Last of the First Nine Weeks

Beautiful snow

It snowed today. Twice actually, although the first time isn't really what a lot of people would consider snow. Me, being from the southwest thought it was beautiful. Then, when I saw the real snow, I realized that the first snow was dull. This was majestic. I made myself a nice cup of hot cocoa just for the occasion, even though it isn't that cold out here yet. I also took some pictures just for my wonderful readers. Ah, what a wonderful place it is out here!

This week felt so very long! By Wednesday I was ready for the weekend. Of course, each weekend seems to become shorter and shorter. Or maybe that is just the days. My roommate told me that daily we are losing five minutes of sunlight, two and a half in the morning, and two and a half in the evening. It is extremely noticeable. Back home you didn't start noticing the night getting darker until daylight savings time. I wasn't expecting it to be so much darker already in the mornings.

But it is beautiful. Every morning as I leave my house to go to work I take a moment on my steps to look at the stars. They are magnificent! I can see so many more than I could even from our farm back home. The big dipper is right above us right now, making me feel like I could be scooped up into the sky any morning. It really cheers me up when I can wake up and look at the stars and the moon. It reminds me that I woke up for a reason this morning.

Mom's famous chili... yum!

I'm not a very good cook. That is probably one of the hardest things so far about living on my own in the remote Alaskan bush. If I screw up dinner, there is only one restaurant to go and solve my problems at. Unfortunately, the restaurant closes at seven so if I make dinner after then I can't very well do anything except try again. My mom is an excellent cook. You would think I would get some of those genes, but they skipped right over me and went to my younger siblings. My mom is great, though. She sent a care package with all the things (except meat) to make her famous chili. It was the highlight of my week when I got that package. I followed her recipe to the tee and my chili turned out fabulous! I even had the other new teachers over to try some and they loved it. If I keep following my mom's recipes so well, people are going to get the wrong idea!

Probably the worst thing that happened this week was something I put a lot of effort into. My kids made awesome dioramas of things we had been learning about. I was so impressed that I decided the kids should get to show off to their parents. I made cookies and invited all the parents to come to the classroom for just a half hour one day this week. I stayed until almost 5:30, an hour after I was supposed to be done, and no one showed up. Not one parent. They didn't want to come see the miraculous things their child had done. The other teachers told me not to take it personally, and I don't. They worked so hard on those things. That is the norm here, though. We have parent-teacher conferences coming up and the other teachers have said not to hold my breath, that the parents won't show up for that, either. It's just the way of the people here. I don't understand it, but that is the culture, I guess.

Big snowflakes!

The best thing that  happened this week was moving my classroom around. I don't have any pictures to put up on here. I didn't take any to show you, but let's just say it is completely reversed. I moved my desk to the opposite side of the classroom and it looks really different that way. It was a lot of fun, though. I also did a lot of reorganizing, so hopefully those two things don't add up and haunt me this next week, especially since report card info is due at the end of the week. I'm not looking forward to that, by any means!



I'll be teaching on weather, the thirteen original colonies, Alaska's original Natives, metacognition, short stories, and fractions. Maybe this last week of the quarter will be the most productive.