“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”

Alaska Vocab Lesson: Qaspeq, Kaspeq, Kuspuk

A Qaspeq (various spellings but qaspeq is the traditional and way to spell it in Yupik) is a shirt that is made out of calico (or other) fabric that is kind of like a thinner sweatshirt. It has a hood and a pouch pocket and is trimmed in ribbon or lace or most often rick rack.

Kuspuk is how you pronounce it, so sometimes it is written that way.

I bought one at the last Saturday Market that is purple and has black and purple Celtic knot ribbon for trim.

BSAR River Report

Bethel Search and Rescue (BSAR) gives updated information about local conditions, especially regarding the ice since that's a major way that people travel around here.

Here are ice thickness measurements taken at a few key spots
on November 18. All measurements were taken by chainsaw
with a 16” marked bar.
Kuskokuak Slough outside the mouth of the Kwethluk River: 14”
Kwethluk/Akiachak Y: No Bottom (didn’t hit water w/ 16” bar)
Upper End of Church Slough: 11”
Lower End of Church Slough: 14”
Lower End of Straight Slough: No Bottom
Straight Slough is very rough & there is a small OPEN HOLE midchannel
near the Upper End
Bethel – out in front of Brown Slough: No Bottom
Bethel – in front of Joe Lomack: No Bottom
Bethel – mid channel near Crowley: No Bottom

Message of Thanks from Mary Strasser

Thanksgiving is a time for reflection; a time to acknowledge the good things for which we are grateful. I’m grateful that there are great VISTAs like you who are giving a year of your life to fight poverty.

With so many people struggling through these challenging economic times, you represent a positive force. I also recognize that your service presents its own challenges, but I hope that it is also provides a sense of accomplishment -- knowing that you are serving your country, making it a better place for future generations.

I appreciate your hard work and hope that you will take time to spend the Thanksgiving Day with family or friends. Thank you.

Cultural Heritage Night

November is "Native American Heritage Month", so at the Cultural Center we decided to put on a series of events.  Tonight we had quliraq (tradtional story-telling) and yuraq (Eskimo dancing).  Two groups danced, and Quentin (the recruiter at the college) told two stories (Panik's Revenge and the End of Warfare and another story about how loons and ravens got their color patterns).

This picture is of the Bethel high school group dancing.  There are drummers in the back who keep the rhythm and sing/chant the song.  The girls/women stand and are wearing traditional dance headdresses made of fur and have dance fans made from woven grasses and caribou "beards".  The boys/men kneel or sit in front of the women and have dance fans made out of wood and feathers.

 

The same song/verse is repeated multiple times, going faster each time.  Sometimes there are alternating verses and parts where the dance is acted differently.

 There is a set dance group, but since many of the songs and dances are traditional and performed often many people know them and you can hear singing in the audience and by the end of the song there are more people on the stage dancing than there were in the beginning.

One of Quentin's stories was very appropriate for the evening because it talked about how drumming and dance developed and became a way for people to communicate their displeasure or dislike of someone's habits without directly saying it to them.  The dances all tell stories, and have particular movements to represent something.  One of the dances was about hunting for birds, and another one was something about smoking cigarettes, kind of making fun of smokers.  All of the dances and the stories Quentin told were very entertaining!

While I'm waiting and have been running around helping set up for our Cultural Heritage Night here at the Cultural Center I found out the Grant-Writing class in Hooper Bay was approved! 



I AM SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!

Saturday Market and Pizza

Yesterday we had a Saturday Market at the Cultural Center from 10-3pm.  This week we had more than 80 vendors!

Then Reyne and I stopped by Brother's Pizza to grab some food.  It's above the old Alaska Airlines terminal and you can watch planes taking off and landing while you eat.

Seal Meat

Mike the Librarian shared some of the dried seal meat he got from his grandmother-in-law with me.  It was very rich and oily (good for keeping you warm), with a fishy after taste.  It was pretty good, but I couldn't eat a lot of it because it was so rich.

In other news, here's the weather for today:

Really Bad Pictures of the Aurora

Well, so far I've only seen the aurora as kind of a hazy green tonight.  Don't get me wrong, it's still beautiful.  The pictures aren't that great and definitely aren't going to be made into postcards anytime soon, but it's something!

Aurora alert

I was all snuggled up in bed ready to close my laptop when someone posted that you could see the aurora in Bethel. ..so I quickly threw on anything that was in hands reach, grabbed a blanket and made a little Megan nest outside by Dull Lake so I could watch them. The aurora is getting bigger and brighter and has now expanded from a streak to a greenish haze covering half of the sky.

No School Today

There's no school today in Bethel due to poor road conditions and freezing rain.  I woke up to my window being completely iced over.  Ice is also wreaking havoc for all the Bush planes that haven't been able to land due to icy runways.

I heard that two buses were in a ditch. 

Some Sales Prices

The JV's and I piled into a car and went to AC for an outing.  I haven't taken pictures of prices in a while, so I thought I'd share some sale prices with all of you:

First Loaf of Bread

Nora the JV taught me how to make bread on Saturday, and then we baked it on Sunday and had some of it at dinner.

Icy Walk with Nora and Charlie

Today Nora and I decided to take Charlie on a walk around town.  Nora (a JV) and the JV's have been dogsitting Charlie while his owner is in Nepal for a month.

It got so warm in Bethel that it snowed, and then it got so warm that the snow turned to rain!  Which of course then froze and turned everyday walking into a skating rink.

The roads are covered in ice, and we've started wearing ice cleats/yaktrax so we don't slip and fall.

We had to stop by the dorms so I could put some different clothes on.  While I was in there, Charlie decided to go on the other side of the fence, and then wouldn't come back through.  I decided to try to coax him through with a muffin but he decided that he'd rather lay down instead....so I had to climb over the fence, pick him up, and hand him to Nora.

We all walked down to the river, that is now frozen.  There are a few holes downriver from us, but for the most part it is completely frozen over and with thick ice, too.  It is so thick that you can walk on it.  The ice doesn't freeze smooth or smooth-ish like lake ice does because of the current and because of chunks of ice smashing into each other like tectonic plates.

I tried to get Charlie to sit with me on a chunk of ice, but he wasn't having any of it.

"Charlie, can you sit?"  "Nope."

Later this evening I went back over to the JV's house where they had made a moose roast!

The Bunny House

In Bethel there's a man that has a whole bunch of rabbits in HUGE enclosures in his front yard.  Sometimes they escape, and you can see little New Zealand or Dutch bunny rabbits hopping around that area of town.  Charlie, Nora and I passed by the bunny house on our walk today.

Fishin'

Today I helped Don check the net he set in the river.  The net is strung underneath the ice and you use the poles the net is attached to to pull it out of the water. 

Presidential Election Broken Down

Alaska is one of those states that they automatically put as "red" on the electoral college map, but if you broke it down to areas, this is how the state voted:

For a brief moment on Tuesday night it was colored light blue instead of red.  The blue areas are in the Bush and are off of the highway system.  I think that red chunk in the panhandle is Juneau.

Here's a story done by KYUK about the election:  http://kyuk.org/y-k-delta-districts-favor-democrats-in-election/

Happy Election Day

Today is Election Day.  I stole this picture from one of the JV's.  I didn't vote in Alaska, I sent in my absentee ballot about a month ago (or at least it feels like a month ago).  The Cultural Center is a polling place so lots of people have been coming in today.

Cucuklillruunga means "I voted", coming from the root "cucuke-" meaning to choose or to prefer.

I took the library's copy of the Yup'ik dictionary and checked out some picture books because I have decided that I'm going to learn Yup'ik and stop being whiny about it.  My friend Rachel made a good point, saying that I didn't know Spanish the first time I looked at it.  So I'm going to do what I did with Latin, which is to read a passage, write it out, and then translate it using the dictionary; while also listening to my Yup'ik phrase CD and learning a phrase or word per day.

The first book I am reading is about marine animals, so if I ever get to the Sea Life center in Seward I might be able to talk about the animals in Yup'ik :)

Wind Chill Factor

I wish this chart weren't necessary.  You can tell how cold it is by either how fast the mucous inside your nose freezes or how fast your cheeks start burning. 

The winds here are insane.  Last week they were around 20 MPH and gusting over 30 MPH.  Because of this, everything in town is very "dusty" from all the sand blowing around.

Pumpkin Chunkin

Today the 4H Club had a "Punkin Chunkin" at the skate park.  People brought their jack o'lanterns and pumpkins from Halloween.  It was fun to watch, but had to climb into someone's car because it was below zero with the wind chill!

The Weather Report

Today it is 15 degrees F and feels like -3 degrees F.  Winds at 23 MPH, gusting at 37 MPH.

Walk on the Tundra and Ice Skating

Last Saturday I spent a good portion of the day going for a walk on the tundra and then going ice skating for nearly two hours on a lake that is right across from the dorm.  The ice here is so interesting, there is so much of it!  The tundra is much nicer to walk on now that it is more solid.  In fact, instead of wearing boots I can now wear my sneakers! (with really thick socks).

The beaver's infinity pool is now frozen.  My friend Ruffian and I explored around it to check out the lodge a little closer and take pictures of some of the ice formations.

 

Diane took a picture of me taking a picture of the ice:

 

Alright, alright, I'll post something!

There have been multiple complaints about me not informing everyone of the very exciting things in my life.  So this is a snapshot of what my day is going to consist of (while I am currently on hold with someone in Fairbanks):

Today my task is to get a grant-writing class prepped and ready to run in December.  This involves:

-Getting a schedule established with the adjunct professor we are hiring who currently lives in Anchorage
-Making sure that schedule works with the target participants in Hooper Bay, Chevak and Scammon Bay
-Coordinating to find a space to hold the class
-Trying to get the adjunct professor approved which means she has to submit a resume and syllabus
-Getting a sample syllabus from the rural development department in Fairbanks
-Sending pre-registration forms to Hooper Bay, Chevak and Scammon Bay for participants to sign up with their contact information and interest/needs/experience for/with grant writing

And just in case you wanted to know exactly what course it was...:

RD F250 Grant Writing for Community Development
1-3 Credits Offered as Demand Warrants
Basic elements of grant proposals and processes of preparing proposals for governmental and private funding sources.  Emphasis on applied skills through preparation of actual grant proposals.  Graded Pass/Fail.
Prerequisite:  ENGL F111X or Permission of Instructor