It has been weeks since I have posted. But a whole lot has happened since Halloween- both fun and work- and my free moments are spent sleeping, not on the computer.
Sure, my job is tiring. And sure, I keep plenty busy to keep me needing sleep. But no, I don't need sleep THAT bad...but what else is there to do when it is dark? For instance, right now, it is 11am, and it feels sort of like early sunrise. There is no sight of the sun rising yet, but its not really dark. It is dawn-ish. So what do my eyes want to do? Sleep, naturally. All this darkness makes a person LAZY. It is not nearly as dark as it will be- but it is dark, much darker than home. And for me darkness means sleep time. It is that simple. So when I get home instead of being extremely productive like I usually can be, I sit on the couch and think about how early is too early to go to bed. When I am home (in Colorado) I can usually wake up and without ever seeing a clock guess the time with great accuracy. Here, I wake up and am completely clueless to the time. It could be 9am just as easily at it could be 8pm or 2:30am. My internal clock is ridiculously incorrect these days. Which is kind of a fun, mind-boggling, event each day and night. But also, can throw a person off.
With shorter daylight hours, and more darkness, come more coldness. Its not been too miserable at all yet. It is bearable or sure. We had one sorta-kinda blizzard which brought some snow- but really, there is not tons of snow. There are snow drifts from the wind. The temperature all the days this week were within 5 degrees of 0. I don't think the actually temperature got below -2 or above 10, but with wind chill and humidity the coldest it felt like was like -13 or so. Which, believe me I was cold. But, not really very many other people were. haha. I wonder if I will survive January, when with wind chill it can be something like -50. Hmm...that will be wild!
With the snow on the ground we have officially made the switch from fall to winter. It is most noticeable by looking at the lagoon behind my house. No more boats... Instead, dog sleds. :) They have begun taking the dogs out everyday for training. When there are not dogsleds, there are ice fisherman, cross-country skiiers (that's me!), and snow-go's (snowmobiles). It is very fun to see. It is hard to tell there was ever even water behind my house- as far as anyone can tell, it was just a big patch of grass.
The Northern Lights have been out a lot more this week than the last few weeks. I saw them a few times this week to or from school. I saw them from my bedroom window yesterday. But unfortunately I have not snapped a picture. They go away FAST! And. I often am not prepared because I need my tri-pod, and camera and everything. Not to mention that it won't really work in town. There is a lot of other light to ruin the picture, It would be best if I could get even just over the bridge to cemetary hill to not have any light pollution. But I am on a mission..hopefully I can even do it tonight!
In other news and updates:
-Last week I was able to to go to one of the villages, Noorvik, about 700(ish) people. We played Volleyball there. Kotzebue defeated the bears! :) It was fun. It was was neat to see the village. Basically, the exact same thing as here, but smaller. Still the same things existed. I was absolutely floored to hear my volleyball team make jokes about 'the Natives." In the villages, many people are more Native. By this, I mean that in Kotzebue there are more non-Natives. Many of my students are 3/4 or 1/2 Native. IN the Villages, many more people are around that are full Native, fully Inupiaq. And they girls from Kotzeube were making fun of this! It broke my heart to see and hear that. Why on earth is that they way it is!?! They are all Inupiaq, and all share the same culture. I could not believe it. Interesting, huh? It made me sad to think that a few more years of that kind of treatment and much of the Native traditions and culture will be lost.
- My Volleyball is playing against Nome this weekend. We are playing both today and already played last night. We won both games! And really well! This is big news because they lost to Nome in October when we went there to play them. It was neat to see the girls be so excited.
-KEVIN COMES IN 11 DAYS. I am VERY excited. :)
That is all for now. More to come I am certain. :)
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