Top of the World to Eat!

Moose on the Loose

We went to Tuzzy Library for Moose on the Loose.

Still going strong...

I thought this was funny. Many people back home don't understand why we don't have cable or watch that many shows at night. We do watch shows for entertainment, but our lives are scheduled around tv shows. We have an Xbox and kinex. They are great for getting us up and moving when its cold outside. Our living room is set up so we all can hang out and talk or play games easily. 

Moving to Barrow has changed our view of family time and how important it is to spend time with your children. Don't be afraid of turning the tv off once in awhile and reading a book or playing a game with someone special. 

9/21 Weekend Review

This weekend has been interesting. Friday I stopped at the library to pick up another disc in my series, The Unit. While I was there, I met a couple that were visiting Barrow. Barbora is from Czech Republic and Milan is from Slovakia. They were on a four month back packing trip from Vancouver. They had planned to visit Barrow, Anchorage, Cancun, Central America, Peru, New Zealand and return to Europe. 

They were shocked by the temperatures and the snow. They hadn't planned on getting a hotel. They planned on a camping trip. Temperatures were too low to allow someone to safely camp outside. 

We invited them to crash in our living room for two nights. We hiked all over town with them and introduced them to other teachers living in Barrow. It was a great time! We exchanged information and plan to keep in touch. I want to take the girls to Prague when they are older. Barbora and Milan want us to come stay with them. :) 

What an adventure that would be! 

While I was blogging...

While I was sitting here blogging, I looked out my window and saw something. 

That my friends, is a small owl sitting on the steps to no where. It was sitting there watching the kids play and throw snowballs at each other. He flew away once he got bored of watching them. I think he was hunting lemmings. The people with chihuahas outside need to be careful.

What is that?!?

What in the world is that thing on your floor? 

That is baleen from a whale. One of Emily's pals gave it to us. There's a craft of drawing pictures on the baleen. He has shown us his work and it's amazing. We are going to leave this one blank and get a smaller one with a scene on it. It's over 6 feet tall and I found it when I came home from a science talk at Tuzzy Library.

which happened to be about bowhead whales - the coolest whales on Earth. :)

It was great to connect with local scientists about bowheads. I was never taught about how the US government tried to take whaling away from the Natives of Alaska. It was the commercial whalers that devastated the herds of whales. The Natives believe that a whale gives themselves to the people. There are traditions involved in whaling in which the people thank the whale for providing for them. I hope that fall whaling will be a success and the people of Barrow are able to continue their tradition of whaling. I hope to see some of the whaling traditions while I am here. I would love to include some science lessons about the topic. 

Grocery Shopping On Line

There are several grocery stores in Barrow, but they are expensive because of shipping costs. We had food shipped to Alaska before we arrived. We travelled with coolers filled full of food. When we were returning from inservice, we did a bush order through Fred Meyer. We have ordered from Amazon and we have tried Full Circle Farms. 

There are several ways to get food items to Barrow. This time I decided to use Dollar General. They are a discount chain of stores and they have limited online products. I ordered the important stuff that we needed. Shipping was free if your order was over $40. I definitely ordered more than that. I like having the ability to order cases of things that we use all the time. 

The picture does show lots of sweets. Halloween is coming soon and I want to give all my students smarties. Be a Smartie... Stay in School!

I think I will use them again for drugstore items and yummy cookies. They have a brand of cookies that tastes almost identical to Girl Scout cookies!

The shipping was very fast. I have ordered vitamins and costumes from Amazon before I made this order. I am still waiting on the products!