The Akiak Redemption

This week hasn't been as exciting as most weeks. I was sick on Monday...with the stomach flu. I had a lot of meetings and had a lesson plan party with my roommate and my friend the 3rd grade teacher. I have made some really good friends up here and he's one of them.

Everyday has been below zero temperature wise. I have been layering up or getting rides to work, so it hasn't really bothered me. Yesterday, it was -5 but the windchill factor was -25. When the wind hit my face, damn, it was cold! Please pardon my swearing, but you get hit in the face with a 25 degrees below zero wind and see if you don't swear. It's really that cold. My skin reacted like a sunburn (the little part that was showing)....that starts to peel right away. It was kind of invigorating at the same time. I felt alive in that wind. Like my body had woken up or something. It was interesting. I was glad to get indoors just the same.

In 12 days, I will be heading to California for the holidays. I have some mixed reactions. I'm so excited to see my family & friends again, but I'm leaving my cats, and my Akiak family. My students are not happy I'm leaving. I think they are used to teachers not coming back after winter break. I have been reassuring them and pointing out that my cats are staying and I think that makes them feel better. When I came back on Tuesday after being sick, one of my boys told me that he had missed me. I was deeply touched because this boy is the same boy who hurt his eye and wanted me to stay with him. He had always acted indifferent to me, but here he was telling me he missed me. I have loved all my students but here my life seems to revolve around them and I find they mean so much to me. If I am offered a contract next year, I would like to continue to teach here next year. So I am happy to see my family & friends but I know I will also be happy to come back to Akiak in January.

So, a documentary crew had come out in the summer to document the new teachers in the village next to me. I am supposed to interviewed at some point, but who knows if anything will come from it. Anyways, I bring this up because I saw the first part of the documentary. And while I was watching it, I was transported back to my trip in the summer. It did a really good job of showing the reality of coming here. The natural beauty, the culture, the alcohol abuse, the violence, and the poverty. I mean, I can look back and read what I wrote during that time and the documentary completely reflects the same thing.

Only, things have changed. I am no longer an outsider looking in. I'm not saying I've been ingrained in the society here...but in many ways, I have. I'm better known. People know who I am without me having to introduce myself. Women talk about their lives around me, which didn't happen before. I'm friendly with the people here, but I don't have a friend other than teachers yet. The change has been the kids. They have become so much a part of me that I no longer see the "bad"....it's there, and I know it is...but when I look around, I see the beauty...not just in the earth around me, but in the people too. Instead of Yup'ik Eskimos, I see all of us as people, living our lives and surviving what life hands us. My kids are kids....the culture's different, true....but so what?

I watched The Shawshank Redemption the other day (one of my favorite movies) and I found myself relating my life now to that movie. At first I realized that my room is a little bigger than a prison cell....and the other then I related to was when Red is talking about time. When I'm not teaching or working, I have a lot of time on my hands. Especially, when the weather is so bad. I stay indoors and have to find ways to spend my time. I watch movies, I read...I brought stuff to crochet but I haven't been in the mood for that. I bought some stuff to start embroidering and hopefully I'll like that.

My brain took off comparing the movie to my life....and it took me in a different direction. I saw the triumph of the human spirit. Not with me....but with the people. Many people/kids are Andy Dufrane to my Red. Abuse, crawling through sewers and coming out clean, innocents paying for crimes that aren't theirs (figuratively)....it's all here. And sometimes I see my students as free spirits I'm trying to keep caged in a square room when they really want to fly.

Call me a dreamer or overly immaginative....but I really can see it.

So I leave you now with this:

Sunrise: 10:49 a.m.
Sunset: 4:29 p.m.

And some of my favorite quotes from the movie The Shawshank Redemption (seriously, if you've never seen it, watch it.)

Red:
* I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't wanna know. Some things are better left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared, higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

* Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend.

* I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.