2nd Year in Kong

I’m BAaaaAAAACkkkkk!
WOW so much has happened since the last posting! Middle of May I headed home for my summer break and the first week of August I returned to Alaska. Rachel and Sheila came back with me to tour the mid-west as neither one had ever been before. Sheila experienced her first concert, farm, casino and the list goes on! It was a GREAT time having them in town and especially having Sheila experience the life and the culture I come from since usually she is the one teaching me about hers. I’ve heard Sheila tell many stories about the trip ever since I’ve been back here in Alaska.
Moose got to spend lots of time with his ‘grandparents’ this summer while I did A LOT of traveling. THANKS MOM AND DAD! I visited a total of 12 states over the summer (Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Alaska! The trips were so much fun but BUSY! I went to Colorado with Lori to visit the Lords. Nebraska to visit Nick, Ross and Jenn. Florida with the Frey girls. Tennessee with the Kuntz side of the family. Chicago to visit Diana and Dan! Kentucky to see Cassie and found a dress for Diana’s wedding :O) As soon as I unpacked a suitcase I packed it right back up again. Somehow I managed to also get some quality family time in there as well. It was so nice to be back. Some of my best friends even got married this summer! Congratulations Anne and Dan Smith as well as Colleen and Alex Lowe!!!!
I decided to go back to Alaska a couple of weeks early because I wanted time to move into the new house and school as well as go fishing and berry picking. This was a very good and bad decision all at the same time.
Let’s start with the bad news… when I got off the plane in Kong… I was brought right back to my old red house… a mile from the school. NOT IMPRESSED. ALLLLLLL of our stuff was packed away in boxes. These boxes were supposed to be at the new house, but no, back at the old house. Apparently the new houses didn’t pass code so the district wouldn’t buy them yet and no one knows when or IF we even will buy them. THEREFORE no one can tell us if we should unpack everything or not. This REALLY irritates me because I spent the last 2 weeks of last school year staying up until about 4 or 5 am to pack my house, classroom and do school work. Did I get paid extra, of course not. Did I care… no… because I was excited to get to move to a new house with flush toilets, a dishwasher, washer and dryer. INSTEAD I can’t find anything because it is boxed away and worst of all we had to bring out the honey buckets again ☹

The situation is really frustrating which is a lot of the reason I haven’t blogged yet and communication is difficult because I can only get online when I’m at the new school since we cancelled internet in our house and don’t want to pay a reinstallation fee. We were told we would be in new housing and even chose which unit we wanted. We were also under the impression that our old houses were ‘unlivable’ because the district wasn’t allowed to sell them when we moved out and the houses were supposed to be moved to the dump due to the asbestos. The new houses are BEAUTIFUL inside and the old ones are not so much. UGH SO FRUSTRATING. Not only was the housing screwed up… but there was only one key available to the new school. ONE! For all the teachers and principal and maintenance guys to share. I couldn’t work late at night like I usually do because 1. I didn’t have a key and 2. I didn’t want to walk a mile in the dark and get attacked by a person or wolf or something. Stranger things have happened. My classroom looked like a disaster because at the end of last year we had to just dump things out of boxes and reuse the boxes since we ran out. Here is a picture…

I will post pictures of the completed room soon.

Although we have ALL been really frustrated and annoyed with the housing situation, the good news is that I have GREAT friends in Kong. Can NOT thank Sheila ENOUGH for everything she has done for us. We did not cook the first week back (hoping that we would be moving soon so we didn’t unpack anything) and Sheila cooked us some fabulous meals. She even threw a welcome home meal for us and a welcome to Kong meal for the new teachers. We had some AMAZING fresh Salmon and Halibut. It was absolutely the best fish meal I have ever had… no exaggeration what so ever. There are two new teachers this year and Michele returned as well. The two new teachers are Patrick and Dustin… I’m sure you will be hearing more about them. They are a lot of fun and I think we will have a GREAT staff out here this year. Lots of fun already! We actually went on a fishing trip with Rod last week! He took us in his boat (only some of us could fit so it was Dustin, Patrick, Michele and me who tagged along) down the river to the Bering Sea to his special fishing spot. It was about 16 miles away if I remember correctly. It was so awesome because we fished near a sandbar where seals like to ‘hang out’ and some were even swimming right by us. Rod taught us to net fish and we went out at 1:30pm then returned to Kong around 9:00pm. We caught 63 Silver Salmon! He also took us Halibut fishing for a little while but no luck… not really the right timing for Halibut. While we were net fishing, a seal came up and started eating our fish in the net. Almost got itself killed! Right in front of me. I was going to be a little sad if I saw the seal get shot or harpooned. Rod ‘let’ us do all the work and when we returned we were the ones who cleaned the fish. NOT very well I might add. We cleaned what we wanted to keep and Sheila announced over VHF that we caught fish and gave the rest away. It was such an amazing experience really. Look at all my pics!







School started yesterday, Tuesday. On Monday night there was a village meeting which all the teachers attended. We had to introduce ourselves and when Sheila made her introduction she talked a lot about her summer in the Midwest and in Maine as well as the hard work we teachers have contributed to school and the community. It meant a lot to hear her talk about all of our cultural experiences over the past year and how much we do want to be invited out and be a part of the community. Other people from the community were also very welcoming to us and happy to see us back for another school year. Even though I have been grumpy about housing for 2 weeks straight, I am happy to see everyone again and thankful that I have such great friends out here.
My second year of teaching is starting out very well so far. The first day was rough just because I have worked day and night for two weeks straight and the exhaustion all hit on the first day of school. I felt so sick just because I was that tired. On the bright side though the day went very smooth. Everything I wanted to get done, I finished ahead of time and I think my kids are off to a great start. This year I have organized things better and they know my expectations/routines the very first week of school. Last year at this time I still hadn’t met all of my students.
The cross country team started practice my second day back in the village. I have had about 19 sign up so far but not all 19 are at practice every day. Things will start getting serious next week because our first meet is Labor Day weekend. They seem to be off to a good start though!!! The team consists of all Junior High and only 2 high school students so far. I haven’t had time or energy to run with them much but hopefully that will change next week. We have three meets scheduled. The first one will be at Toksook Bay and the last one at Bethel in hopes of going up against more competition to see how the kids to. We will have our first meet in Kongiganak September 10-11. I’m pretty excited to be organizing this and a little nervous too! We have named it the Kongiganak Tundra Trot. The whole race will take place on the tundra because the boardwalks are too dangerous. Boards often break on our mile walk to/from school (one of the kids I was with one evening went running on the boardwalk, slipped and had a huge gash in her leg. Seriously the deepest wound I have ever seen. We spent 4 hours in the clinic that night as they tried to clean the drying mud out of it. Poor kid! Lots of screaming)! Anyway, it should be an interesting race since the mud just sucks you in sometimes and there are little ponds everywhere! Speaking of mud… last week I was walking when my little 1st grade student was riding a bike and saw me. He got really excited and yelled at me to wait. I waited he came riding fast but wasn’t looking where he was going. He rode right off of the board walk into a huge pond of mud!!! He landed and sank to his hips in the mud and wow was he unimpressed (as I would be too!) He and his bike were stuck in the mud and as we tried to help he started throwing mud! I felt so bad for the poor kid but it was quite a sight to see!
Welllll I think I have bored you enough. My new address is:
Amanda Frey
Ayagina’ar Elitnaurvik
100 Tassak Way
Kongiganak, AK 99545

Miss you all!
P.S.- My Yup’ik speaking and listening skills are improving. I sit in the Yup’ik 2nd grade class a lot this year with my student and I have learned how to say the days of the week and some of the months! Just in the past 2 days. I can also count to 5 and say the number ten. I’m getting there!

Let me know if you want to come visit! Our first meet would be cool to see but the Cultural Heritage Week/2nd Annual Tommy Phillip NYO meet are the same week in October this year. Should be a REALLY cool time to come if you ever plan on it.

ALSO! I did not edit this because it is too long for me to reread at the moment. Sorry for any mistakes!

Wrapping up the school year...

A few weeks ago was Cultural Heritage Week at school. My dad and brother, Eric, came in town for this week long event-- it was AWESOME! Basically during Cultural Heritage Week, community members and especially elders from Kong (and other villages) are invited to work with a group and teach kids how to do 'cultural' types of projects. Some of the things they make during the week are: bracelets, slingshots, dance fans, headdresses for Yuyuuraq dancing, piluguuks, knitting, crocheting, toy boats, checker boards, wooden spoons, ulu knives, and sleds. Students are also allowed to go out hunting during the week with permission of the parents. People who catch birds, beavers, and seals tend to donate them to the school during this week and the students then have a chance to learn to work on them (skin, gut and butcher).
Below is a picture of two of my students and me with swans-- they were so excited!


Here my buddy is with a Ptarmigan-- he was making it 'fly' around the gym and didn't want to let it go ;)

Below you can see that I was 'lucky' enough to get to separate the seal skin from the blubber/oil. I couldn't believe how thick this layer was!! The ulu knife is used to separate the two and then the oil is put into a bowl and left in the arctic entry way of a house. Within a couple of days the 'solid' oil becomes a 'liquid' oil.

This is a picture of the crew that worked together on the seal- I probably only worked for 10 minutes and my back was sore- wow do I respect the people that have to do numerous seals in a day!

Below is a picture of one of the students finishing up cutting the seal meat...

These girls were working on the headdresses which they can wear for Yuyuuraq dancing- they turned out beautiful!

One of the elders, Julia, came in and helped the girls make dance fans. Headdresses and dance fans are not commonly made in Kong because up until this year they weren't allowed to Yuuyuraq dance (the eskimo dancing they do) therefore they didn't need any headdresses or dance fans. Sheila has been trying for a few years to get it started but there have always been elders who said no. This year she asked again and a tribal council meeting and it was finally approved. The group is doing a GREAT job!

Another project some of the boys worked on were making wooden spoons. They started with logs and 'cut' them down to be spoons. These took a few days of hard work and a lot of patience. Pictured below are a student and Eric working on their spoons.


A group of boys also chose to make these... (Ice cutters???) I'm not sure of the name but they are used to cut blocks of ice apart from lakes and once melted, the water is used for drinking.

The younger boys (1st-4th) made boats which they could pull around in the puddles around the village. There are A LOT of muddy puddles!

These kids also worked on checkerboards throughout the week. They had so much fun!

The kindergarten boys began the week making slingshots. Later in the week 1st-4th graders also made slingshots. (Scary to think of all these little boys outside in the spring with slingshots! YIKES!)

A big group of boys are excited to show off their projects below!

The girls had a variety of projects to work on as well. This little girl chose to sew.

These girls were knitting and crocheting. The girl in the middle is working on making a hair net.

Every morning we would gather in the gym and watch the Yuyuuraq dancing. The kids wore their headdresses and used their dance fans as they finished. They were so proud of their work. After assemblies they would go to specific rooms to listen to elders speak to them for a while.


Ok on to something new! I THINK Moose is a dad. One of the students brought over her puppies and this one in particular reminded me of moose. He has white on the tips of each of his feet just like Moose, he has a big block head, thick fur, tons of excess skin, similar ears and snout. Not sure, but I have a feeling it may be Moose's baby :) When the student's dad found out that we were thinking they were possibly Moose's puppies he called the person he had just sold one to and told him he wanted the puppy back and they would give them the money back for it.

Last Saturday we had graduation and prom. Pictured are us gals at the graduation (Garnet,Rachel, Me, Sheila, Megan).

There were 8 preschoolers and 2 highschoolers who graduated...

After graduation was the prom. Prom Princess, Prince, King and Queen are in this picture.

I think the teachers had about as much fun as the students at the prom. This is a picture of Rachel, Sheila, Me, Garnet and Bernie.



During our last week of school we were SO BUSY! We have been packing up classrooms for a few weeks now and since we will be in the new school in August we decided to let the kids help load/unload boxes out of/into school (cheap labor and finished QUICK!). Some of the kids walked out to begin and others hitched a ride on a 4 wheeler. Below are the students making the mile journey to the new school...

The kids were all lined up and ready for the boxes to arrive. We kept half the kids at the old school to load the 4 wheelers/trailers and half at the new school to unload and place in the correct classrooms.

The kids actually created assembly lines on their own to pass the boxes up the stairs and into school. It was really cool to see everyone (teachers, students, parents) work together on this project.

After 2 days of hard work we finally hopped on the 4 wheelers and left the new school only to return again in August!

This is a picture of the new school aka the blue school!

This is a picture of the old school, the Red School.


On the last day of school we had a student v.s. teacher basketball game. Was only supposed to be 20 minutes long but lunch was running late so we ended up playing for an hour! I was so sore by the end but had so much fun!




NOW IT IS SUMMER!!!!! I stayed up until 4:30 am Friday packing our house and 5:30 Saturday packing the house. SO EXHAUSTED now as I sit in Bethel on Sunday. I think this is the first time I have just sat to relax in a month. I leave Bethel tomorrow (hoping to hop on the morning flight to Anchorage instead of the evening flight) and spending a night in Anchorage. Rachel, Sheila and I fly into Chicago on Tuesday! CAN'T wait! Hope to see everyone soon!!!!

Homer, Dead Seals, Moose(the real thing) and Moose (the dog)

WOW I haven’t blogged in a long time- it has been a BUSY end of the school year! Only 3 weeks of school left. This week we will have cultural heritage week all week. I will explain more in my next blog and show pictures—to make a long story short, it will be awesome. My dad and Eric are coming to Kong for the week as well. They should be getting here any time in the next 5 hours. You never know when a plane may decide to leave Bethel early.

So let me catch you up… after the last post, I met my friends Anne and Michelle in Anchorage for a mini vacation.

We borrowed Megan’s truck and her condo- Thanks Megan! Well…. As soon as we got to the condo, I put the car key in the hole and turned… BROKE the key! Luckily Megan is smart and keeps a spare key which I got copied and we were still able to go out and have fun. Michelle, Anne and I went out for pizza the first night and shopping. The next morning (Palm Sunday) we went to church downtown and then headed to Homer. Homer is about a 4-5 hour drive from Anchorage. My state mentor, Ed and his wife Sheryl have a house there as well as some cabins. If you ever plan to go to Homer I STRONGLY suggest you stay with them and book early- GREAT people, BEAUTIFUL land and view- “Moose Creek Cabins”. The drive from Anchorage to Homer is just amazing as well. We stopped at Portage Glacier (but couldn’t see it because of the clouds) along the way as well as just some stops to take pictures. I really can’t stress how fun it was just to get in a car/truck with some friends and take a roadtrip through the mountains.





When we got into Homer we went to the Salty Dog Café. This place has dollar bills ALLLLLL over the inside of it.


After the Salty Dawg Café we headed to Ed and Sheryls. Talked with them for a bit and then just enjoyed sitting in a hot tub overlooking the mountains. On our way back to Anchorage the next day, we saw a Moose and it’s baby in the middle of the road!



We basically finished up our trip with a lot of shopping. It was a short trip but so much fun!

When I got back to Kong Michele had to leave to head home to Indiana the same day. Sad but true.

So onto another week, another subject… Sheila called us one day and said Rod caught some seals and we should come over. So we did of course. We watched Sheila cut up and gut the seal. I took a video but I’m not sure how to post it on here so check out Facebook sometime. I did get a couple of pictures for you to see however! We cooked up the seal meat a couple of days later—it tasted exactly like beef liver to me- which I like. Rachel gagged because we made gag sounds to set her off (well Megan did). I don’t think she liked it so much ;)



Now as for an update on Moose.... he eats, plays, sleeps and poos. He is a HUGE SLOBERY BEAST these days. He will drive you nuts but is full of love. When we go out on walks and kids are around, Moose HAS to be the center of attention. What else is new. He runs up to them, rolls over on his back and expects to be pet and loved.

Moose smiling for the camera with snow/ice all over his face- just the way he likes it.

Moose digging in the snow-- he LOVES it! He looks like a little groundhog.


Also... RIP Peter the cat. He was a good cat and he was a bad cat. He sprayed on the furniture and we think he had tumors and was sick so he was 'put to sleep'. We miss that cat and I think he was Moose's best friend. What I don't miss is Moose eating the cat poo- glad that came to an abrupt stop.

Hmmmm so I think that is about it. I will post some Cultural Heritage Week information next week so you know what I am talking about. I land in Chicago May 18th… 24 days… but who is counting. Sheila and Rachel are coming back with me for about a week- they have never been to the Midwest!!! Should be a great time :O) From the Midwest they are going on to Maine. Welp I can’t wait to see you all soon!