Two months here and school starts!  Bradley is now a 3^rd grader at Gladys Jung elementary school.  He is one of about 75 3^rd graders which are divided among four classrooms.  He is excited because there will be certain classes he will be able to choose to take.  He’s quite interested in wood burning now, but who knows what he’ll like when he actually gets to choose.  He’ll also have a Yupik class, which he’s looking forward to.  I think he’ll learn some Yupik words as well as things about the culture and tradition.  Alaska students only go to school for 170 days a year.  There are several days throughout the year when he doesn’t have school, so if anyone is interested in providing day care, please let me know.

I’m not sure if I have mentioned it before, but there is a great Farmer’s Market here in Bethel.  There is one guy who has a big farm and he grows a lot of vegetables.  He also sells organic fruits from around the world.  The mangos are pretty good.  We’ve been able to buy white turnips, radishes, carrots, lettuce, kale, and potatoes (last year’s crop).  He also has strawberries, but those sell out quickly.  He has chickens and for about $6.00, I can get a fresh dozen eggs.

 Alex and I are getting used to our jobs.  He is up to a full schedule daily and has little time to breathe or eat.  I suppose that’s good, because we don’t want him bored.  I am currently teaching the clinical rotation for the Session II health aides.  That may not mean anything to those outside of Alaska, but for us here, it means that once the health aides finish the session, they will be able to treat patients without contacting a medical provider.  That’s a big deal around here for people who live in the remote areas.  In this session, I was able to watch the aides suture pig’s feet.  They also learned how to assess a pregnant woman and treat an emergent allergic reaction (and a lot more!).  I was fortunate enough to lecture on STDs.  Alaska ranks #1 in the nation for chlamydia.  

That's me in the tan sweater--everyone else is in short sleeves!

Fishing—have we been successful?  NO!  Alex did manage to snag (he says, "I didn't snag them, they bit the lure!") a few pike one day, but he got skunked when he tried to catch some coho (silver) salmon.  We did find the only commercial fisherman in town and purchased 2 “medium” sized silvers for $14 each.  They probably weighed in at about 8 pounds.  Alex smoked a few filets on the grill and then canned it.  We also have several steaks in the freezer.  We will go out tomorrow and see what we can catch.  I think the silvers are running because there are boats all over town on their way to the river.

Final blueberry count—5 ½ gallons in the freezer.  We will make jam once we have all of our stuff out of the storage container.  Be nice to me and I may send you a jar!

Soccer is over.  I have to say that Brad and all of the other kids on his team improved tremendously.  They had a great coach who was very positive.  He also knew the names of all the kids on the team and made sure each kid played hard.  Some days there were only 8 kids, and others there were 14 or more.  Brad told me that he was glad he was able to play soccer because he met a lot of kids.  He said this about a week after he told me he liked Bethel because the people were nice.

 Brad is quite fascinated by Pokemon Go.  Personally, I simply don't understand that game at all.  He found an article about how dumb people are when they play that game; they have walked off cliffs and in front of moving vehicles.  He sat next to me on the couch and read an entire article in the Wall Street Journal.  He looked so sophisticated with the newspaper in his lap, and relayed his impression of the article quite well. 

We had the fortune to travel back to Milwaukee for the wedding of Zack Campana and Kate Schaus.  The flight there wasn’t so fun because it was a red eye and we didn’t sleep.  Well, Brad slept . . . but Alex and I were most uncomfortable.  The entire Campana family was able to be there.  We haven’t been together for about 4 years.  It was sort of strange being in a city where I could walk to a coffee shop on a concrete sidewalk and then drive on an interstate to a mall.  The contrast of a Midwest city and Bethel is quite profound.  Not bad or good, just different. I did stand in the shower for a long time because there was no fear of running out of water.  And of course, we stocked up on food at Costco.  We had four, yes four, suitcases full of food.  Brought back 25 pounds of flour, Nutella, Nilla wafers, and canned tomatoes.  Oh, and a huge jar of mayo for Alex.

Sitting on the floor at REI reading

The happy (and nervous??) groom

Brad misses his cousins. 

The sky here in Alaska is so pretty.  The clouds are different, and it’s hard to describe them.  They seem lower in the sky.  And the storms that we can see blowing across the tundra are so amazing.  I was out running one day and thought I’d get rained on.  But instead the storm went to the south.  I can frequently see rain storms off in the distance and I think we’ll have a big “thunder boomer”, but we don’t.  The rain is always welcomed because it tames down the dust.

Alex and Brad were able to take advantage of the perpetual wind.  The kites flew high.