So, Jamie and I got to attend some training last spring in California, and I did this year as well. Even a year apart, the trips were remarkably similar. Here is the story, in pictures mostly, of how one gets from the frozen village to sunny San Jose.
Step 1: Get from the village to the hub, because the little planes are struggling in mid-March. We ride about a half hour by snow machine to Saint Mary's, our nearby hub.
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| Brittnay arrives to pick me up. She is a saint. |
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| Brittnay and Chris load up the sleds to take us to St. Mary's. Here we are pictured just in front of the school. |
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| St Mary's airport - a 20 ft x 15 ft building.. My favorite choice is the last one :) |
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| The Dash 8 that will take us from St. Mary's to Anchorage. |
Step 2: Stash our snow gear, consisting of snow pants, parka, hat, neck warmer, boots, goggles, mittens, etc. in the pilots' area because who wants to take that stuff all the way to San Jose? Board the Dash 8 (about 30-ish seats). We get a free cookie!
Step 3: Indulge in some Anchorage food before boarding the "big plane" that will take us to California. I lost that photo, but it involved food at the airport Chili's and a giant glass of wine.
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| From the big plane! En route from Anchorage to Los Angeles. |
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| Ending our day with palm trees. I believe this is LA. It was a long day. |
Step 4: Hang out in Los Angeles for the night, and fly to San Jose in the morning.
Step 5: Take a much-needed side trip to San Francisco before starting the conference.
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| Thankful to be soaking up the rays. |
Fun side story: While visiting this beach, Jamie and I were so impressed with this dog walker taking care of all these pups. We watched them for a bit, and then decided to sprawl out on the sand and try to soak up as many rays as we could, laying on our backpacks and closing our eyes to enjoy it fully. Then, for some reason, I felt like something was wrong.
I opened my eyes to see that one of these angelic dogs was peeing on Jamie's backpack. Her eyes were closed and she had no idea that she was about to be used as a fire hydrant.
"JAMIE!!!" I screeched.
I must have had a look of horror on my face, but I could not articulate the sentence, "A dog is peeing 2 inches from your head," so she sat up in a panic to see what was happening. Eventually, I stuttered, "A DOG! IT'S PEEING!! GET UP!!" After we recovered from hysterical laughter, we ended up at Target to get her a new bag.
Step 6: Hang out at the Dolce Mansion, where our conference took place. Each break we had, we meandered outside to catch a bit more sunshine.
Professionally speaking, this conference by E.L. Achieve is phenomenal, and I got to chat with other teachers in various other circumstances, talking about how the common practices we use to accelerate academic language work both in the big city and the tiny village. We are lucky to currently be the only district in Alaska to partner with this amazing company. Maybe that will change soon - it has done amazing things for our teachers and students!
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| The patio of our conference - not a bad place to finish up report cards. |
Step 7: Eventually, we returned to the village. This was probably taken from one of the little 207s (6 seats) or caravans (9-10 seats) en route to Mountain Village.
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| Returning to the tundra. |
This year, I had much the same experience, having to snow machine from Mountain Village to Saint Mary's to get into Anchorage. Though I did not get to have a little side trip, standing with my bare feet in the grass was quite worth it!
So, now you know, if you're ever in the village, how to get yourself to San Jose.
(Sorry it has been such a long time since the last post...but you know how life happens...)
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