This weekend was another wrestling tournament in Bethel. We left Thursday afternoon and arrived back in Akiachak around 12:30 pm on Sunday. When I told my first graders I was leaving and they would have a sub on Friday, one of the little ones exclaimed, “But I’ll miss you!” It was sooo sweet and one of the first times they have said something like that without me prompting them to, haha. They also said that the sub was a “boring” teacher, but informed me that I was not. So that’s good to know, I suppose. Anyway, I love watching our kids wrestle and seeing how they have improved. The tournament was even live streamed, so my parents watched some of our kids wrestle as well. We took 3 high schoolers, and 5 junior high kids. Two of the junior high kids ended up with a first place medal in their weight class, and one of them received third. Junior high wrestling season is over and the high school kids have regionals and then state (if they place well enough at regionals) in December. Akiachak has 2 high school girls who have been unfortunate in all the other tournaments in that they have had to wrestle boys, but regionals and state have separate girl and boy brackets, so I’m excited to see how the girls do. After the season is over, Collin and I are planning a little banquet for the wrestlers with cake, “juice” (which we would call Kool-Aid in Kansas, but they call pretty much everything (Tang, Kool-Aid, Gatorade, lemonade) juice here), and some awards to hand out. When we got home on Sunday, David called and invited us over for supper. It turns out that it was their Thanksgiving meal that they were having early because their kids are going to be in Anchorage on Thanksgiving. We had turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and akutuq (pronounced ah-goo-duck and is Eskimo ice cream. Read more about it here. It’s pretty interesting stuff.) It was a pretty traditional meal and was pretty tasty as well. It was very thoughtful of David to invite us over, but I’m not surprised he did, since he calls us his other kids. Before we left, he invited Collin to manaq this week. See below for some photos of Collin’s experience.
The best part of the week is the fact that next week we only have school for two days. Next Tuesday after school Collin and I will be going to Bethel and will be spending Thanksgiving break in Anchorage! I’m excited to have a break from work and from the village. Even though I enjoy it here, it will be nice to do some “normal” things like see a movie at a theatre, go to a restaurant, go to Wal-Mart, and drink a margarita, haha! I think I’ve bored all of my readers (all two of you) enough for this week, so here’s where I will end this post and I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!