Broomball, Babes, Basketball and BABS in Bethel!

I guess I like lists. I mean, I hate organization. But I always find myself writing my blogs as lists. Well, enjoy my list of recent interesting activities!

1. I have started accompanying my roommate Ariel on her visits to the “kiddie jail.” It is actually called the Bethel Youth Facility (or BYF), but nothing in Bethel is really called it’s real name. BYF is divided into two parts, short term and long term. The short term kids are there on a monthly basis, the long term kids are there for years, or until they turn 18 and move to the real jail. When we go and visit them, we all sing religious songs (with hand motions!), pray and just sit around and talk. I have spent more time with the kids on the short term side and they are great. They are young kids who have gotten themselves in quite a bit of trouble, obviously, but they are such a joy to be around. I feel blessed to spend time with them. I have only visited the long term side once and we played volleyball! That is actually the reason I went, Ariel told me that they liked playing volleyball and so I jumped on the chance to get back on a volleyball court. Playing volleyball with them was hilarious. First of all, the court was tiny. I kept hitting everything off the walls instead of getting it into the court. Secondly, they do not really know how to play volleyball, it was full of blocked serves (illegal to block a serve), carries, backwards serves (where you face the wall and serve it over your head), and other ridiculous things. After we had played for a while, we went back into the main area and prayed. It was actually really awesome. To my parent and grandparent’s chagrin, I am questionably religious these days. I mean, I am a confirmed Catholic, I actually enjoy going to Church (most of the time…) and I believe in a higher power. But, I do not agree with many Catholic teachings, I hate the hypocrisy of many organized religions and I find myself flip-flopping a lot when it comes to making serious choices about religion and how it influences my life. Anyway, even me, in my messy religious state, saw the power or prayer for these boys. Ariel asked them to pray for each other, so A would pray for B, B would pray for C, ect. It made them obviously uncomfortable, but they came out with some really profound prayers for each other, it was beautiful.

2. Unfortunately, I do not go to BYF as much as I would like, because there is another activity that I (usually) enjoy at the same time. Broomball! Playing broomball is a ridiculous experience. First of all, it is freezing outside, literally. Last week, one of the guys came over to me about an hour into the game so that I could check his nose for frostbite. It was like -35 that day with wind chill, so it would have been completely feasible for him to be getting frostbite. I’m sure you think that I am nuts for enjoying this sport, spending 3 hours every Saturday freezing my butt off just to hit a little orange ball around on a frozen pond… and I think I might be a nuts. In fact, everyone that plays is a little off their rocker. Every week you can find 40/50 year old men who still think they are the hot shot 20 somethings that they used to be, so they are all intense and yelling and mean. Then you have the 12 year old boy who likes to beat me up. No joke. I am one of the two or three women who usually play, I am not very good and not very intense. It seems like a totally waste of energy to get intense about something I kind of suck at and so for the most part, the guys leave me alone. They play rough with each other but not with me. I get lots of positive feedback, “good job Jill! That was awesome!” (I just passed the puck to a teammate who was like two feet from me… thanks guys) I feel like I should be upset about this unfair treatment, but lets be honest. I am too much of a wimp and if they treated me like one of the guys, I wouldn’t last. There is one glaring exception to the “be nice to Jill” rule, however. The little boy. He is constantly pushing me around, getting in my way and stealing the ball from me (well, everyone does that, but he is more of a jerk about it). Last week, he even wacked my hand with his stick. Now, I realize he does it to everyone else and I am being a total wimp, but it is a pretty humbling experience. Every week, I get owned by a pre-teen. (Sidenote: I wrote this part before I went to broomball on Saturday, and I have great news to report. I figured out how to beat the pre-teen! Be on his team. Haha)

3. Also, this past week from Tuesday until Friday afternoon, I was the girls dorm parent. Basically, that meant, I spent the nights at the dorm with the girls, helped them with their homework, helped them do their homework, hung out and just joked around with them for three nights straight. Well, it was supposed to be three nights, but it was actually only 2. The third night, the girls were out at a basketball game until late so I was by myself for most of the night, and then one of the girls didn’t come home at all. Great. I was responsible for them for three nights and I lost one?!!?! Turns out, she was safe, but she had forgotten to check out with me before she left. That was a little bit stressful. But, it was a really fun experience. I love those girls. (these are the babes my title referred to, just so you know, haha)

4. I am dog sitting for the terrifyingly huge dog again. He still weighs 120 lbs. He could still kill a bear. He still needs pills shoved down his throat every night. But, now he also needs ointment put on his nose twice a day. It is an antibiotic cream for a scab he got by getting his nose stuck in the fence. The scab is starting to heal but it still looks painful. I’m sure you can guess how happy Lucas is when I start rubbing the lotion into his nose. Yikes. Well, so far, so good. I still have all 10 fingers! (Dog sitting ended last night and I am still all in one piece. Thank goodness!)

5. We didn’t have school on Friday because it was “spring break.” Guess what I did? I went over to a friend’s house and spent 6 hours watching Star Trek. No joke. There were 6 of us that gathered to finish season 1. I am not a huge Star Trek fan, I remember watching some episodes with my dad when I was younger but that was about it. And surprisingly (or not that surprisingly, if you know me at all), I really enjoyed watching the show. Oh and guess what adventure earned me? I have officially been elevated from "nerd-friendly" status to "a nerd’s dream girl" status. Sweet. Haha.

6. On Saturday, my roommates and I all went to the girl’s championship village basketball game. All of the local village teams came to Bethel this weekend to compete for a place at the state tournament and I am excited to say that the Kwethluk Lady Kings will be heading to Anchorage to represent this area. Kwethluk is a village close to Bethel that is home to a few of my students. Actually, the Chefornak Lady Shamans represented some of my other students, so I would have been happy no matter who won. Now, I haven’t played basketball since 8th grade and haven’t really spent a whole lot of time watching it, but this was a weird game to watch. My roommate PJ found the word that describes it perfectly, frantic. I felt almost stressed watching them play. Or maybe I was stressed because I was crammed in the BRHS gym that was packed way over capacity and filled with tons of intense fans. Whichever it was, it was definitely an interesting experience.

7. On Sunday I got a frantic phone call from one of the girl’s dorm parents. Apparently, one of the pipes in the dorm had burst and it was leaking water all over the floor. I rushed over there and luckily my roommate Justin joined me because I had no idea what to do. By the time we got there, Starr was just arriving and the construction teacher was on his way too. It didn’t take long for them to figure out how to turn the water off and to fix the pipe. But, the fun part was cleaning up afterwards. It has been super cold here the past few weeks and the water was actually starting to freeze in the entryway. But, we got it all cleaned up and everything turned out just fine.

8. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only BABS drama this week. As I walked into school Monday morning, I was greeted with, “Don’t touch anything, this is a crime scene.” Sometime between when the pipes burst and when Starr got to school the next morning, someone broke into BABS, stole $1700 in cash from our safe (which they seriously battered) and broke one of our doors. It is pretty upsetting to know that someone would steal from a school and I really hope that they find the jerk who did it.

9. On a brighter note, Ariel, Joe and I have started a new tradition! Joe has started reading Ariel and I a bedtime story every night. Oh, first of all, fun fact. Ariel and I share a bed now. Well, technically we don’t. We pushed our beds together, so now we have a double wide Queen size bed. It is pretty fun. But anyway, Joe comes in every night and reads us a chapter or two from Northern Lights, a Nora Roberts romance novel based in Alaska. It is actually surprisingly accurate, so if you want a more professionally written version of life in Alaska, you might pick it up! On second thought, since we are only on chapter 5 and haven’t gotten to any of the juicy parts yet, maybe I shouldn’t be encouraging anyone to read it yet… I should also make it clear that the setting is the surprisingly accurate part, not the romance part. (But, like I just said, we haven’t read any real romance novel-y parts yet, so maybe it will be accurate too, *wink wink*) ((Just kidding! No exciting Bethel romance for me to report, sorry!))

Ok, time to walk home. OH! But first, another exciting thing. I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT. Like, actually the light. I can watch the sun start to rise on my walk to work and then the sun doesn’t set until like 6:30/7. Amazing. So, I guess now it is time to enjoy the -10 degree (-30 with wind chill) weather and the sunlight.

Love and miss you all!