Empress

There are 4 restaurants in town: Empress, Bayside, Uutuku, and Bison Street. They all do carryout and delivery, but only the first two have a place to sit down and eat. They all are owned and run by Koreans. They all have similar menus with some specialties.

Empress is the more casual looking sit down joint with about 7 or 8 old Dairy Queen type bench booths. They have a big screen TV, and they may have the largest selection of ice-cream treats. They recently brought a Thai cook up from Los Angeles and have added some good Thai food to the menu. Empress is open for the noon to night crowd every day of the week. One of their delivery vehicles is a hummer!



Here's the Empress. I'll add the others later.

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Front Street

On the map it's labeled Shore Avenue, but everyone here calls the street that runs along the sound Front Street. There's even a big book called Front Street Kotzebue that sells for $50 in our bookstore that's full of black and white photographs of the street in different seasons over the years. (I would really like the book, but the only two page spread in the whole thing is a picture of the dump. What kind of statement is that?)

I wish I had taken some pictures along the street myself when I first got here or even early this last summer before the construction began. Right now the street's about halfway through a facelift. I believe the reconstruction project is scheduled to be completed next summer.




This is looking southwest down the street. Over the years, Front Street had eroded, and what was the functional (dirt) road was creeping into the yards of the houses and businesses along it. The project includes widening it and building a seawall to avoid further erosion.



This picture is looking northeast. Earlier this summer there would have been no street where you see the trucks. The project also includes some pull-out observation spots (since this is such a heavily traveled & toured spot?!) The lights are of course new. I'm not sure what else will be done.


Here you can see the seawall. Where I'm standing there used to be a dirt ramp down to the ice that people used to get to the snow machine trails and that I used to get out on the ice to ski. I'm hoping they still leave a spot because you can see there's a big drop from the wall to the water.

Speaking of the water, can you see the ice in it? This time of year is called freeze-up. Here's a little video I put together (in about 5 minutes so don't expect much) about it.

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Glitchy Indeed!

Regarding technology, Selawik was not the smoothest trip. I already wrote about how I lost a whole blog post (of course maybe that was best being that it was at the beginning of my trip when things were a little more bleak...maybe it wasn't a very positive post).

Then, Thursday afternoon, my new iPod seemingly died on me (read "panic")! So, I had often run the battery on my old iPod all the way down. When it gets low, the battery symbol turns red and gives a low battery notice starting at about 20% battery power I think. If you ignore it, at some point it just shuts off and won't do anything. However, when you put it on the charger, it acknowledges that it has been plugged in and is receiving power.

Wednesday night I had fully charged my new iPod because I use it in some programs to play a song or sounds. I didn't use it much, so it should have had plenty of power. I turned it on to check email at the end of the day. I didn't notice how much of the battery indicator was showing, but it was definitely still green. I set it down for 5 - 10 minutes, and when I picked it back up, it wouldn't turn on, no sign of life. I plugged it in to the charger for a while, no sign that it was charging. I fiddled with it for a while that evening and nothing. I concluded that for some freakish reason my iPod died. Disappointed and bored (all of my entertainment - books, music, podcasts, social media...were on it), I texted my brother about it. He mentioned charging, but that didn't seem to be the problem. A school district employee who was staying there also mentioned that hers had discharged so much as to be nonresponsive before also. I charged for a while but later gave up and went to bed.

On Friday I punched the power button a few more times - nothing. Then, strangest thing, as I'm back at the office moving my things from my work computer bag to my backpack, I touch the iPod and it's showing the low battery-need-to-charge symbol. Now, with just a little bit of charging here at home, it seems to be working normally - *sigh*

I'll investigate more this weekend but am relieved and happy to have it back for the moment. I'm disappointed, though, because I missed some photo ops in Selawik and on my flight back. The best was of our copilot - the pilot's 4-year-old son. He was the best in-flight entertainment around!

I'll throw in some of just a few pictures I took in Selawik on Wednesday evening. Keep in mind that Selawik is situated in a wetland. They have an elaborate system of boardwalks all around the village that they use for walking and driving Hondas. They're all wood (in a place with no trees), and some parts of it are in better repair than others. My pictures don't do it justice - it's really a pretty big system of boardwalks.



There are 2 rivers between the airport and school. This is the boardwalk over the bigger one.







Like I said, some parts are in better repair than others.




In the next one I was on the bridge trying to get a picture of the smoke coming from the dump. Tuesday evening someone set fire to their trash in the dump. It spread around the whole dump and was still smoking when I left on Friday.




I think there are some firebugs in Selawik. My first summer here they were building a new building for the Friends Church. They finished and dedicated it some time in March, I think. I'm not sure if it was even a month later that someone burned the new building down.



The back of the school.



They have windmills too.
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Selawik Summarized

I'm back in Kotz, and it's always a good feeling to look back on a village trip and all the work you accomplished. On that note, I recently got to tally program numbers for a whole fiscal year which reflects my work. The year starts October 1, so all the reports to summarize and justify work done during the last year are being compiled this month. This is my first full fiscal year showing all of my program work. After I entered everything a week or so ago, I took a shot of the summary or tally.



These are just school visits and don't include classes going to the visitor center or all of the summer programs. The first number is the number of participants. The second is a count of how many programs were given. I think I can say I've been working hard!

Back to Selawik, I gave 19 programs across 4 days, 2 of those being travel days. Each program is about an hour long. I haven't tallied the number of students, but I believe Selawik is second only to Kotz in size. Most grades in Kotz have 3 classes per grade level where Selawik only has 1, so the class sizes are actually larger. Here are a couple of pictures I was able to take. I get caught up in the program and don't tend to take many pictures, so it's not much. The 1st grade teacher did give me a cd of pics he took, but I haven't seen them yet. PreK, K, and 7th grade teachers also took pictures. Maybe they'll send me some.



These are highschoolers chopping up plants to make medicinal oils. The best thing was to hear one of the girls say it was more fun than she thought it would be...words not often heard from a teen!




After they followed the recipes and cut up a mixture of plants and added some oil (like olive oil), I heated them for several hours in a water bath. The next day they strained out the plants, put their medicinal oil in a little plastic bottle I had for each one of them and made a label with cool stickers I had made with magazines and a label maker.



Here I was getting GPS units ready to use with a large class of challenging 7th graders. It's a feat to teach a large group how to use a GPS in an hour, let alone this one, but we did it. I had already done a program with them, so I went in like a drill sargent barking orders and taking no nonsense, but it allowed us to stay on task, finish the activities, and get all of the units turned back in without incident. I had gone out the evening before and stashed several marked rocks all around the school. Then I entered the coordinates of one of the rocks in each of the units. Their last activity was to locate the rock and give it to me in exchange for a prize. They did well and liked it. The funniest thing to me, though, is how much they complain about the cold. You can't give in to their whining or you'd never get them to really learn the GPS. I just give them a hard time about my being able to take the cold better and I'm not even from the Arctic. (It's not even really cold yet, no snow on the ground even.)

Selawik presented some challenges, and I'm glad it's behind me for this year, but I think it turned out well, and I have some helpful notes to self for next year.

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Glitchy Selawik

Ok, last night I spent a good chunk of time writing a blog entry, and it didn't work. I'm planning to be more brief before I try it out tonight. The summary... I'm in Selawik, day 2 of 4. I have my new iPod with me and was actually fortunate to run into the district's IT tech out here because he was able to get my new device logged on the school's wireless network, and I'll be able to use it at all the schools. I knew some of the apps don't work on the school's network, but it looked like my blogging app was working last night. So I wrote up an entry, added some pictures (because I can do that now with my iPod camera!). However, when I hit "publish," my entry disappeared. Disappointing! I tried to go to "manage blog" to find it, but that just shut the whole app down. So, now I'm on the blogger site through Safari; we'll see how it goes.

Well, I can only post 1 picture at a time, grr. Here goes, hopefully it will post.

Test Drive

Ok, this is what I've been waiting for...iPod with camera for instantaneous blogging (at least when I have wi fi)

To date, if I wanted to include photos in the blog post - and let's face it, that's what everyone wants - I had to have my camera with me, transfer photos to computer (which meant I had to wait 'till I was home if I wasn't), and wait for my slow processor and website to upload the photos to blogger. There have been numerous times that i just gave up or ditched the blog because the news was old by the time i git to it.

Now, with the iPod 4, I can take pictures, start writing my post, and publish as soon as I have wi fi -- all from the same, super portable device. So you see, it's a sacrifice that I'm making for you, my host of readers!

I read the reviews before, and I know that substantial camera quality was sacrificed for device size (it's very slim), but I think the quality will be good enough to get the idea across and will be a worthwhile tradeoff.

This post is my test drive. I got my device all set up today while I stayed inside and read. It was the perfect day for it being cold, drizzly & gray. So, while it was syncing away, I curled up next to Smoky to read some more of Cold by Bill Streever (appropriate title, no?). It's a very good book that discusses the phenomenon of cold through science, history, literature, and personal anecdotes. Friends & family, let me know if you'd like to read it; I'll send it to you when I'm done. Anyway, here's a picture of the book...taken on this iPod late in the evening, not with the best lighting, but that's what I had to work with at the moment. I'll try to find something better soon, although tomorrow promises to be just as miserable.




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Noorvik - Take 3

I'm feeling like a regular in Noorvik, AK.  I just came back from 3 enjoyable days in the school.  Programs went well -- a relief since I'm overextended right now -- and people were friendly.  It's always fun when there's also something extra going on while I'm visiting a school.  Noorvik was where the 2010 Census was kicked off.  Census dignitaries came out and were hauled around in dogsled.  The town shared meals of caribou stew, muktuk, and other traditional foods.  Media personalities put their gloves on.... 

Mike Burns, Principal Doyle Horton, Asst. Principal Sherrie McKenzie

It just so happened that while I was there, Mike Burns, the Deputy Regional Director of the Census, was there to present awards to the city of Noorvik and the school for their help in raising interest and kicking off the census.  Now that Noorvik is back in the business of Eskimo dancing any event will, of course, include a sample.  There are more kids involved since last November, and many of the kids look like they've been doing it forever.  Here's a little snippet.

(Just a note on the video, it's taking HOURS to upload.  I had it going last night and woke up to a message that the server timed out, so we'll see how it goes today.  I also have it uploading to my Flickr account, so if it doesn't upload directly through this site, I'll link to Flickr.)

The assembly took place after my last program; I was just waiting for the plane to arrive.  The principal let the kids keep practicing for the half hour between the end of the assembly and the end of the school day, so I stayed to watch them practice.  By this time, I had been to all the classes, and the kids were very friendly (most remembered my having been there last year).  One girl saw me taking pictures and wanted to do some photography of her own, so I let her take the camera.  Here's some of what she took.

Noorvik Aqqaluk School - Eskimo Dancing

Girl wearing traditional "atikluk"