Gratitude
Uvlaalautaq and good morning everyone! I’m hopeful that you had a fantastic Thanksgiving time. It’s been a few weeks since my last blog and that’s just due to the busyness of my schedule. A lot has happened and I don’t like rushing my blog entries. Thank you and Taiku (Inupiaq for thank you). The more I thought about my previous blog entry, I realized that, though it offered a real perspective of my village, it was also somewhat discouraging. If I dwell for too long about some of the dark realities of my students, then I become depressed as well. I desire school to be one place where students can enjoy learning, feel safe, and be encouraged. So, in this blog entry, I want to focus on seven of the many things I am thankful for this month of November in Shungnak.
1. Bush Brawl Tournament – I had the opportunity to attend the annual district Bush Brawl wrestling tournament. Students from 4th grade through High School wrestled for two straight days. Shungnak had 11 wrestlers consisting of 9 boys and 2 girls. We had probably 20 schools participating all from above the arctic circle (except Nome, but nobody likes them anyways). Seeing students, parents, and fans interact with each other was truly special. Almost everyone has a relative living in another village, so in some ways it was like a family reunion.
It was great to watch and cheer on my students as they gave their all on the mat. I’m thankful for students who have a passion and enjoy participating in sports. There was one student in particular that I was thankful for who had never left for the village on a school trip because of behavior issues. This year the student has made incredible growth and showed that they were capable of controlling their emotions enough to attend the Bush Brawl. We had two first-place victories and another second-place winner.
2. First-year teacher friends – Having someone who is able to relate and understand is incredibly valuable when living in the Alaskan bush. I happen to have two great friends who are also first-year teachers living in different villages. I am so thankful for their encouragement and passion to teach their students and interact in their village. I had the chance to see these two, great people at Bush Brawl, where we ordered WAY too much Chinese food and talked about our experiences and struggles.
The crazy guy on the left is Brandon, the elementary music teacher in Kotzebue. The wonderful lady on the right is Becca, or as she prefers, “burly” Becca. Becca is always making me jealous with her stories from Selawik where she’s skinning seals, making wolf hats, and attending the Baptist church. I want to also praise the Lord for a lost soul that Becca was able to lead to the Lord this month at that small church. It’s amazing to see how God led and brought us to different villages in order to make an impact.
3. Our district art teacher – Once a semester, our district art teacher flies to our village and provides spectacular art lessons for our students. Our students absolutely love this week as it provides them an outlet for their creativity. I have one student who I’m so thankful for because she always brightens my day. Together we are working on her academics, but she absolutely excels in art. She has a natural talent that I wish could be developed. This was one of her projects from the past week.
4. Winter Wonderland – It’s fair to say that every day is another chance that the Alaskan Bush can take my breath away. Though we are currently getting around 4-5 hours of sunlight a day, it’s always a spectacular sight to see the sun rise (at around noon) over the surrounding mountains. I usually peek through a window a few times a day while in school because at 4:00pm the darkness returns. I’m also BLOWN AWAY by HOW MUCH SNOW we have. I always think to myself, “Wow this is the most snow I’ve ever seen in my life”. And the next day we get MORE snow. We have about 2-3 feet of snow on the ground right now. However, blizzards will blow and whip snow into giant drifts and if you’re not careful you can fall waist deep into a pile.
5. Students – How can I not include my students in my list? Though some days they drive me insane, they are also the best part of my day and my experience in Shungnak. Shungnak kids can sometimes be hard-hearted, lazy, and stubborn. However, they are also desperate for encouragement, willing to work hard on the things they care about, and students have a deep sense of community that transcends my own. I remember having a conversation with one of my elementary students who wanted me to use Google earth and show him my house in Atlanta. I zoomed in on my house and my student asked me if I lived in a village. I chuckled and said no this is a subdivision. The student then asked if the subdivision was my family. Did we hunt together? The student was slightly confused when I replied that we knew of just 3 families in our subdivision. I am thankful for my students’ sense of community and high regard of team work. This month my students earned behavior points and asked if they could have an all-nighter. I replied with a dignified, “BAHAHAHA ALL-NIGHT? Ya, no way. Sorry.”
However, I did agree to a 3-hour, after school video game and pizza party. What was absolutely unique was that after I baked the two pizzas and had the boys come in to grab slices from the school kitchen, the boys grabbed one, just one, slice each. There was no rushing to grab the biggest piece or anyone taking half the pizza at once. It honestly shocked me, but it speaks volumes on the unique unselfishness that these village kids possess when it comes to a group of people. I am thankful for everything my students are teaching me.
6. New experiences – On Thanksgiving Day, the village of Shungnak has a truly unique tradition. Every family in the village cooks a dish and then meets at the local church bringing with them bags of Tupperware. All food is then placed in the middle of the room for onlookers to salivate over and smell.
There was caribou, berries, turkey, soups, mac n cheese, noodles, salmon, salads, cakes, stews, chicken, ptarmigan, and even the delicacy, muktuk. All men in attendance don a kitchen apron and gloves and then proceed to serve the rows of women and children.
Women and children sit with their Tupperware, boxes, tinfoil, and plates, ready to choose their Thanksgiving meals. Instead of one family cooking an entire meal for themselves, each family cooks one dish and the community shares and combines to create a village-wide feast. However, the village does not eat together. The women of the village lug their selections home and there the household will eat together.
Unfortunately, for a bachelor like myself. I had no wife to collect food for me. Thankfully, the other teachers collected some truly unique cultural delicacies for me to try.
In this picture is a slice of bear meat and some muktuk. The bear meat was delicious; very gamey but similar to a roast. Muktuk. Doesn’t it just sound….delicious? Muktuk is the Inupiat delicacy of whale or seal fat. Let me just state that yes, I tried it. It has been checked off the list, haha. In all honesty, it didn’t taste too bad. The texture is what is unique. No matter how much you chew it, it will not break down into smaller pieces. Presumably, that must be why they slice it into tiny pieces. Sometimes they will boil muktuk and make it into an oil, liquid seal fat salad and soup dressing. The reason it is a delicacy is because our village is inland, along the river. We don’t get too many whales and seals like they do on the coast. I am incredibly thankful for new, cultural experiences that get me out of my comfort zone.
7. Lastly, I want to say just how much I appreciate my parents, grandparents, and friends who always offer me encouragement through their prayers and messages. I’ve had many people get in touch with me about my Lego project as well as offer to write and send letters to my local church and students. I am blessed to have the support and kindness that I receive. I am most thankful for God’s love, His guidance, and His reminders that I have to trust and depend on Him completely.
I’m sure they had no intention of being recognized, but I wanted to give a giant shout out to the Troester and Mickey family from Berean Baptist church. Both families wished to support me by providing some Lego people. I will be using Lego people to teach different cultures/time periods and also as a behavior incentive as students build their figure one piece at a time. I want to wish you a big Taiku on behalf of my students!
