Just another day in the bush...

Had a crazy past couple of days again... ALWAYS something in Bush Alaska!

On Sunday evening we had a big dinner at Dustin's house. It was still blizzarding but Margaret and Oscar decided to come over to teacher housing for dinner. As soon as they got to our house it turned to a white out! They weren't able to go home until 11:30 PM when it just started to get a little bit better. The snow was blowing around so much that it piled up the side of our house and front door worse than before. We had to climb up a mountain of snow to get out of the house. The snow was also covering the exhaust for our house stove. This is apparently really dangerous and caused a mini 'explosion' in one of the other teacher's houses... NO ONE was hurt luckily. I guess it could cause carbon monoxide poisoning if all the fumes back up into the house. LUCKILY we have some pretty amazing neighbors up here.... Dustin and Kristina's husband kept coming over and checking it/shoveling it out/breaking the ice which formed around it. It was about 2 AM and someone was out there working on it for us. That felt pretty good to know what caring neighbors we have.

Yesterday we didn't have any kids at school due to 'mechanical failures'. Mechanical failures in Bush Alaska could mean many things but on this special occasion it meant that the pipes were frozen somewhere between the school and the old village area.... that's over a mile of insulated green piping!!! The sewage was beginning to drip out under the school and a pond of it was creeping closer to my house! EWWW! Teachers ended up having a work day (THANK GOODNESS!) and the problem was 'fixed' in the afternoon... for now at least!

TODAY we had a whole new situation! MY principal came in and let us know that we weren't allowed to send the kids outside (beautiful day) because there were concerns about one of the windmills.... WHAT?!?!?! These HUGE windmills are right behind the school and teacher housing. With the high wind gusts the other day I was becoming a little concerned when I thought about the possibilities that could happen if one of the windmills broke... and then on a nice day there were concerns?! It turned out that we let our kids out at the normal time but there were a lot of parents there to greet the kids today. I'm not sure what the problem was or if there was really a problem... but I don't like the sounds of it.

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN BUSH AK!