You New Teacher??

Well, I've officially made it to Chevak and have been adjusting well! It was quite an adventure to get here so lets begin...

We left Anchorage a little after noon and got to Chevak a little after five. It was a day full of first-times!! First, I flew on a half-passenger/half-cargo plane on the way to Bethel. I had never been on a plane like that, but it wasn't really different from a normal flight. When we got to Bethel we shortly realized that we were in the wrong 'airport', once we got our luggage (which consisted of mainly coolers) we took a shuttle to the 'airport' that we needed to be at. The reason that I have "" on the airport is because it would look anything BUT an actual airport. There are no terminals, just a giant room that has everything a normal airport would have smashed into a small room. We had to wait about 2 hours for our flight to Chevak. It was a good time for me to realize that I wasn't in Anchorage/Palmer anymore. We got paged over the pa system that our pilot was ready to meet us at the door (oh, how easy) (a small side note..the pilot was heavenly pretty. However, he wasn't very nice) After there was roll-call we walked out on the runway to our 10 person airplane. Basically you just sit down and the pilot asks if your buckled and it's off you go. The flight to Chevak was pretty short, less than an hour. This in fact was my first time on a "bush" plane. I was very nervous that I was going to decorate the plane with whatever I had eaten that day! Luckily, that never happened and it was a pretty neat experience! : ) 

We got here and were very welcomed! The principal and his wife picked us up and gave us a run-down of the village as he took us to our apartment! It was nice to get to see everything that there is here. Most of our stuff was in the apartment when we got there, so it was nice knowing that we weren't going to have to hall all our stuff from the post office to the apartment. We spent some time un-packing and getting settled...when we got hungry. Ha. Ha. Most of Mary's stuff wasn't in the apartment yet so we realized that we didn't have any silverware. We called Amelia (who is also a first year teacher that I've talked with throughout the summer), she directed us to go see Stephanie (our neighbor : ) and also a first year Chevak teacher) well she wasn't home. We were getting frustrated and the hunger was getting stronger. I got a text from Amelia telling us that we could go borrow from another teacher. We finally were able to get some silverware so that we could eat dinner....and we were locked out of our apartment. No phones because we left them in the apartment and a handful of silverware in our hands. Thankfully, Stephanie came home so we were able to meet her and chat! About an hour later we saw the superintendent outside and he let us in! We could finally eat! The rest of the night we spent getting settled. 

The next day we ventured out in the village. We went to the clinic, the post office and the school. Many of the people seem to know that we are new teachers because everytime we walked by we heard "You new teacher?" It's very nice to know that people here are so friendly and welcoming! We got keys to our classrooms and were able to look around in them. I didn't know what to expect when I walked in (and Frankly, I was a little nervous because I didn't know if there was going to be anything in it) In my head I shouted "PRAISE JESUS" because it was PACKED with stuff. I even have fish!! :D I haven't really gone through much of the stuff in there (which I really need to get on) but I'm super excited and overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done! 

I'm really starting to like this place! All the people here seem to be fabulous (a Stephanie reference) and I'm excited to see what happens this year! 

Walking through the village I've gotten to meet some of the kiddos that I'll have next year. I get super excited when I tell them that I'm going to be their teacher next year. They're a little un-sure of me right now...but I am still excited! : ) I found out this afternoon that as of right now I have 28 kiddos next year! It'll be broken up into an AM and PM. I could end up with more because registration is still open so we'll see on Monday how many I end up with! I have a lot to do before they come on Friday...

There are a LOT of dogs here. There is one dog in particular that has taking a strong liking to my neighbors daughter...well the feelings are mutual. She even got named 'Maxine' and she is a gorgeous dog. She is just a little white fur baby blue eyed puppy. I don't think that I've ever seen a more well behaved dog. At first I didn't really want to pay too much attention to her because I didn't want to become attached. However, today when Stephanie came over to talk I couldn't help myself. I picked her up and we became friends (I'll post pictures of everything, even Maxine once I am on my own computer) I couldn't get enough of her. She snuggled and I wanted to keep her. We can't have animals in our apartments so she couldn't become my life-long friend. She really didn't have a home so she would sleep outside the door. I put a blanket out there for her so she could try and stay warm. I was really worried about her (I'll post later on why I worry about her) but Stephanie was able to find someone that wanted to take her! YAY!!! : D

I've been meeting so many people and gathering so much information that it's a little overwhelming but still so exciting! I can't wait to share stories with you....