Village Life

I thought I'd share a few facts with you about Manokotak so you have an idea what life is like here:

Manokotak is about 350 miles southwest of Anchorage.  There are about 450 people in the village (97% are Native).  It sits on the Igushik River.  Manokotak is a Yup'ik Eskimo village with a fishing, trapping, and subsistence lifestyle. The sale, importation, and possession of alcohol is banned in the village.

 We have 125 K-12 students in our school.  I am teaching 7-12 Social Studies, which consists of one Geography class, two American History classes, one 7th Grade Social Studies class (Ancient World History), one 8th Grade Social Studies class (Medieval World History), and one Government/Civics class.  Yes, this means I have to come up with 25 lessons a week (I only had to plan 10 last year...)!  Lucas teachers a remedial math class, 7th Grade Reading, 7th Grade Writing, a math test prep-class, middle school PE, and high school PE.  We spend a good chunk of our Sundays (and sometimes even Saturdays) in school to keep up with our planning/grading.  We are also both taking a grad. class on Teaching in Rural Alaska that meets twice a month. 

When we've needed a break from time in school, we have had the opportunity to experience some very "Alaskan" things! :)  Labor Day weekend, we had two invitations to go out on a boat.  Sunday, Larry (our awesome tech. guy at school and Manokotak native) took us out on his boat for some fishing as sight-seeing.  I looked stellar for these adventures! :)

The next day Kirk (science teacher) took us out on his boat.  We threw a net in hopes of getting salmon, then went berry-picking on the tundra.  The berries (blue, black, and a few cranberries) are super tiny and pretty seedy, but it was fun to go.  Lucas got to play look-out because we were in bear country!

We have a few ziploc bags full of berries and a chest freezer full of salmon fillets now.  Lucas has gone down to the river (FYI: The river and village is 4 miles from the school and teacher apartments) just about every day (via 4-wheeler) to check the salmon net to see if we have anything in there.  It has a been a slow late summer when it comes to the salmon, but we have enough to eat salmon about once a week from now until Christmas.