Here are some pictures of the girls so you can see how big they are getting.

Someone is pulling my hair!

Ellora did the cutest thing this morning. I heard her whining and crying so i went over to see what was the matter. She had her little hand tightly clasped in a fist around a big chunk of her hair and was pulling it. :)


Chalyse loves rocks!

Chalyse has spent most of the morning paying with her rock collection. She loves moving them from the box, to her highchair, into my lap,...and now she is stuffing them into the heater. Great. I am going to be finding them all over the house for weeks.

Eskimo Dancing

A few weeks ago, we had "Back to School Night," and afterward there was an Eskimo dance. It was mostly the natives that danced. They also got the teachers to get down and make fools of themselves. The first video is me making a fool of myself. Chalyse does a little dancing of her own. The second video is what the dancing is supposed to look like.

Difference in Perspective

Today, some of my students were looking out the window at the clear skies and sun, saying it was going to be "hot." I would definitely agree that it will be a little warmer today than it has been, mostly because we haven't had a clear day in about a week. I don't think I would ever describe 35 degrees as "hot," though.

Ancient Native Homes

These are the homes the natives used to live in. Some as little as 30 or 40 years ago. They are mostly underground with thatched roofs. They are supported by whale bones and a few pieces of drift wood. They have a hole cut in the center of the roof to let smoke escape. This particular one has one small room just inside and a narrow hall to another room. The other room had collapsed so it is only a hole in the ground now. These homes are a little ways away from the current village. About 30 years ago they moved the entire village to make it easier to bring in electricity and plumbing. They still use some of the old thatch homes to store their game meat.

The Point

Here are some pictures of our trip out to the point of Point Hope. It is about 3 miles from the village.
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A Balmy 65 Degrees

This was our picnic at the beach that we had a few weeks ago. We miss that day, because the forecasted highs for this next week are in the 30s. If you look closely at the picture of the water, right in the middle is a jelly fish. We saw a few jelly fish that day. They'll come right up to the water's edge, and when the waves are big they'll sometimes get washed up on shore.

Picture Tour of Point Hope

This is a whaling boat next to some houses. They'll cover the hull of the boat with bearded seal skins that have been painted white. Yes, they still use them.



John Denver wrote a songs entitled "Whale Bones and Crosses." Evidently, he actually paid a visit to Point Hope back in the day, and it was this cemetery he wrote about. The one thing that surprised us about it, though, was the size of the crosses. They're all over 6 1/2 feet tall. It's between 1 and 2 miles from our home and we can see it from our window.





One thing that the Tundra is known for is the many colorful mosses and lichens that blanket the ground. We don't get these colors in town, though. The feet and four-wheelers take care of that.



The tundra has large cracks that form in it in geometric patterns. There have been people that actually come up here just to study the cracks and the patterns they make.



Point Hope, from a distance, is a very colorful little village.



Here is our hotel. In the back, much of it is made out of converted barge containers. Each one is a different room.



This is our general store. It's called the "Native Store."





And finally, this is our (only) gas station.

Yay!

We got our a/c adapter for our other laptop, so we can start uploading pictures. Stay tuned...

Unity

Today we had a great experience. First, we had a sister join us for church who hadn't yet. She usually participates on her own. It was great to have another sister here.

Second, Since we attend church via conference call we often only get every other word (if we're lucky). So this week we decided to tune in for sacrament meeting and then have Sunday School and Priesthood/Relief Society on our own. Sacrament Meeting was great. The two speakers were also joining by phone so as a result they came through crystal clear. We caught every word. For Sunday School Tom led the lesson and Bro. Stevens led Priesthood/Relief Society. The first lesson was on the story of the rescue of the Martin Willey Hand Cart Company. The second class was the building of the Kirkland temple. We talked a lot about unity. The spirit was very strong as we all felt unified with each other. We also talked about missionary work and what work the Lord may have for us here in Point Hope. We agreed that people might get offended if we went around preaching our religion but also that there are things we can do. We need only to be in tune with the spirit and pray for help in sharing the gift of the gospel with our friends here.

I know that the unity of the church can be felt ANYWHERE the saints may gather.

Yay!

It happened! Ellora slept all night. From about 10:30 until we got her up at 8:30 to make sure she was not dead. Ten hours! I can't believe it. I know it probably wont last but I am still psyched.

A Really Long Night

Last night Chalyse woke up screaming at about 10:30. Yep, it was a night terror. She was inconsolable and wouldn't even let us hold her. She was completely terrified! If you have never seen this before, let me tell you it can be SO unnerving. They are asleep but look like they are awake. They don't recognize anything or anyone around them. The best thing to do when this happens is get them to lay down and go back to sleep.

As soon as we realized what was going on we tried to calm her and get her to lay back down. She wouldn't. She was so hysterical Tom and I didn't know what to do. We tried for about 10 minutes to calm her down to no avail. Imagine: Chalyse is hysterically screaming at the top of her lungs like she is being tortured. She will not let us comfort her, is afraid of us and trying with all her might to get away.

We decided to try to wake her up by turning on the lights and talking to her. I wanted so bad for her to know I was there to help her. She was standing on her bed just screaming and I asked her if she wanted Mommy to hold her. She finally seemed to hear me and said "ya" shakily through her tears. When i picked her up this time she did not push away but wouldn't let me move at all or she would freak out again and she still wouldn't stop screaming and crying. I was desperate to help her so i started offering he things. "Do you want to watch Monsters?" "Ya" She pushed down, ran to the living room climbed on the couch and sat quietly waiting for her movie.

Chalyse and I watched the movie and had a snack then I tried to put her back to bed but even though she was so tired she was too afraid to go back to sleep. She wouldn't even sleep in our bed with us she would just sit there. So i finally put her in front of another movie and went to bed. I went and checked on her about and hour later and she had finally fallen asleep. I left her there and went back to bed.

Around 4:00 Tom got up to go to the bathroom and tripped over Chalyse sleeping in the doorway of our bedroom. He moved her to her bed but about a half hour later she was back in the door way. Poor girl. I don't know why she didn't come get in the bed with us. Maybe she was still trying to stay awake. We moved her to our bed with us. She slept the rest of the night but every once in a while she would whine in her sleep. I hope this never happens again. I hate feeling helpless in comforting my terrified daughter.

Ironically enough Ellora slept really well. She only got up twice to eat.

We're Doin'

Ellora is doing much better. She only gets really fussy every once in a a while now and it doesn't last as long. I am thinking she doesn't like it when I drink milk. She has been smiling a lot more now and is a lot more aware. She is just beginning to realize that she can interact with her world. We have a bouncy chair that she sits in that dangles butterflies in in her reach. A few times i swear i have caught her batting at them and today she reached up and put her hand on one for about 15 second or so. She still has lots of hair. :)

Chalyse has been sleeping well in her big girl bed for a while now. We had a big struggle getting her to go to bed in it. She is a little young to be out of her crib but we didn't think it was worth $200 to send it up here. Hind sight: I think it may have been worth it. It's all good now.

We have made friends with the neighbors across the hall. The lady is an elementary school teacher. Her "honey" has lived in the village all his life. They have a boy who is a year older than Chalyse and they enjoy playing together. They invited us over last Saturday to watch the BYU football game. We had a good time.

On Thursday Tom came home and said that yesterday there were hundreds of walruses at the point (they were migrating). The vice princable let us borrow her 4 wheeler and we drove down to see them. We missed them but we did have a little adventure. The school has a Ford Explorer, and some of the other teachers also wanted to see the walruses, but they didn't anticipate the deep sand out by the point. They were completely high-centered, and we stopped for a while to help dig them out.
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Culture Shock

Cathy asked if we had gone through any culture shock. Well, let me tell ya;)

Things are pretty different from what we're used to. Like in some places in the country and around the world, there are a lot of people who live together and never get married. One thing that's different here, though, is that there is no cultural priority to ever get married, even after 20+ years and 10 kids. Consequently, even in these homes, there is still a very family-centered atmosphere. They refer to all companions as "honeys," mostly because they want to not have to guess about whether or not they're married.

Another thing is classroom behavior. To illustrate, during my student teaching I could ask even the hardest of my students to join me in the hall to talk if I needed to, and they would come with only brief protest. Here, I tried to talk with an average student in the hall, and she flat out refused. It took a few minutes of her not budging, and she eventually came when she saw I wasn't going to back down.

We have also been able to see the unfortunate endgame of entitlements played out in the lives of some people. There are some people who only work as much as they absolutely have to, and not at all if they can. I will say, however, that there are many hard working natives here.

There are a few of the things we've noticed.

Mommy, she looks like our doll

Every one here thinks Chalyse is something to behold. There are very few white people and even fewer with blond hair. Most people here have never seen a "blond hair baby" in their small village and every one is enthralled with ours. At the picnic last week one lady brought her 3 year old daughter over to see Chalyse. She said her daughter pointed to Chalyse and said "Look, She looks like our doll".

Oh, we never wrote anything about the picnic. We were waiting to get our power cord to the other computer so we could post some pictures but we will have to post the pictures later.

Two Fridays ago we had a community picnic put on by the school. It was held on the south beach and the weather could not have been better. After putting it off twice because of the rain they finally picked a good day. The sun was shining, the wind was only a breeze from the south and it was about 60 degrees. We didn't even ware our jackets. We had a lot of fun visiting with people. Chalyse spent most of the time throwing rocks into the water. We also saw some jelly fish!

Afterward we walked down to the cemitary. We have some really cool pictures to show. The graves are all marked by huge crossed that look small next to the enormas whale jaw bones jutting out of the ground behind them. The walk there was pretty fun too. The tundra is full of color that we don't get to see around the village. There are so many diferant plants and lichens that cover the ground. It was nice to walk on too. It feels like squishy carpet. So much easier on the joints than the deep loose graven that is every where in the village. The village even looked better once we got away form it a little. All the buildings are painted a different color. We will put a picture of that on too when we can. Until then you will just have to imagine it.

Something else to imagine until we can post it: we went to back-to-school-night this last Wednesday and they spent an hour or two playing their drums made from seal skin and singing and dancing to their native songs. It was fun to watch and the teachers even dances a few. We took lots of videos so we will post them when we can.

Snow?!

We got our first real snow, today. It didn't stick, as first snows usually don't. We've seen a snow flake here and there since we got here, but this was the first little storm.

We would like to post more pictures, but our a/c adapter for our PC decided to die, and our only way of getting pictures off of our memory stick from our camera is an adapter that plugs straight into the computer, and our Mac doesn't have a port for it. This is also the same reason Camille hasn't posted more blogs. Hopefully the a/c adapter we ordered gets here soon.

Ellora has been really fussy. It started shortly after we got here and has gotten progressively worse. It might just be colic, but we have wondered if it's caused by something Camille has been eating. We ran out of onions for a while, so we ruled those out. We tried chocolate, but that didn't seem to help. We even wondered if she was fussy because of the chlorine in the water (we ordered a filter that removes chlorine, but it hasn't gotten here, yet), so we used our hiking purifier, but that didn't seem to help much. We are now trying to eliminate milk. We'll see if that helps.

Japanese History and Culture

Because I teach at a small school, there aren't a whole lot of options for many of the students as far as classes go, especially in the middle school. They have English, math, science, social studies, Inupiaq (native language), and PE. They have 7 periods each day, though. For those students who didn't pass a particular part of the state tests, they get an extra class in that area (math or reading/writing). For those who passed all areas, they have to take either two science or two social studies. I have 3 students who are in two of my social studies classes, all of whom are really bright kids (obviously). They are all in one class together (with two other students) during 4th period.

These three kids were getting really bored, getting the same material twice in one day. I felt sorry for them, knowing how bored I would be if I were in the same position. I convinced the counselor that these kids needed me to teach something else, and that the other two students wouldn't miss out too much if they didn't get US History this year (most students forget everything by the time they get to high school, anyway).

Yesterday, I gave the students a list of social studies classes we could study this year (I listed just about every one I could think of that I felt comfortable teaching) and it came down to US History Through Literature and Japanese History and Culture. Well, this year, I'm teaching Japanese History and Culture. Now my only problem is getting resources to teach out of. The kids are really excited.