Holiday Season in Atka

I love the light of the menorah against
the blurred backdrop of the Christmas
tree.

It's that time of year. Throughout the land, streets are decorated. Merchants fill their shelves with tempting gifts. Every doctor's office and elevator plays Christmas music. Back at home, houses are filled with the smells of baking. Christmas trees occupy a treasured spot in our homes. Mysterious packages in bright wrapping appear under trees.

Atka provides only a pale imitation of the holiday season. Trees are artificial, if they're decorated at all. No one has a fireplace or mantel to hang stockings from. Given the problems with mail delivery, Christmas shopping had to be done a couple of months ago. There are no merchants, elevators, doctors, or streets. And while we might sing about Rudolph and recite poems about the other reindeer, Christmas dinner is likely to be reindeer steaks from the local herd.

Nearly everyone on Atka is Russian Orthodox. In that religion, the major holiday is "Russian Christmas," which is celebrated January 7-9. The local custom, according to my students, is called "starring."

The celebrants walk in procession starting at the church and moving house to house, carrying a star. They announce that Christ has come, both in words and in song. The star gets spun at each home, which symbolizes the spirit of Christ entering that home. Then the homeowner serves food and drink to the celebrants, who visit for an hour or two. Over the course of an evening, they eat a complete meal. Of course, the schedule of whose homes to visit on which night--and in what order--is set ahead of time.

I've asked one of the local leaders if I can participate this year. I think it sounds like great fun.

On the topic of holidays, I introduced our students to Chanukah this past week. Only one student had ever even heard of the holiday. We watched a cartoon that told the story of Chanukah, then the kids played with dreidels while I cooked latkes. We lit the menorah candles, and then we ate. For the rest of the week, my students wanted to light the candles, even without all the other celebration. It makes me very happy to know that I introduced them to a facet of culture they didn't know before.

A Little Perspective

A colleague on the next island got a pilot to take these pictures of Atka for her. They show better than I could ever tell just how small the world seems from here. The "cul-de-sac" is the "new" village, where nearly everyone lives, except of course the teachers, who live near the school. The buildings along the beach road include the store and the post office. Just at the end of the road, before it turns to the right, is the cannery. It's a seafood processing plant that doesn't actual produce anything in cans, but I guess "cannery" is easier to say than "seafood processing plant."

This is a closer view of the cannery. They employ fishermen who bring their loads up to the dock, as well as people to work on the line. They also take finished product out to the dock where it goes on boats to barges in the next bay.

This is a view of the village from the bay. At the far right is the airport. The red roofed building beside the airport is the school. My house is the one on the right in front of the school. Then come the store, post office, and assorted buildings.

When I figure out how, I'll repost these pics with symbols to identify all the various locations. Meanwhile, maybe this will give you a better frame of reference for how tiny our village really is, as well as how beautiful it is!

Learning to Ride a Bike

The blue building on the right is the airport. The white one
on the left is the school. My house is in front of the school.

There are no paved roads on Atka, unless you count the airport runway. There are maintained gravel roads and unmaintained gravel roads. You could probably count the cars on one hand. Most people get around using 4 wheelers, or bikes in the local vernacular.

I have access to a bike. It was languishing in the garage for a few years, until the District's maintenance guy fixed her up with a bit of this and that. Mostly, she works fine. Getting into reverse is a bit tricky, since you can't really shift into it. Instead, there's a cable running beside the seat that you have to pull on.

The village as seen from across the bay

My friend, a.k.a. the maintenance guy, taught me how to ride the bike today. It's really the only way to get around the island, especially if you want to go where the critters are, i.e. reindeer and sea lions. We drove around the bay, riding in the hills and along the beach. We stopped about halfway at the city dock, which is well-removed from the village itself. I was able to look back across the bay and see the airport, the school, and the village. That's also where my friend took pics of me.

We didn't time our ride too well. The tide was coming in, so we rode through a lot of surf on

I can ride a bike! It's hard to tell that's me under all that
clothing. Of course it's me; I'm wearing purple!

the way back. Other than that, though, it was a lot of fun. Although riding through the surf and chasing waves was a lot of fun, too! I wore all the clothing that I'd been told to get before I got here but haven't needed. Long underwear, top and bottom. A fleece-lined flannel shirt. Jeans. Heavy socks. A fleece jacket. Balaclava (that's the hood that goes over the head and neck). Goggles. Neoprene gloves. I needed every bit of it. I forgot to put my gloves back on after taking a picture; my hands felt like ice by the next time we stopped! It wasn't all that chilly, but even riding at 15-20 mph, the wind was vicious!

An adult and juvenile bald eagle on top of a little cliff.
Probably a parent and child.

Next time I go out alone, I'll take the dogs with me. There's a basket for Shadow to ride in if he has to, but I'm betting he can keep up. Cody can probably keep up, too. Or they can both go back home and wait.

Halloween Carnival

Refreshments table, before donations.
I loved the Purell bottle! The student's
idea, not mine.

Very soon after the school year started, the kids asked me if we would be doing a Halloween carnival. I had no idea what they were talking about, but I told them yes, we'd probably do whatever they had done in the past. If I'd realized that I'd be the one responsible for doing it, I might not have agreed so quickly!

Having the responsibility for staging an event with a history is a delicate matter of balancing how it was done in the past and how logic dictates it should be done. Some concerns are easily ignored, like the suggestion that tickets needed to be red because that's the color they were last year. Other concerns have to be carefully considered. I found some flyers from last year, so I knew the event ran for 3 hours last year. I also knew from, hmm, let's say unsolicited advice from the community, that there were spans of time when nothing was happening. I also heard that some of the games, which are run by the secondary students, had no one attending them.

I wanted the kids to be responsible for putting on the carnival, but also accountable for how it turned out. I cut the hours back to 2. I also refused to have more games and activities than we had people to run them. I made signs that had the name of each game and the name of the student running it. Any student who wasn't at their station would be known by all to be shirking. I had 2 floaters to relieve the kids running the games so that they could play the other games. I changed the way we voted for "Best Costumes," so that everyone got to vote, but I limited the prizes to one in each age category: Child, Youth, Adult.

The kids were part of every decision, whether I made it or we decided as a group. They did all the actual labor in setting up and tearing down the carnival. The student in charge of refreshments baked all the cookies and cakes, made the popcorn, and kept the coffee coming. Some members of the community donated baked goods for the refreshments, along with prizes for the Cake Walk. I encouraged the kids to think of different ways to decorate, that we didn't have to do things the way they'd been done before. I also demanded a higher standard of appearance, like covering tables with paper in black, yellow, purple, or orange, rather than having bare furniture.

I'd say the event was a success. Many of the elders came, although they didn't play the games. They brought things for the Cake Walk, bought game tickets that they distributed to the younger kids, and then sat and watched the community as a whole have fun. When it was time to pull a ticket for the Split-the-Pot raffle, I asked the oldest of the elders to do the honors. We earned something like $350. Next year, we'll do some things differently, but I know what I'm getting into! Now the parents are asking about a Christmas pageant!

Math and Eagles

This is a juvenile Bald Eagle. My friend estimated
he was about 2 years old. And no, we don't really
know its sex.

I was a lazy student. I was also a perfectionist. Math teachers told me to show my work, but I was too lazy to do that. And check my work? But that would imply I didn't do it perfectly the first time!

Really, though, I struggled through Algebra I and II and Geometry. I didn't understand the underlying concepts, so I had to do everything by rote. Eventually, I ran out of memory space for math formulas. At some point, I started to get it, and acquitted myself nicely in College Algebra.

I was about 10' away from this eagle, creeping closer and
closer very slowly, and taking a pic with every step. Since
the camera is equipped with a telephoto lens, it looks like I'm
standing right next to him. I love that I was able to get his
face and those eyes!

And here is that same eagle, flying away when I got too close.

That's why it amazes me every day to hear the things that come out of my mouth while I'm teaching Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, and Geometry. Each class is taught one-to-one, so I have to understand the content, be able to find mistakes, and explain the corrections. And there's no textbook in the program to help me! I keep telling kids to show their work and that I can't help them fix their mistakes if I can't find their mistakes. I'm pulling phrases like "combine like expressions", "balance the equations," and "reduce fractions to lowest terms" out of some dusty cabinet in my brain. One of the test keys turned out to be lost, so I had to solve each equation on the test myself. I figured if my answer and the student's matched, then it was probably right. That doesn't really inspire confidence in a math teacher, does it? I owe my high school and college Math teachers a note of thanks. They managed to teach me when I wasn't looking!

We let the dogs run around the tundra for awhile.
Here's Cody, lying down in the tundra grass,
nose up, scenting the air. Such a happy dog!

On a totally different subject, one of my colleagues took me for a ride around the island over the weekend. I got some good pictures that I'd like to share. Enjoy!

Seeing and Believing

Shortly before I left China, as I was walking with a friend through her apartment complex, she asked me why I like China. I told her that everyday brought something new, like a new challenge, a new bit of language, or something beautiful to look at. She was amazed that I found her home country beautiful. She had spent time in the U.K. with her husband's family, and thought that China wasn't nearly as lovely as England. I walked over to a low wall near us and showed her the ceramic tiles that had been used to top it. Each one had a dragon design embossed on it. She had never noticed them before.

I was home, sick, while most of the
community was at the school for Family
Movie Night. I saw this rainbow through
my window and ran to get the picture.
A few days later, my students told me
that rainbows are rare on Atka!

That anecdote is relevant to my life here in Atka because there is always something beautiful for me to look at. The mountains are more or less visible, depending on the amount of fog and cloud cover there is. Sometimes I can see the base of the mountain and the peak, but the rest is obscured by fog. If there's been heavy rain, the waterfalls may be wider and whiter, but if there hasn't been much rain, they become narrower and darker. I love seeing the day's weather report every morning when I let the dogs out.

It rains nearly every day, anything from a light drizzle to a squalling downpour. It also clears up nearly every day. The usual rhythm is rain in the early morning, clearing in the late morning, and more rain in the evening. Sometimes even the rain brings its own surprises!

The most fun thing to watch is the pattern of light and dark on the mountains. The dark patches are *not* the shadows of other mountains. Instead, the dark patches are the shadow of the clouds, while the light patches are where the sun comes through and turns the dying fall grasses gold.

It's easy to see the patterns of light and dark as the sunlight
falls through the clouds onto the mountain.

When I tell my students how much I love this island and that it's beautiful, they think I'm joking. To them, it's just the rock they live on. Like my Chinese friend, they don't recognize the beauty that's all around them. Maybe part of my job is to teach them to see.

Weather or Not

I know that the biggest threat to my long-term happiness in Atka will be the weather. I don't mind the cold, but that's not even an issue here. The climate is maritime, so the temperatures are more moderate than inland temps. It's rarely lower than 20º F here. However, there is a *lot* of rain. At the moment, daily highs are running around 45º to 50º F, so I don't even need a jacket to walk to school. If it's raining, I just get wet. It's only 75 paces, remember? BUT, when the temps are 15 degrees lower, the rain is harder, and the wind is 50 mph or more, and it continues like that for days on end, I may not be as relaxed and sanguine about living in this climate.

We had one storm that was so strong it kept me awake until 2 a.m., though I tried to go to sleep around 11. The wind kept rattling the house while the rain beat against the windows and door! I thought sure the rain was coming in my bedroom window. Even the locals were talking about how bad the storm was the next day.

Yesterday, the rain and wind suddenly picked up out of nowhere. We could hear ice beating against the windows. The kids were saying to each other that it was too bad I wouldn't let them go look at the rain. Ha! We stood at the back door, trying to see if it was hail, sleet, or freezing rain. Three of the kids decided to venture out from the eaves. They asked if they could come back in by way of the front door (we were at the back door). I told them they could. Two minutes later, three wet, happy kids came in. Five minutes later, the sky was clear.

I now understand the meaning of the word "squall." It's a very localized, brief storm that's very intense. Rain is common here, and it's usually intense, but short-lived. We might call it a shower. However, it takes a certain combination of wind and rain to qualify as a squall. I think we are now leaving showers behind and trading them in for squalls.

More fresh snow! This time it covers the peaks.

In the picture, you can see a lone storm cloud. This area is so remote that even storm clouds can't count on having a lot of friends nearby. In the South, all the clouds get together with their buddies and make thunderstorms. Here, a cloud's gotta go it alone. I think that's why we have squalls.

Oh, and today our VPSO (Village Public Safety Officer, the local law enforcement guy) did the school's annual presentation on "Drop, Cover, Hold." That's what we're supposed to do in case of an earthquake. Drop to the floor, preferably under a piece of furniture. Cover your head. Hold onto the furniture so it doesn't move away from you.

Squalls and earthquakes? I'm just hoping the volcano doesn't wake up!