Baby, it's cold out there! (everywhere, it seems)

Ok, I have had many people comment on my lack of blogging recently. I am really sorry. Strangely enough, I do have better things to do than sit at a computer J Just kidding. I have been busy though. The past few weeks have been a huge roller coaster but I have learned a lot of really good things. Most importantly, I have re-recognized why it felt so important for me to do JVC in the first place. First of all, I really wanted to figure out if I could be independent of my family. I had spent the first 21 years of my life in close proximity of my parents, even in college, I was always able to go home if I got sick, was heartbroken, needed a break from my college life, whatever. Moving to Bethel was going to be a huge change for me, and it has been. Being away from my family for Christmas was actually kind of hard. I missed our traditions, as dysfunctional or random as they might be. Every Christmas, my mom and I spend hours upon countless hours baking cookies to send to our neighbors and friends, we bake until I can’t eat a single more bite of cookie dough (and trust me… I can eat a lot of it). So, instead of baking for my friends and neighbors in Shoreline, I went into a baking frenzy in Bethel. It was part stress reliever, part traditional Christmas activity, and partly a way to fill the time that I was out of work for Christmas break. Important lesson learned: I have family traditions that are important to be, even if I never actually recognized them before.

Going to Christmas mass is another Bruton family tradition that I continued this year. I actually went to two. Once for the children’s mass, where I was in charge of the preschool shepards and angels. During their “speaking roles” I was crouched in front of the first pew, stage whispering “say praise the lord! Yes, you! No picking your nose sweetie! Say praise the lord! Ok, no one wants to say it? Well, come on back, good job everyone!” After that hilarious mass, I stayed with two of my housemates and hung out with Fr. Chuck, our Jesuit priest, until midnight mass. Then I was at midnight mass until Communion when my roommate Abby was called to work on a domestic violence case. We got up and I drove her to work, getting back just in time to pick up the rest of my roommates.

Christmas day was really relaxed; I made popovers, an O’Hara family tradition. Then for dinner, we all went and worked at a soup kitchen. That was a great experience. I had worked at the soup kitchen before, but it really brought Christmas into perspective for me. I had no gifts to open on Christmas, but as corny as this sounds, serving food to those much less fortunate than I, was a wonderful gift in itself. (And the food was delicious too!)

A few days after Christmas, I headed back to Maine for Amy, my cousin, and Chris’ wedding. What a culture shock. I had just spent 5 months in a place where appearance doesn’t matter and showering is overrated because it is awful being naked with wet hair for more than like 2.3 seconds. Then, I was shoved back into a world where appearance is very important. It wasn’t that I was being judged exactly, but my family strongly believes that how you look is an important part of how you carry yourself appropriately. My lack of tan, lack of cute clothes and apparent lack of interest was a shock to my family. But, at the same time, it reminded me of why I am so thankful for Bethel in the first place.

I have spent years of my life believing that I was ugly or fat or just sort of substandard. These days, I realize that whenever I admit that to people, it can come off like I am asking for some kind of compliment (oh Jill, you are beautiful, blah blah), but let’s be real, until I could believe in myself and see my own self worth, whatever anyone said to me would just be empty words. In the past few years, I had made some serious steps in the journey towards genuine self confidence and love but being in Bethel has been incredibly freeing. I found people that don’t care what I look like, people that think I look AMAZING when I take like 10 minutes to put some product in my hair. It was weird to be back in typical “civilization.” I had been back in Seattle before Thanksgiving but I wasn’t around long enough to get that vibe, I don’t think. But, enough of a rant on beauty. Let’s talk about the wedding. It was amazing. I feel so honored to have been a part of something so incredible. In so many ways, it reflected the best parts of Amy and Chris. If I ever get married, I hope to create a ceremony and a reception so full of love, friendship, fun and elegance. (Though I might give the person singing the Alleluia in my mass more than a few days/hours to prepare… thanks Amy!) My time in Maine, and my time with Amy and Chris, was way too short and just flew by. Between the dress fitting, the worrying about the snow that set in the whole time I was there, the seeing of my family and my extended family at O’Hara Corp (I know you guys are my most faithful readers, I think it is time for some recognition) But, it seemed like as soon as I adjusted to Maine, I was on my way to Montana.
What is in Montana? You may be asking yourself. Well, for one, more cold. I left Bethel in the cold, went to a blizzard in Maine, and then went to -20 degree ambient temp in Montana. Sweet. My mom and I were actually visiting my little brother. Turns out that it had been over a year since I last saw the kid, it was about time, wouldn’t you say? I only had a few days in Montana, and that visit was over way before I was ready. But, after 2 days with Alan, I had to repack my bag and head back to Seattle. I was in Seattle for only like 4 days total, if you count the in-between other state travel. Then, back to Bethel I returned.

Whew. Just recounting my 12 days away from Bethel (6 of them spent in an airport) makes me tired. I arrived back in Bethel, just in time to get settled before school started up again and the cold decided to test my determination to survive. Now that I have done a pretty long recap of the past few weeks, I will move on to something I think you will enjoy hearing about. The K300. The K300 is a dog mushing race, an actually pretty famous race in the dog mushing world. This year, some of the world’s most successful dog mushers descended upon Bethel to compete for glory. Traditionally, JVs are always checkers at the K300, this year was no exception. I, along with Justin and Abby, was sent to Tuluksak, a village about 50 miles by river trail from Bethel. On Friday, we headed to the airport and hopped in a little 6 seater plane and flew the 20 minutes it took to get there. It was a terrifying 20 minutes. First of all, the plane didn’t seem to want to start. Then, when we made it into the air, we were bumping and shaking all around. I tried to play it cool, but I was pretty darn thankful when we made it to solid ground. Once we got there, we were greeted by some people from the school who loaded up all of our stuff and then took us to our new home, the school library. We set up there and then went about trying to figure out what this whole being a checker would be like.

A few hours later, the first dog teams showed up. There were two races running through Tuluksak that weekend, the Bogus 150 and the K300. (150= 150 miles, 300=300 miles, get it?) The Bogus mushers started earlier so they got there first, funny how that works out… Well, it got pretty hectic. Dog teams showing up at the same time, people everywhere, and just plain craziness. The job of a checker is basically to check what time the musher arrived, what time the musher left, how many dogs came in, how many dogs left and most importantly, the musher’s name. Now, that last one may sound simple, but when you are all geared up for -60 degree weather (yes, I was out in that… for hours. Not four hours. For hours) it can be hard to recognize people. Mushers that I knew would come in and I would ask them their names and when they answered, I felt like an idiot. But, most of the 150 mushers went through then some K300 mushers started mixing in. They had started later but they were speeding along. This continued for hours and then by the time the K300 mushers had all gone through, we had a few hours rest before the 150 mushers were on their way back. On the way back, they were more spread out and we had over an hour between some of them. The K300 mushers were even more spread out when they came in. I think the time between the first and the last musher was almost 12 hours.
So, at Tuluksak on the way up, all the mushers just checked in with us and then peaced out. On the way back, the K300 mushers had a required 4 hour break. During that time, they fed and cared for their dogs, fed themselves, got some rest and hung out with yours truly. It was soooo cool. Dog mushing is an awesome sport. First of all, when you are mushing, you may not receive any help from anyone, except for a fellow musher. If your team gets all tangled up or won’t cooperate, the only people that can help you are your competitors. That puts a pretty cool spin on the race. It means that no matter how much they wanted to win; there was still a lot of camaraderie. While they were in the school getting themselves fed, they would talk to each other and just hang out. They also hung out with me, which was SWEET. Pretty much everyone that I talked to was so great and interesting. I learned a lot about the sport of mushing and I think I may have totally fallen in love with it.

I realize that many of you reading this probably think I am nuts. First of all, those of you that knew me when I was little know that I used to be terrified of dogs. Not anymore! I was pulling dog teams around, cuddling up with really stinky dogs and even picking up full grown dogs to bring them places. Second of all, I don’t really like the cold, I didn’t think. Well, the warmest it got that weekend was -35 with wind chill. Balmy, eh? But, I didn’t’ die. I wasn’t comfortable most of the time, but I didn’t die. In fact, I learned some really important lessons. 1. Hot hands (the warmer things) are the best invention ever. So great. 2. You can spend hours outside in -60 degree weather, if you are prepared and are not opposed to pacing around. 3. This is a really important one for the ladies… so O’Hara Corp males and others that don’t want to hear about a woman’s undergarments, skip to the next paragraph. Ok ladies, here is the deal. Do not. I repeat. DO NOT wear silky underwear in the cold. My butt was warmer in a thong than in silky fuller coverage undies. Just saying. Survival begins from the bottom layer. My butt was COLD!
Ok so anyway, back to mushing. A musher is like a basketball coach. A basketball coach who speaks English whose team speaks Japanese. A basketball coach who speaks only English but whose team speaks Japanese AND is coed. A basketball coach who speaks only English but whose team speaks Japanese and is coed AND the entire team is obsessed with sex and eating and having fun. That is what a dog musher is up against. Obviously, it works out for some people, but not all. Between bad trail conditions, the cold weather and some temperamental dogs, there were a total of 7 dog teams that had to scratch. It is not a forgiving sport. But, it is a beautiful one. I have tons of funny stories from that weekend, fixing a musher’s snowpants while he was wearing them, wanting to kill two mushers who woke me up from my 45 minute “sleep” just so that I could wait 2 hours for them to go, scaring a really shy musher half to death by making pretty simple conversation, watching grown men crawl on all fours and switch into baby talk so sweet that it made me want to gag (no, seriously, he has a dog named Celine Dion too, oh Martin Buser), yea, all good times.

So, I got back from Tuluksak on Monday afternoon, went to the awards banquet Monday night where I got to hang out with my new mushing buds. I like to say that I am on first name basis with some world-class mushers. I mean, I know their first names. Anyway, awesome awesome experience. It makes me want to go out and find a dog musher that will trust me with their dogs so I can go out and race. (To any dog musher that reads this, don’t let me do it. I would probably kill myself and your dogs, not on purpose of course!)

On Tuesday, I headed back to BABS where I spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in a frantic rush to catch up with the students, with the independent study courses I am leading and with applications. Tuesday was the first day of the semester, there was just a lot going on. And I guess that brings me to today (Friday), I am currently writing this from my laptop in Shoreline and I will be heading to Oregon tomorrow with my mom and my brother for some family business. I feel like I should get some sort of award for being the most well travelled person in the WORLD. I swear, I have spent more minutes in airports in the past few weeks than minutes I have spent in the shower since I moved to Bethel. Gross? Maybe for you guys. You all just need to move to Bethel and lower your hygiene standards. Ok, another marathon blog. I hope this makes up for all the time I have neglected my faithful readers :)

Love and miss you all!