If Only My Eyes Were Tiny Cameras...

Huge store!

Seal meat, moose fetus, Yup'ik name, basketball games, and a trip to another village by snow machine, what more could you ask for when living in an Eskimo village in Alask? What a week we've had!

Yum! Fresh produce :)

On Monday afternoon, right after school, a few of the other teachers and I got all bundled up, hopped on the snow machines and drove about thirty minutes away to visit the AC store in a neighboring village. Their store is bigger than ours and has more fresh produce and frozen foods than our store does, so it felt like we were in a huge store, like a Sams or Costco, but really it would have been viewed as a small store by any outsider. It took us around thirty minutes to get there and forty to get back, but it was only eight or nine miles away. There was a bit of overflow, which is melted ice, that we had to be careful to go around, but really it wasn't too bad of a trip. I wanted to take more pictures, but it's hard to do that while riding on the back of a snow machine that is only meant for one person.

At the store after a nice long ride

Cutting into the brain

Wednesday one of my aides went around finding out what all of my students' Yup'ik names are. She wrote them all down, then made them look very pretty and laminated it. It looked very pretty. She was almost done when she came back in and asked if I had been given a Yup'ik name yet. I said I hadn't and so she named me. She asked if I was the oldest, and when I replied yes, she named me Alqaq, which means big sister. It was exciting. I feel a little bit more like a member of the village.

moose fetus before surgery

A student's mother had caught a moose and when they were cutting her up, they discovered she was pregnant with twins. They decided to bring one in for the school to dissect. The science teacher allowed my class to come join. Not many students have ever seen a dissection here before, so they really enjoyed that. They were all impressed by how small the fetus was, because of how big moose are and they were also impressed with how similar a moose is to us when it comes to the intestines.

Spirit Line

Our crowded parking lot

That was on Friday. Friday also brought a basketball game to our gym. It was a lot of fun. The gym was packed! Many people showed up from the neighboring village to watch the game. In fact, two young men from another village came up and recognized me from our teacher dance. Seeing and meeting people from so many different places was a lot of fun.

Yummy seal meat!
Tastes like beef, smells like fish

Bright moon one day

I doubt next week will be as interesting as this week, but I do hope you enjoyed reading about the wonders of our village this week. The pictures are just a hint at how much fun it was to experience. I wish my eyes had tiny cameras in them so that I could have even more amazing pictures to show you. Keep yourself entertained until next week.