Monday, April 13, 2009, sometime around 11:00AM time slowed down. The phones kept ringing, but none of the calls were to inform Jeremy and me that our flight to Newhalen for the High School Academic/Athletic Meet was on its way. Finally Glen Jr. with Lake Clark Air announced on the radio that he was on his way to pick up a couple of passengers here in Igiugig. Bonnie called; Jeremy and I grabbed our snow gear and headed down to the hanger to wait. Glen landed and walked in, “Sorry, wrong flight!” Bummer! We went back to the school to wait. “April Fools!” joked Mark. Bonnie called again to let us know Lake and Pen Air was five minutes out. We looked at each other with hope that this was no joke. Once again we grabbed our gear and headed back. Phew! Lyle stepped out and loaded our bags, we climbed in, waved goodbye, and we were off!
We arrived at the Newhalen School sometime around 1:00PM. Newhalen School was still in session so we placed our bags off to the side in the hallway and joined the other schools that were hanging out in the gym. Students were making banners, playing catch, reading, and shooting around; our week wasn’t scheduled to begin until 4:00PM. When most of the schools had arrived and 4:00 came around we started out with a few icebreakers. Personally, they involved too much contact for my comfort, and in the end there was probably more ice created than there was to begin with.
When the icebreakers were through we had dinner followed by a short student government meeting. At the end of the meeting all students lined up by their grade and signed up for the classes/activities we would be participating in for the next couple of days. I signed up for Star Planetarium, Biology, Population/Tracking, and GPS. I forgot which class Orville Lind was teaching (turned out to be Native Science) so I had hopes that he was teaching either Population/Tracking or GPS. Oh well, I learned some interesting lessons and gained some amazing new skills from the classes I chose.
In the Stars Planetarium class, I learned that the North Star never moves, and that I have an excellent nose for recognizing different scents! In Biology, I discovered that I am a natural at cutting up dead reptiles. I also learned what a mudpuppy is. (A type of salamander that has both gills and lungs, but they only use their lungs 2% of the time. Their lungs are tiny!) The Biology teacher was loads of fun! She was very upbeat and excited about teaching - she is definitely a people person. Population/Tracking taught me more about how much work fish and game puts into tracking fish in the summer and throughout the rest of the year. I enjoyed pretending that packing peanuts inside of a plastic trash bag were fish in a river. In my last class, it was great to finally learn how to use a GPS; I knew they had cool digital maps and such, but never knew much else about it. It was fun finding the different locations the instructors mapped out for us. In the end we found a bag full of jolly ranchers and got to snack on them.
It is hard to say which class was my favorite; they were all great. At the end of those couple of days I was glad to look back and reflect on everything I had done. I had truly grasped the power of my nostrils, discovered my amazing dissection skills, tracked down Cody (one of the guides) during Population/Tracking, and I now have a better understanding of how to use a GPS. (Woohoo, Go Angel!) I enjoyed the options we had this year; I would be content if the choices for next year’s classes were even half as great.
