Razdolna School

Some of you may have wondered about Doug's working at a Russian school. He is 3 weeks into his job, 2 weeks since school started, so let me share some of the things he has discovered and experienced.

There are currently 41 students at Razdolna, up from 36 last year. At this point 11 kids will be enrolling in kindergarten next year, in a building that has a maximum capacity of 50 students. Needless to say, there are growing pains! Since the school district rents the building from some of the villagers, they cannot actually make any improvements. They are working on a plan to address this problem. Student test scores are high, so Doug's job will be to make them higher! Parents want their kids to have homework.

There was an open house at the school today, and every family stopped by. Many were very appreciative of Doug's being there, there were numerous comments about how the school is looking better, and some were even asking if Doug was going to be there next year! Overall, it is an incredibly positive place to work.

There is a full-time K-4 teacher, Ann, who has taught at the school 10 years and lives in one of the other Russian villages (though not Russian herself). There is a part-time 5-12 teacher, Laura, for whom this is her first year teaching. The other half of the time she is a Title teacher. Doug is the other half-time 5-12 teacher. He teachs math, technology and independent study. They also have various part-time teachers who come in as counselors, to teach Russian, special education, etc. The secretary of the school is a Russian lady who lives in the village and acts as an informal liaison between the school and village.

Doug's comment after the first day of school, about the students: "They are kids like kids everywhere. They are very well-behaved and smart. The only difference is that they will start speaking Russian every so often." Doug was so excited the other day when a student was looking through the Algebra textbook and saw some graphs and said with great enthusiasm, "I really want to learn this stuff!" In 15 years of teaching he has never encountered such an openess to learning.

Obviously there is no bussing, since all the students live in the village. They have an hour for lunch and they all go home. The teachers then have a half hour lunch and half hour prep.

School supplies are delivered to McNeil Canyon School, 15 miles away, so Doug has to pick up water (the water in the school is unpotable), paper, chairs, equipment, etc. He also has to take the trash to the dumpster at McNeil.

The school belongs to the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District that encompasses hundreds of miles from north to south, including some schools in the bush (fly-in or boat in only). Doug has never known such an incredible level of support in all his years of teaching. He has been hired to do his job. The district office staff repeatedly state that they are there to help them do their job. This school district is one of the best in the nation for its size. While there is paperwork, like anywhere, Doug says there is a purpose to it (as opposed to pointless paperwork) and he doesn't mind it because he understands why they need it.

The superintendent is very responsive to the administrators (80 of them!). She expects them to do their job as principals, which means having quality teachers on staff. The whole atmosphere of the district is education. The health insurance is self-funded, which means they have not hired a middle-man to pay their insurance costs; the district pays the health insurance bills themselves.

Starting Over

As school starts and the pace of life shifts, I have been reflecting on our move, our expectations and adjusting. Here are a few meandering thoughts.....

I was looking forward to starting over in Alaska with a clean slate, but it definately was not as glamorous or as different as I'd hoped. It has been nice that no one here has expectations of me, what job I should work at, how I should live my life. Yet people develop expectations quickly, and pretty soon we're pegged again.

The big disadvantages of starting over, as I see them, are
1) PAPERWORK! Applying for new insurance, licenses, schools, doctor's offices, utilities, etc. etc. is a huge time siphon. I can see why people with big families don't move! The paperwork for the school alone was 15 minutes per child! Big yuck!
2) Money! It costs so much to move, and having to pay two of everything for awhile (mortgage and rent, electric, phone, etc.) can eat up extra money (what extra money??!!). It's a bit stressful still having an unsold house in Michigan (who's mowing the lawn? Is the place being taken care of?).
3) Not having the kind of friends that just know me. People are friendly, and I enjoy getting to know them, but there is a comfort in being around people I have a history with, who know my sense of humor, my hot buttons, etc., and I know theirs. I miss that kind of friend more than anything. I had forgotten how long it took to develop the awesome friendships I had in Michigan.

The advantages of starting over:
1) New experiences, new places to explore, new friends to be made, different activities to get involved with. As life-long learners, we are finding all this newness great fun. Luckily our kids share this enthusiasm, so while they miss Michigan a little bit, they too are looking forward to new adventures.
2) Not as many expectations of who we are and who we should be.
3) Learning about ourselves and each other as we experience these new situations.
4) Applying our skills in new situations.

We have no regrets. We feel like this is where we are supposed to be, and are enjoying carving out a niche for ourselves even as we wonder how long we will be here. There's no place better than the present!

Engineer Lake and Campground

This is one of the campgrounds we spent a few hours between hikes hanging out at. The loons were calling back and forth (at noon!), and we found this lake to be much more beautiful than Ohmer. It also had less traffic than Ohmer. No vehicles pulled through in the 3 hours we were there. This campground has only 4 sites, but it is at one end of the 4.4 mile Seven Lakes Trail connecting it to Kelly Lake on the Sterling Highway, so it had 2 bathrooms and potable water. We all went swimming here, as the water temperature was wonderful and it was in the 70's or low 80's. The fish were hilarious. I don't know what they were, but the moment we stepped into the water they swam up to our feet and nibbled at them, which was a ticklish affair! They were only 1-3 inches long, looked like rocks, and were not shy! We have this campground on our list to stay at sometime, as well as the camping cabin that is on the north end of this lake (a 1/2 mile or so hike from the campground). The only bummer: no berries at this campground!

Kenai River Loop

On this hike we saw our first bear. Just to the right of Aurora's head in the top picture she spotted a black bear across the river. It was just for a couple seconds, but it was still neat. The other picture is a little backcountry campsite/picnic area on a bluff overlooking the Kenai River. Aurora was enthralled, and wanted to stay for hours. We saw lots of fish jumping as we sat there, and though there had been countless bear scat and rotting carcass smells along the trail, we felt pretty comfortable in that spot. I had told the kids I would carry the backpacking stove out and cook lunch on this trail, but with so many bear around I did not want to cook anything that was "smelly" and would attract bears, so we ate our usual dry, nearly scentless snacks. This path starts in a burn area, then winds into a swampy area, then heads down to the Kenai River in a beautiful spruce forest. There is an Upper Kenai River Trail and a Lower Kenai River Trail (each 5+ miles round-trip), but we took a trail out to the river and a short loop back, which I would guess was 3-4 miles round trip, though we're not sure about that. There is very little elevation gain, so this is a comfortable hike, though the bear presence is incredibly strong so it is not relaxing in that sense. This is another trail on our "definately go back to" list.

Hideout Trail

Three years ago when we visited Alaska, we climbed partway up this mountain, but at that time we didn't have mountain legs, and now we do! The Hideout Trail overlooks Skilak Lake and that is the Kenai River in the background. It is a 1.5 mile roundtrip hike, 500 foot climb. It was neat making these climbs each day, because we could see where we'd been on other hikes. This is a hike full of open alpine meadows. We didn't see any sign of bears, and we relaxed a little from our constant vigilance and noise making. It was on this trail I first saw a Sitka Mountain Ash, a tree with edible fruit that I found in my AK berry book (author: Verna E. Pratt. I highly recommend this little pocket guide). They weren't ripe, but it was one of the few berries in the book I had not seen yet.
As we sat at the overlook I noticed the "rocks" in the river moving. Looking through the binoculars, I thought perhaps they were bears, but if so, we saw 5 of them at once just on the part of the river you see in the picture above. I didn't know what else they could be beside bears. The hike down to the river was the one we had planned on next, and Aurora, thinking they were bears, said, "Let's go! I want to go see some bears up close!" When we did the Kenai River Trail and saw a boat go by it occurred to me those might have been boats.
We enjoyed this hike, and would recommend it for being a beautiful view, but not quite so grueling as some of the others.

Hidden Creek Trail

The Hidden Creek Trail was one of our favorite's. It wound through an unburned, beautiful spruce forest with a wide enough trail to walk side-by-side in some parts. The raspberries along this path were huge, so of course we stopped to graze. There were some sections that were burned, as this is the source of the Hidden Creek Fire of '96 that burned the other areas I have mentioned. Unlike the other trails, where there were few trees still standing, as you can see many skeletons still stand. The forest was very dense before it burned!

The highlight of this hike was meeting a group of about 12 people who had just seen a brown bear in the direction we were heading. We debated for about 10 seconds about going back or continuing (it was a loop), and decided to just continue to practice safe bear habits and continue. In the 300 yards past where we met that group we saw 4 fresh berry-filled bear scat. We were a bit more nervous on that hike than others. We were on the shore of the Skilak Lake, at the mouth where the Kenai River flows into it. Fish were jumping out of the water all over the place. It was bear heaven. The trees were so dense and close to the trail that we couldn't see very far off the trail. That is the trail we most want to go on again next time we get back to the Skilak Wildlife Recreation Area.

Bear Mountain Trail

The Bear Mountain Trail is 1.6 miles round trip, a steep 400 foot climb. It is not burned, but it was somewhat open and was therefore very grassy. There was not a profusion of berries, unlike the hikes in the burned areas. The view of Skilak Lake (see picture) was almost more beautiful than yesterday's Skilak Lookout Trail. You can see where we were yesterday. The little knob on the mountain above the lake is the Skilak Lookout. The haze you see in the picture is from the Swan Lake Fire which is just off the right side of this picture on the far side of Skilak Lake. The rocks at the top of this trail were swarming with flies, and it was very hot, so we sat in the shade of a tree. I was nervous up there because there was a very strong scent (I can't remember it well enough to describe it), but it made me think of bear or other wildlife. The bear scat we saw on the way up was filled more with currant berries (I could tell by the shape of the seeds) than the bear scat we saw on the Vista Trail.