canceled. The high school is actually two schools run sort of like they are two schools, but at the same time run like they are one school. Officially in Galena we have two schools (the Galena City School District also runs a boarding school and some of those kids live in Galena as well): Sidney Huntington School (the aforementioned SHS) and Galena Interior Learning Academy, better known as GILA. SHS is a prek-12 school for kids who live in Galena. GILA is a public boarding high school for students from anywhere in the state of Alaska. While the campus in town gets called SHS and the campus that was made from an old Air Force base gets called GILA the reality is the high school students enrolled in SHS and the high school students enrolled in GILA attend classes together and on both campuses. Thus, there are two issues with canceling the high school classes: 1) Only part of their classes are without water and 2) 230 of our 265 students live in a dorm. When they are not in class they have resident advisors and dorm aides who look after them. However, since this was a scheduled school day they are almost all off duty (there's one who runs the wellness room for sick kids and someone who runs the front desk, but otherwise it's an empty building during the school day). There's nowhere we can send them "home" to if we cancel school.
Thus, I took my papers and my computer to the other campus. I had just arrived and was about to head to my apartment to get my DVD when my principal stopped me. Change in plan. He'd had students asking about where I was because they wanted to ask questions on how to do academic things. He decided he was going to set me up in the dining hall and have me help students during the periods that they had me. Unfortunately, I had brought no books nor whiteboards (I have individual whiteboards that I use a lot during academic support since in academic support I am helping individual kids with whatever they need help on, mostly math). The dining hall director had a big easel pad of paper (because the GILA side is an old Air Force base the buildings are all separate buildings so the dining hall isn't next to any classrooms) and the art teacher was going to be working in the dining hall as well having the kids were on some art projects. She had some markers.
As the day progressed it eventually morphed into the kids attending their regularly scheduled classes in a variety of different locations. For the classes we made due with what we had available (Which was sometimes difficult because often the kids don't carry books around. For example the have a copy of their math textbook in their dorm room and then use another copy in class. I have additional copies in my classroom that they use when they come to academic support). Sometimes we had to get creative. For example, I had a student who needed to work on Algebra II. He didn't have a book, but one student had a book. So he used his phone and took pictures of the problems that he needed so he could work (actually several students did this). In another case a student needed to study for a trigonometry quiz (I was helping her). We started with practicing the problems on a worksheet she had previously done, but had with her and then I googled worksheets on the material she was studying and we used those problems to help her study.
Lunch was a bit challenging. Normally only about half of the students eat lunch on each side. Today all the students and staff ate lunch in the GILA dining hall. We started lunch ten minutes early serving the kids who were already in the dining hall first. Then the kids were dismissed to lunch by building to stagger their arrival in the dining hall. The food was a wider variety of items because more people had to be fed then were planned on. The dining hall manager kept encouraging people to leave the dining hall as soon as they finished eating. Before long we ran out of trays and people had to just balance their food in their hands (they were served in disposable serving dishes, but the individual items had to be balanced). Then, we ran out of seats and people were told to take plastic cutlery and eat outside in the grass (thankfully it was a sunny warm day, although warm is relative. The high today was about 55 F which for Alaska in October is quite warm). After a while she was kicking everyone out because they had to get the tables cleaned off to turn the dining hall back into classrooms (there were three classes, including mine, using the dining hall as their classrooms).
By the end of the day I had filled pages and pages (front and back) of the easel pad with lots of math and a decent amount of chemistry. Sometimes I had two or more students working simultaneously on different parts of the page (and on different subjects), but overall it worked.
After school was over I had a student asking me if first period academic support would be in the dining hall tomorrow morning. I told him the water was supposed to be back on by 2 pm (school ends at 3:55) so hopefully everything would be back to normal tomorrow. When I went to the SHS campus at 4:30, there it was still without water. I do hope everything will be back to normal tomorrow, but if not, I now know what I need to make the day more successful. I think everyone has learned enough that tomorrow will be an educational day even if we still have no water.
Friday, September 7, 2018
So many boxes
I received a box with a six-month supply of contacts (I wear daily lenses so this is 320 lenses), but when I went to put the away in the bathroom I ran into a problem. When I got home, I opened the box while sitting at the table. However, the first box I found on the table contained light bulbs. The next box contained garbage bags and a third box contained canned lychees. I finally found the contacts on the floor beside the table. However on the floor was also a box of picture frames. By this point you are probably wondering, "what in the world? Why does she have so many boxes and why hasn't she put anything away?" Let me explain. First of all, as my fellow Bush residing friends can attest I can't just go out to the store and buy things. Here in Galena we have two general stores and hardware store. The stores do a really good job trying to keep things stocked, but it's neither easy nor cheap. For examples eggs cost $10 for 18 (I think it's $8 for 12). Milk is somewhere around $10-12 a gallon (I don't drink milk so I don't know) and a loaf of bread is $10. Additionally, one store sells gasoline for $6.95 a gallon while the other is $7.50 per gallon. Thus, while I buy gas and some other things, I try to buy as much as possible when I'm in Anchorage (or if I go to Fairbanks, Fairbanks; it's closer to here) and otherwise I order things.
I order a box of veggies every other week that arrives on Friday or Saturday depending on when the cargo plane gets here (its supposed to be Friday, but it often isn't). When I lived in Kobuk I used Full Circle Farms which is out of Seattle, but now I'm using the Alaska Food Network (AFN) which is based in Anchorage. I like AFN better because not only can I customize the size of each box I can include things like eggs, tortillas, and other things (depending on what they have available that week) as part of my standard order (with Full Circle Farms I could only add it on top of my order, thus adding to the cost). I also like the fact that AFN has (at least this time of year) Alaska Grown produce. I'm still shipping my vegetables a long way, but not all of them are coming from out of state.
Most of the rest of the items I buy I order online. Walmart charges a HUGE shipping fee to Alaska and a lot of staples of Amazon only ship prime pantry which doesn't ship to Alaska. Thus, I order things as a combination of Amazon and Target (who does ship free to Alaska, even rural Alaska). However, each of these choices comes with some trade-offs. Target often has better prices, but they only ship UPS. You might be wondering, "how is that a negative?" The problem is UPS only goes as far as Fairbanks. Once it gets to Fairbanks it is transferred to Ravn (a bush airline) and marked as delivered. However, it's not really delivered. Now it is simply sitting in Fairbanks. Ravn throws everything in a pile and they carry out the UPS delivery at the lowest priority (their own cargo shipping and all postal service shipping are higher priority). This means that your boxes may sit in Fairbanks for weeks. Ravn is also the airline that transports all 260 of our boarding school students so when the students arrived in town a few weeks ago that backed all the cargo up and I have a pile of boxes that say they've been delivered, but as far as I know they are sitting in Fairbanks. I say "as far as I know", because Target doesn't always put a phone number on the box and so I won't necessarily get notification (although last week they tracked me down through the school to let me know). Unfortunately, once the package arrives in Galena, I still don't have it. I have to go to Ravn and pick it up, but Ravn is open 10 am - 4 pm. I work a couple miles away from Ravn and I work 8-4. This means I can only pick packages up on Saturdays and Sundays (if it was really important I sure I could go during my planning, but I only have one every other day).
Thus, if Amazon will ship the item to a P.O. box in Alaska, that's the best choice (some things only ship to physical addresses which means it come UPS), but we're still not home-free. Best case scenario, the post office is open Monday-Friday 2-5 pm. Last week however, the post office was closed Tuesday-Friday. Monday was Labor Day so it was closed Monday as well. By the time it opened on Tuesday I had a HUGE pile of boxes (which I have then been too busy to entirely unpack and put away). Next week the post office will be open on Monday (and I think Friday), but then it will closed until the following Friday. There's a part-time opening at the post office. If anyone wants to move to Galena and work part-time at the post office many of us would be eternally grateful.
Now before you think, "she's crazy for living there," I should say there are a lot of positives including a really great community. On Monday we had an awesome Ag Fair which I hope to write a post about soon and on Sundays we have a potluck lunch after the church service each week. Also people share with each other. Many people have gardens and they share their bounty and others share their fish and hunted meat. Despite all the negative things mentioned it does seem to be a really nice place to live.
Friday, August 10, 2018
A hilarious series of errors
So if you read my last post you probably realize that by now I have arrived in Galena. I haven't made any posts on Galena itself and I will later, but I want to share a hilarious series of events that had me in stitches today.
On Wednesday we started new teacher in-service and this afternoon while I was in the meetings one of the administrators came and told me that the business office didn't have my direct deposit information which is super important because we get our first paycheck (plus our signing bonuses on the 15th). It's also super important because Galena doesn't have any banks (although remote deposit on my phone does make that a lot better than when I lived in a village prior to remote deposit and mobile banking apps). We called the business office and it was discovered that they did have my direct deposit form, but I had made a mistake on my health insurance form and needed to fix that. One of my colleagues was in fact missing her direct deposit form and so our supervisor wanted us to go to the business office to correct these issues right away. The only problem was that our school is on two campuses that are about three miles apart (for a town of less than 500 people Galena is incredibly spread out) and the business office was of course located on the opposite campus from where our training was being held. Neither my colleague nor I have had our vehicles arrive and so since we didn't have our own transportation our supervisor pointed out the window and said, "see that Toyota? Why don't you two take that and go together. The keys are in the car." Our supervisor went back into the training, we picked up some things from our seats and then headed out to the car. When we got out there we realized there were two Toyotas side by side and we each thought he had been pointing to a different car. I said, "well, he said the keys were in the car..." and proceeded to look for keys hanging from the ignition. The left car had keys in the ignition and the right one didn't. So we got into the left car. My co-worker just didn't feel it looked right and we were a bit afraid we were going to take off in the wrong car so we looked around and I found a piece of mail laying face down on the console. I picked it up, turned it over and discovered it was addressed to another district employee (at least it was one we knew). We laughed and climbed out of the car. At this point my coworker wanted me to drive (originally she had wanted to drive) and I replied, "no way, I'm not driving now." We went back to the car on the right and I discovered there was a set of keys in the cupholder. We started toward the new part of town where the other school is located, but I still felt a bit nervous. I looked through the glove compartment and breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered the insurance car which said that the car was insured by the Galena City School District.
We got to the new part of town and discovered another problem. Neither of us had done any driving and we didn't actually know how to get to the school. I thought we should turn right on the road that went past one of the local stores that I recognized, but after we turned I thought we were wrong so we went back the other way. After a while we're both going, "I've never seen this before" and decide we've gone the wrong way. We go back to the original road and in fact find the school.
We take care of our business and head back to the car. I don't know what was going through our minds, but I suspect it was my fault. In the district office we had picked up a medium sized flat rate box (not a very big box if you're not familiar with U.S. priority mail boxes) that I had shipped. The box weighs a very surprising 47 pounds 6.2 ounces and is not easy to carry. I think because I was struggling with the box I walked to the first car, put the box in the back seat and climbed in the passenger seat. My coworker followed (if this isn't how it actually transpired, I'll still accept the responsibility). We started driving back to the GILA campus and my coworker is like, "is this the right car?" Then the seat belt alarms started chiming (no one in Galena wears a seat belt) and my coworker said, "It didn't do this on the way." I look in the glove compartment and don't see the insurance card where I left it. Finally I found it, but it was buried under other documents. I was starting to worry we were in the wrong car, but after finding an insurance card registered again to the Galena City School District I reassured myself. Right after I finished reassuring myself, my coworker tells me she had to move the seat when she got in. At that point, I exclaim, "We are in the wrong car!" I remembered that we got into a car parked near the stairs leading into the school, but when we had arrived two other employees and been parked over there in a truck and I had watched them get out. The view was wrong to have been parked anywhere near where we grabbed this car from. My coworker also pointed out that the keychain was bit different. We drive back to school and I'm dying from laughter and embarrassment, park the car where we found it and walk over to the correct car. As we approach I notice the window is rolled down and remember I that I had left the window rolled down. My coworker found jacket on the seat. Laughing all the way we drove the correct car back to campus stopping at my apartment to drop off the really heavy box. We got back just after the training session wrapped up for the day.
On Wednesday we started new teacher in-service and this afternoon while I was in the meetings one of the administrators came and told me that the business office didn't have my direct deposit information which is super important because we get our first paycheck (plus our signing bonuses on the 15th). It's also super important because Galena doesn't have any banks (although remote deposit on my phone does make that a lot better than when I lived in a village prior to remote deposit and mobile banking apps). We called the business office and it was discovered that they did have my direct deposit form, but I had made a mistake on my health insurance form and needed to fix that. One of my colleagues was in fact missing her direct deposit form and so our supervisor wanted us to go to the business office to correct these issues right away. The only problem was that our school is on two campuses that are about three miles apart (for a town of less than 500 people Galena is incredibly spread out) and the business office was of course located on the opposite campus from where our training was being held. Neither my colleague nor I have had our vehicles arrive and so since we didn't have our own transportation our supervisor pointed out the window and said, "see that Toyota? Why don't you two take that and go together. The keys are in the car." Our supervisor went back into the training, we picked up some things from our seats and then headed out to the car. When we got out there we realized there were two Toyotas side by side and we each thought he had been pointing to a different car. I said, "well, he said the keys were in the car..." and proceeded to look for keys hanging from the ignition. The left car had keys in the ignition and the right one didn't. So we got into the left car. My co-worker just didn't feel it looked right and we were a bit afraid we were going to take off in the wrong car so we looked around and I found a piece of mail laying face down on the console. I picked it up, turned it over and discovered it was addressed to another district employee (at least it was one we knew). We laughed and climbed out of the car. At this point my coworker wanted me to drive (originally she had wanted to drive) and I replied, "no way, I'm not driving now." We went back to the car on the right and I discovered there was a set of keys in the cupholder. We started toward the new part of town where the other school is located, but I still felt a bit nervous. I looked through the glove compartment and breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered the insurance car which said that the car was insured by the Galena City School District.
We got to the new part of town and discovered another problem. Neither of us had done any driving and we didn't actually know how to get to the school. I thought we should turn right on the road that went past one of the local stores that I recognized, but after we turned I thought we were wrong so we went back the other way. After a while we're both going, "I've never seen this before" and decide we've gone the wrong way. We go back to the original road and in fact find the school.
We take care of our business and head back to the car. I don't know what was going through our minds, but I suspect it was my fault. In the district office we had picked up a medium sized flat rate box (not a very big box if you're not familiar with U.S. priority mail boxes) that I had shipped. The box weighs a very surprising 47 pounds 6.2 ounces and is not easy to carry. I think because I was struggling with the box I walked to the first car, put the box in the back seat and climbed in the passenger seat. My coworker followed (if this isn't how it actually transpired, I'll still accept the responsibility). We started driving back to the GILA campus and my coworker is like, "is this the right car?" Then the seat belt alarms started chiming (no one in Galena wears a seat belt) and my coworker said, "It didn't do this on the way." I look in the glove compartment and don't see the insurance card where I left it. Finally I found it, but it was buried under other documents. I was starting to worry we were in the wrong car, but after finding an insurance card registered again to the Galena City School District I reassured myself. Right after I finished reassuring myself, my coworker tells me she had to move the seat when she got in. At that point, I exclaim, "We are in the wrong car!" I remembered that we got into a car parked near the stairs leading into the school, but when we had arrived two other employees and been parked over there in a truck and I had watched them get out. The view was wrong to have been parked anywhere near where we grabbed this car from. My coworker also pointed out that the keychain was bit different. We drive back to school and I'm dying from laughter and embarrassment, park the car where we found it and walk over to the correct car. As we approach I notice the window is rolled down and remember I that I had left the window rolled down. My coworker found jacket on the seat. Laughing all the way we drove the correct car back to campus stopping at my apartment to drop off the really heavy box. We got back just after the training session wrapped up for the day.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Final countdown
Tonight at dinner my aunt asked me if I was packed [for Galena]. I just looked at her. She then said, "What am I talking about you still have..." "3 days I replied." She counted them out and determined I had three more days and four more nights before I depart. My flight is on Monday at 6:00 am.
I have actually achieved quite a lot, but it feels like a never-ending list. I have had a physical, filled out a million new-hire documents, ordered transcripts, and requested a new copy of my teacher certification (I have to give the district an original copy and my previous district kept my original district copy of my certification). Last Saturday I shipped nine Rubbermaid Roughneck totes and this week on bought a Yamaha Kodiak 450. I pretty excited about the machine. I arranged shipping through the Yamaha dealer. They have a contract with Everets Air Cargo which supposedly gives me a better rate and they will deliver the four-wheeler to Everets, fill out the Hazmat form as well as the waybill. I was pleased with the shipping rate. The total to ship (by air) was $766.79. I was figuring it would be somewhere well over a $1000 so this was a nice surprise (The total to ship my totes was about $285; a decent price in my opinion as well). I still have a number of things to do, including, but not limited to: shopping for groceries, packing said groceries and changing my cell phone provider. When I lived in the bush before (if you go to my earliest blog posts they are about living in the village of Kobuk in the Northwest Arctic Borough) I had GCI as my cell phone provider. GCI is by far the best provider for Bush Alaska (matter of fact in many villages it is the only provider), but it's an Alaskan cell phone (and cable and Internet) provider and so when I was living in Los Angeles I switched to AT&T. From what I've been told AT&T has voice service in Galena, but not data. GCI has 3G.
For those of you who are accustomed to always having 4G or LTE this probably doesn't sound good, but it makes me quite happy. When I lived in Kobuk the service was only GPRS. I would click on a page and then go brush my teeth or do other chores before coming back to check and see if the page had loaded. Internet service in Kobuk was also really slow (and rather expensive) so I didn't bother to get Internet (I just used the school's Internet - the school was about 40 yards from my house) and my GPRS connection. When I moved to Nome the wireless and Internet service both improved, but neither was what you would consider good. When I arrived in Nome GCI wireless has Edge service. I also paid $70 a month for 1 Mbps Internet with a data cap of 10 GB per month. While I was in Nome the Internet improved. I still paid $70/month, but my speed increased to 3 Mbps. My data connection also improved. Nome upgraded to 3G (at the time AT&T still only had Edge so it was nice to be able to access the Internet better than my friends on AT&T). I'll have to see what I can get for Internet, but it seems that the possibilities are better in Galena today then they were in Nome a few years ago. Data is without a doubt better (and cheaper) so I'm not worried about that. Also, I should be able to port my number since it was originally a GCI number, if I can't things will be tough because my phone number is on so many things...
The other big thing I need to do is go grocery shopping. One of the things everyone who lives in the Bush does when they come into town is go grocery shopping (matter of fact it isn't unusual for high school students coming for sports and other reasons to shop for their families). I will stock up on meat, veggies and other perishable items which will undoubtedly be really expensive. Here is a link to my blog on prices in Kotzebue (back in 2011). I will pack the items into Rubbermaid totes because among other things they weigh only three pounds, much less than a suitcase. They are also easier to handle and tend to fit better on bush planes as well. I meant to take a picture of my totes as we took them to the airport last Saturday, but I forgot. Nonetheless, you can read about (and see pictures) of when I shipped to Kobuk. Looking back on my shipping to Kobuk post I see that 1) I packed things other than totes 2) it was raining when we went to the airport and 3) there were lots of people. I must say this year I shipped only totes (I've learned they are much, much better) and the day I shipped my totes this year was a sunny day. Also, I guess since it was still July at the time the post office wasn't crowded at all. Anchorage requires you to take shipments of boxes greater than two to the airport post office. The airport post office has a hand truck customers can use, but it can also get really busy. We went shortly after the post office opened and there was no one there. It was easy and quick to ship everything.
I'll get to Galena on Monday and start settling in. Hopefully, by the end of next week, I will be more settled and can start focusing on the start of the school year.
Here are a few other pictures from this summer...
I have actually achieved quite a lot, but it feels like a never-ending list. I have had a physical, filled out a million new-hire documents, ordered transcripts, and requested a new copy of my teacher certification (I have to give the district an original copy and my previous district kept my original district copy of my certification). Last Saturday I shipped nine Rubbermaid Roughneck totes and this week on bought a Yamaha Kodiak 450. I pretty excited about the machine. I arranged shipping through the Yamaha dealer. They have a contract with Everets Air Cargo which supposedly gives me a better rate and they will deliver the four-wheeler to Everets, fill out the Hazmat form as well as the waybill. I was pleased with the shipping rate. The total to ship (by air) was $766.79. I was figuring it would be somewhere well over a $1000 so this was a nice surprise (The total to ship my totes was about $285; a decent price in my opinion as well). I still have a number of things to do, including, but not limited to: shopping for groceries, packing said groceries and changing my cell phone provider. When I lived in the bush before (if you go to my earliest blog posts they are about living in the village of Kobuk in the Northwest Arctic Borough) I had GCI as my cell phone provider. GCI is by far the best provider for Bush Alaska (matter of fact in many villages it is the only provider), but it's an Alaskan cell phone (and cable and Internet) provider and so when I was living in Los Angeles I switched to AT&T. From what I've been told AT&T has voice service in Galena, but not data. GCI has 3G.
For those of you who are accustomed to always having 4G or LTE this probably doesn't sound good, but it makes me quite happy. When I lived in Kobuk the service was only GPRS. I would click on a page and then go brush my teeth or do other chores before coming back to check and see if the page had loaded. Internet service in Kobuk was also really slow (and rather expensive) so I didn't bother to get Internet (I just used the school's Internet - the school was about 40 yards from my house) and my GPRS connection. When I moved to Nome the wireless and Internet service both improved, but neither was what you would consider good. When I arrived in Nome GCI wireless has Edge service. I also paid $70 a month for 1 Mbps Internet with a data cap of 10 GB per month. While I was in Nome the Internet improved. I still paid $70/month, but my speed increased to 3 Mbps. My data connection also improved. Nome upgraded to 3G (at the time AT&T still only had Edge so it was nice to be able to access the Internet better than my friends on AT&T). I'll have to see what I can get for Internet, but it seems that the possibilities are better in Galena today then they were in Nome a few years ago. Data is without a doubt better (and cheaper) so I'm not worried about that. Also, I should be able to port my number since it was originally a GCI number, if I can't things will be tough because my phone number is on so many things...
The other big thing I need to do is go grocery shopping. One of the things everyone who lives in the Bush does when they come into town is go grocery shopping (matter of fact it isn't unusual for high school students coming for sports and other reasons to shop for their families). I will stock up on meat, veggies and other perishable items which will undoubtedly be really expensive. Here is a link to my blog on prices in Kotzebue (back in 2011). I will pack the items into Rubbermaid totes because among other things they weigh only three pounds, much less than a suitcase. They are also easier to handle and tend to fit better on bush planes as well. I meant to take a picture of my totes as we took them to the airport last Saturday, but I forgot. Nonetheless, you can read about (and see pictures) of when I shipped to Kobuk. Looking back on my shipping to Kobuk post I see that 1) I packed things other than totes 2) it was raining when we went to the airport and 3) there were lots of people. I must say this year I shipped only totes (I've learned they are much, much better) and the day I shipped my totes this year was a sunny day. Also, I guess since it was still July at the time the post office wasn't crowded at all. Anchorage requires you to take shipments of boxes greater than two to the airport post office. The airport post office has a hand truck customers can use, but it can also get really busy. We went shortly after the post office opened and there was no one there. It was easy and quick to ship everything.
I'll get to Galena on Monday and start settling in. Hopefully, by the end of next week, I will be more settled and can start focusing on the start of the school year.
 |
| Isn't she beautiful? |
Here are a few other pictures from this summer...
 |
| Anchorage is home to Lake Hood the world's largest seaplane base. |
 |
| This picture was taken at 11:17 pm. |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)