This week

Here is a picture of Phil with Io (orange) and Obsidian (gray).

I started summer school this week. We had training at the district office (90 miles away) on Wednesday and then the kids started Thursday morning. I actually only had 1 kid Thursday, and he was splitting the time between me and world history, so I did very little that morning but call other students to convince them to come. Friday I had three more kids, so that was good. I would have gotten paid with just one kid, but it would have been way too boring to sit there for 2 hours while he did world history and then watch him work on math on the computer for the last two hours. I am glad to be more active.

Thursday afternoon Phil and I went on a hike out Tonisna, which is off of Lowel Point, which is at the head of Seward, so to speak. The trail was 1.5 miles through the forest, ending at the beach. The trail was damaged by floods and part of the time we were just walking up/down creek beds. Still it was cool. There were signs up at the trail head of bear sitings in the past two days and we saw lots of fresh bear scat on the trail, including some that showed up between when we hiked in and when we hiked out. Still, there were quite a number of people on the trail (especially on the way back) and we didn't see any of the bears (who tend to be more scared of us then we are of them).

We wanted to hike the 3 mile beach trail that connected to the Tonsina trail, but about 40 feet of the 140 bridge was wiped out from the 2006 fall flood and we had to stopped there. We contemplated wading across downstream where it was shallower, but decided to plan that for a another day. The tricky thing with the 3 mile beach stretch is that it is tide dependent. You can only hike it at low tide, otherwise you risk getting stuck.

So Phil and I opted for a nice picnic lunch on the beach. The hitherto shy sun came out and the sand was warm and we were very happy to sit there, leaning against some driftwood, just taking in the day, watching boats go by.

Yesterday I did some gardening in the yard. This involved mostly cleaning out the dead plants/grasses from last year from the flower beds, picking up other bits of debris and moving around some rocks (for new borders). I planted some flower pots which I now have on the front porch steps and I hope to get some seeds in the next week to plant in the beds. We have some rhubarb coming up already and I hope to actually do something with it this year, although I don't really know when to pick the rhubarb. I have to investigate this.

Today Phil and I are going to a retirement party for one of the nurses Phil works with. Funny, we have known each other/been together for 3.5 years now and this is the first time we are going to some kind of "party" together. This should give you an idea of how often Phil and I "get out." Actually we do do a lot, but we seem to just do it alone (parties don't come up for us or get accepted by us that often). That being said, in two more weeks we are going to a wedding for another nurse Phil works with.

Pics from the last day of school

You can click on any picture to make it bigger/easier to see.

This is a picture of the entire school.

I'm in the red shirt in the middle at the top.

















This a picture of just the 8th graders (who I primarily taught).









This is a pic of our staff. Notice that even though I am standing on pilings, I am only just as tall as my principal, Trevan. He was new this year and great to work with. We are actually only 5 days apart in age, so we have a lot in common.

Last weekend

Last weekend Phil and I went to Homer. We had a great time. It is so nice to stay at my parent's. They have a downstairs guest apartment and every window of the house has a great view. I love our trees and close mountains here in Seward, but it does make it feel very closed in. Over there the view is gorgeous and wide open. You feel you are on top of the world.

Saturday Mom and Robin (my sister-in-law) and I went yard sale-ing(Phil slept in). Actually we ended up only going to one yard sale at my friend Jenn's. We all got great stuff! I would have gotten more, actually, but I was too busy saying hi to Jenn that I missed out on all the cool stuff Robin snatched up.

In the afternoon Mom, Dad, Phil and I went to an Peace Event at the beach. It was very moving. They had a pair of shoes set out for each person who died on one particular day in the Iraq War. Each pair was marked with the name of who died, including all the Iraqi civilians.

My parents are the people standing in the background. It was a bit rainy, which is why the shoes were covered.

That evening Chris (my brother) and Robin came up and we had dinner. Originally we were going to eat in the green house as a sort-of inauguration, but it was a bit on the cool side, so we ate inside.

Sunday Mom, Dad, Phil and I went to the Ptarmigan Arts Gallery where my parents have their work. Mom makes beaded jewelry and Dad does marquetry, which is inlaid wood designs. Their art looked great in the gallery. After that we drove out to the Spit and went to the Wooden Boat Festival. Then we drove around and looked at land around Homer. Ideally Phil and I would like to live there in Homer, but our jobs are here for now...

In the evening Phil and I went out with our friends Jenn and Miriam.

Monday morning Phil slept in and Mom, Dad and I went on a bike ride out the Spit. The ride is about 10 miles round trip, it is on a bike path that has the ocean on both sides, so you smell that lovely salt air and feel the sea breezes. We stopped for lunch at at small cafe on pier over the beach and then headed back. While we were eating the wind really picked up. The sweet sea breeze became cold, foggy winds and it was a tough ride back. But still, it was a lot of fun.

Phil was awake by the time we got back, so we packed up and headed home. It was a glorious, sunny drive and a great mini-break.

I'm free!

So to speak. School is officially over!

I checked out this morning and then Phil and I went for a hike. We had planned to do a 9 mile round trip hike, but the trail still had a lot of snow. About every 50 yards we had to cross a snow pack, and often we would sink in. One time I sank all the way down, so the snow was up to my hip. I rolled around to try to get out and Phil tried to pull me out, but my foot was stuck. Finally I had to use my hands to widen the hole so I could get my foot out. Needless to to say, we did NOT do the entire 9 miles. I am not sure how far we went, but we hiked for about 90 minutes. The trail was very nice, if you ignore the snow. You could see Exit Glacier at times, there were several small water falls and in general it followed the river, so it was lovely.

Later this afternoon I had Phil drive me back out Exit Glacier road and then I biked home. It was just under 6 miles and it took me about 40 minutes which I think is pretty good. The wind was blowing a good bit, which made the biking a bit harder, but the weather, which was quite gray and overcast this morning, has tuned into a blue, sunny day and the bike ride was great. The hardest part was actually biking up our driveway, which is steep and comes, itself, off a hill on the road (I made it up!).

Tonight we were going to go out to dinner at my favorite restaurant in town. I got a gift certificate there from one of my students as a thank you, but Phil says his stomach is feeling wonky, so now we are not going. At least I can look forward to eating there later in the summer.

We are going to go over to my parents house in Homer this weekend. They built a green house and we are going to help inaugurate it. Plus it will just be nice to visit them and our Homer friends. I haven't been over since Christmas and I don't think Phil has been there in at least a year, if not more. This mini-trip will be a nice way to celebrate the end of the school year and to just enjoy not having responsibilities (I won't have worry about lesson planning or work to be graded--that is a great feeling)! Yeah for sumer!

Gull Rock

Yesterday Phil and I hiked out to Gull Rock, which is a 10.2 mile round trip trail through the Chugach National Forest . It was an hour and a half drive to get there, but the weather was great!

Among one of Phil's many past lives (high school drop out, chicken wrangler, aviations tech in the Navy, bum, medical test subject, hot-shot forest fire fighter, ect...) he used to work for the Forest Service on Trail Crews here in the Chugach National Forest. The Chugach extends from Seward up north of Girdwood. I worked for the Chugach NF in 1993 as a naturalist at Portage Glacier and it is very possible we crossed paths back then as we were in the same areas at the same time.

Part of Phil's trail crew job was to work on the Gull Rock trail. So as we hiked along Phil would show me where they dug the drainage ditches, how they milled logs at the site to build bridges and the extensive board walk, how they hauled in supplies on four wheelers and how they hiked along with their chainsaws clearing winter tree blow-downs and cutting back the vegetation to open the path.

It is a beautiful hike that follows the coast out to Gull Rock (an elevation gain of about 600 feet), where you can see across Turnagain Arm and out Cook inlet. The trail goes through several different ecosystems, from the more grassy coastal vegetation, through dense spruce and hemlock, more open birch and alder and wide open scree/slide areas.

We saw a ptarmigan (the state bird) already in it's summer plumage, a hare (that's "bunny" in the north), several squirrels, and enough moose poop to know there were several around, even though we never saw any(although one did go through our yard Saturday night). There were caws of ravens and the lovely songs of the varied thrush to accompany us. And the deluge of mosquitoes if you stopped out of the wind to rest kept us on our toes.

Phil is great to hike with. If he got more than about twenty steps in front of me he would wait for me--it helped that I was wearing a bear bell (to make noise and keep bears away) on my pack so he could hear that I was right behind him. He also carried our pepper spray, which is like mace for bears. I would say that we passed hikers every half an hour or so, so the trail wasn't crowded, but had just enough activity to keep the bears at bay.

We were both sore by the time we got back to the car, but it was well worth it. We are planning another hike for Thursday afternoon, after I finish the last day of school. This one might be a bit longer, but it has less elevation, which will be good for my knees and Phil's hip (he is still having trouble walking because he is achy today--could also be that he slept all day while I went to school and worked my kinks out). We're a good pair, he and I!


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from http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail.asp?trailid=HGA003-021

Gull Rock Trail

Preview: A long day hike or overnight trip to a prominent point along the south coast of Turnagain Arm. The trail crosses the forested slope above Turnagain Arm to Gull Rock, a prominent headland that projects well out into the arm. This is one of the earliest hikes to open on the Kenai Peninsula in the spring. Watch for mountain bikes; the trail is popular with bikers, and the narrow trail dips and twists enough that visibility is limited. The trail is a popular hike or ride for campers at the Porcupine Creek Campground. The Gull Rock hike is loaded with variety: leaf-carpeted birch woods, bluffs with mountain and ocean views, small streams gushing through quiet forest, a pretty talus and tundra slope, an avalanche gully that can hold snow into June (take care crossing it), and dark, mossy forests of hemlock and Sitka spruce. The trail crosses several small creeks, but the only large stream is Johnson Creek, about 0.3 miles from the end of the trail. Special features: Coast and forest scenery, historic interest.

Hummingbirds

Last Friday we saw a beautiful humming bird looking for food at our normal feeder. Luckily I had my hummingbird feeder ready to go and within 5 minutes i had nectar made and hung it outside. we have had hummingbirds visiting regularly since then. Usually we have the Rufous hummingbirds in Alaska, but the first on had a bright crimson chest and I haven't identified it yet.

"A full-grown rufous measures 3 1/2 inches from bill tip to tail end. These fuel-efficient birds are the northernmost hummingbirds and travel about 2,600 miles from southern Mexico to spend the summer with Prince William Sound residents."
from http://www.humabout.net/hendrix.html

Chinese Red Cross Foundation

The Alaska Chinese Association has set up a relief fund for donations to be sent directly to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation. If you have the means, this is a trust worthy organization to make a donation to.

The Alaska Chinese Association Announces

May 12th Earthquake Fund

The Alaska Chinese Association is calling upon Alaskans to help out in the rescue & relief efforts after the disastrous earthquake in China. We have established the “China Earthquake Relief Fund”. All donations will be sent directly to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation. Anybody who would like to make donations can either send a check payable to:

China Earthquake Relief Fund

P.O. Box 91047

Anchorage, AK 99509-1047

Or make a deposit directly to:

China Earthquake Relief Fund Account # 3265527535

at Any Wells Fargo Branch.

All donations are Tax Deductible.

Three days left of school

Only three days until school is out! I am ready for the break. Even though I will be starting summer school a week later, that is only half a day, two days a week for a month, so it is nothing.

Lots of updates.

Two weeks ago I got a little over enthusiastic playing 4-square with some of my students and tweaked something in my back. It wasn't really that bad until a week later when I must have done something to exacerbate the problem. I ended up in a lot of pain for our weekend in Anchorage. Luckily, we still had a great time.

Our row D, center tickets to Bruce Cockburn ended up being the front row (there was no A-C), so that was awesome. Bruce sang one of Phil's favorite songs (from an album originally released in 1979). Before the show Phil had told me this endearing story of listening to this song while biking around somewhere and thinking how great it was, and then Bruce played that song and Phil was all excited and sang along, which I thought was great (plus, Phil has a good voice, I like hearing him sing).

On Saturday Phil slept in ALL day and I went shopping. The weather in Anchorage was sunny and warm and I had a nice time hitting the thrift stores and all the places Phil doesn't like to go. I even had a chance to walk to the big Anchorage Saturday market, which was just two blocks from our hotel. Saturday night we had great seats again to see Arturo Sandoval, a jazz trumpet (and every other instrument) player. It was a great performance as well.

The hotel we stayed at was horrible! This was the first time we stayed there (and the last). The room was okay, but it was loud in the morning. Sunday morning (after staying up until 3) we were woken up repeatedly. I called the front desk at 8 a.m. to ask for a late check-out as it was so loud and we needed more time to sleep. An hour later, I kid you not, the maintenance staff was in the room next door, actually hammering into our wall, running the electric drill and saw, making tons of noise. Phil was VERY vexed (to put it mildly). We ended up checking out at the normal time (who could sleep?!?) and I told the manager that I would not be paying for that night, and she agreed. So at least there was some restitution, but not enough to entice me to go there again, even with my NEA discount.

It took all week, but my back is better now. Phil and I plan on going hiking tomorrow. The weather is sunny and the temperature is in the 50s, so it should be good. I bought some nice hiking boots at REI and broke them in at school this week, so I am set to go. Hopefully, it will happen. I may go biking today, it depends on what Phil and I end up doing this afternoon.

I have been a bit heartbroken this week about the earthquake in China. I can't imagine what it must be like to encounter such devastation. One thing I have been thinking about is that one middle school where 1000 students and teachers were burried in rubble when the building collapsed. In my entire 6 year teaching career I haven't even taught 1000 kids--it would be as if every student I have ever taught all died simultaneously. How do you recover from something like that. I worry that my daughter might be from that province and might have experienced that quake (if she will be 2-5 when I bring her home, then she is already alive now and it is just a matter of time until we are together).

My adoption agency, WACAP, said that they contacted all the orphanages closest to Chengdu and they all reported that everyone was okay. Some have had a little damage and have had to evacuate buildings, but they are not in the badly struck areas and are okay. My daughter could end up coming from anywhere in China, but I don't know and it makes me wonder if she is okay, even though I don't know her yet/haven't even been matched with her yet. I still sense that she out there and worry and think about her.

I don't know what effect the earthquake will have on international adoptions. There were a lot of parents that lost their children, but equally their were children who have lost parents. One school that was not badly damaged had the problem of not being able to get the students connected with their parents and of knowing which student's parents were dead and not having the heart yet to tell those students. Such terrible losses.

So, like always, we will just keep waiting and trusting that everything will work out.

I hope all is well with all of you.

Happy Belated Mother's Day Pat and Peggy. Thank you, from each of us, for giving us each other!

The smell of death

Ugh, there is something dead in or around the guest room/Lilly's room. I usually leave that door closed and the heat off, to save on heating costs. Last week I went in there to get something and there was a pretty bad stench. I had just been in there a few days earlier and nothing. I searched every corner, every hidden space and couldn't find a thing.

The next day I went back in (to a worse smell). I unmade the beds, took them a part, looked inside the box springs, opened every drawer, moved every piece of furniture. Still, I found nothing.

A few days later I had Phil help me search. Again, we took things out, checked every spot, smelled ever corner and were again unable to pinpoint the source. Phil thinks it must be something in the wall or under the floor.

So now I am stuck with waiting to see if whatever is dead will rot enough to eventually dessicate and cease smelling. I hate the thought of something dead in there--I wish I could find it, even though I don't really want to see it . We get shrews in occassionally, but the cats take them out pretty quickly.

It is not good Feng Shui to have a guest room/future daughter room reeking f death. I am goig to have to do some physical and spiritual cleansing in there! I hate that smell!

Live In Concert

Phil and I really enjoyed Shidara, the Taiko drummers from Japan. They live in an isolated mountain village. They said they train 11 hours a day, starting with an 10 mile morning run. They also do 3000 sit-ups and push-ups a week. In addition, they sew all their own costumes and eat and live together. Every member is trained and performs on each type of drum. They are committed to becoming not just better musicians, but better people spiritually and mentally.

Check out this video.

This weekend we have two concerts! Bruce Cockburn (songwriter/acoustic guitar) is Friday night and Art Sandoval (jazz trumpet) is Saturday night. This will be our last trip to Anchorage for a while--got to save money (never mind the cost of gas!).

Only 12 days left of school. I am so close to freedom!

It is sunny today, which is bad, actually. We need water. Our 1000 gallon tank is down to just under 2 gallons of water If it doesn't rain soon we may have to start hauling water, which is not ideal (that's an understatement).

I got my $600 tax refund today. I put it right into savings (exactly the opposite of what the government wants us to do). I do plan on using it later in the summer to buy stuff for Lilly's room/Lily in general. Right now it is just part of my China fund.