Offspring Opinions, No. 6
- Prof C
- May 11, 2024
- 5 min read
This has been the longest stretch without posting since our arrival here, but for good reason. About two weeks ago, the district had Starlink installed in all River teacher housing, promising us a better Wifi experience. I assure you...that has not been our experience. Any given day, our devices will randomly connect, and you never know for how long. For the longest time, none of our laptops would connect to internet at all. All that to say, here is the post I intended to post last week. Hopefully, things will get better for our connection to the rest of the world.
Avery: The past month has been kind of chill. We had Emily’s 16th birthday, and ahead of us, we have Jadyn’s senior trip coming up, Mama Sue and Papa Joe coming up at the end of May, and potentially our dog Forrest coming up with them. Emily’s birthday was fun but it went by too fast. She got a lot of cool gifts. For her birthday treat, it was the same tradition that we’ve been doing for a few years, Emily can elaborate more. For Jadyn’s Senior Trip, she is going with Dad down to Juneau to do some cool stuff. Personally, I am excited to have Papa Joe and Mama Sue come up for this summer. It has been different without them here. I miss having Mama Sue drive us up to school and having them take me to church. I miss hanging out at their pool and watching mystery crime TV shows with them trying to guess the guilty one. But most of all I miss just having them around. So, I am truly excited and overjoyed to have them come out here to be with us. And I guess I’ll be happy to have that big, dumb dog out here with us as well.
Joshua: The last couple of weeks have been horrible because ever since the snow has started to melt and since they plowed the snow, it’s just been muddy and nasty for walking, and we have been walking a lot more recently to play softball with the community. But on the good side I am doing decent at softball with a couple of home runs, but I have several outs as well. Also, we are still trying to get Forrest up here. Overall, we have spent around $1000 getting him up here. So, it’s going to be expensive getting him here.
Emily: I’ve almost KO’d myself too many times. My birthday was great, and the rice Krispies were good; my favorite was the coffee toffee one. I got a big jar of Nutella all to myself. The gifts I got were cool; I got pants, a jacket, a bag, a hat, and a crepe pan (which is being used now). Baseball has been fun out here. I’ve already hit 3 homeruns, which isn’t hard because it’s not fast pitch. I was getting used to a bat they had brought and while I was in the field my dad was up to bat and he swung and I saw the ball hit the ground and then I saw a white pole looking thing fly sideways. I thought he had thrown the bat, but I found out that he had broken it in half.
***
I just realized that Jadyn never wrote her input. She's currently traveling with Philip, on her senior trip, in Juneau. They are checking out the area, and more specifically, checking out the University of Alaska Southeast. If you've been keeping up, a while back, we shared Jadyn's news of being accepted and getting a scholarship to the University of Vermont. It turns out that the scholarship she got would not cover the price of an out-of-state tuition, and even with additional financial aid and work study, it would leave her significantly short of the cost of attending. As such, she made the difficult choice to look at other, more affordable options, to which she had applied. It was heartbreaking to see her disappointment, and I'd be lying if there weren't moments where Philip and I thought about just footing the very expensive bill. But we ultimately chose to let her work through this, and come to her own conclusion that a more affordable undergrad degree is just as valuable as a high-priced one. She's still considering UVM for her graduate studies, but this senior trip to UAS will let her know more about her second choice. I'm already so proud of her initiative in taking steps for this next chapter. Granted, that hasn't assuaged the sadness of experiencing her absence in this house.
Photo Dump: The Thaw
This first set of pics shows the changing landscape with the thaw. Aside from the melting snow around the village, a crack appeared in the river view from our house on Wednesday, May 8th. The following evening, right before we went to bed, we looked outside, and the ice was gone. It had just disappeared. Obviously, it floated on down the river, but we were surprised that we didn't hear or see it. We now see the occasional big chunks float down from upriver, and there will be a lot more to come, but for now, the view shows sparkly, flowing water, with ducks and other diving birds. We've been told several village stories, one of which includes seeing a moose float down the river on a piece of ice. I'm really hoping for a real-time view of that!
Ems' Birthday
I admit that my photo-taking was a bit deficient that day, but we enjoyed the day together. Playing softball at the airfield (pics above) later that evening turned out to be the perfect gift for Emily, who really misses playing. The locals are thrilled to have her as an addition to their summer team. (And yes, Philip broke a bat at the plate, which also was the talk of the town.)
School Shenanigans
Last week, an instructor from UAA came to teach the students various health concepts related to the cardiovascular system. They got to dissect a pig's heart, which as you can tell by the faces, produced different results for all. It was a good thing they did this right before lunch!
As for Philip and the water jug...let's just say that accusations were levied against staff and students for a missing water jug this past week, that was later found to have been misplaced in the library. I've mentioned our frustrations with administrative staff before.
That's it for now! Hopefully, we'll be able to post regularly again soon. We are only 9 school days away from summer break!!!
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