Marshall From the Air

     Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to Alakanuk to take photos of the high school boys and girls cross country meet. Lucky for me it was a sunny afternoon when we left and I was able to take some pictures of Marshall. I labeled a couple of the pictures to give everyone a better idea of the layout of Marshall.

Beautiful Marshall, Alaska

 Looking Down River

 Marshall school and Track

Check out all the boats on the river bank

Marshall looking up river

     Hope this gives everybody back home a better idea of how Marshall looks. Love you guys.

Berry Picking

     Since I arrived at Marshall, several different people had approached me telling me that I should take my elementary students berry picking. I wasn't sure what this would entail or where I should go, but with the help of my teaching partner Mary we took our classes out picking berries.

We were planning to walk around the community to pick berries, but when Mary and I got out to the front of the school all of the students had already piled into the school van.

 Students getting out of the van

 Students splitting into groups. Notice the guy in the back, that is our school counselor Steve and yeah he's holding a shotgun

Looking for berries

 This is what we were after

One student actually picking berries

A lone flower on the tundra

 Mary is a 4/5 teacher she is helping me stay sane up here

 Photo op on the rocks

 I had to get one more picture with Steve and his gun

 Beautiful hills that surround us

 Mt. Pilcher

The bucket can also be used for a hat

Where the Yukon splits to go around the island. The Yukon is in the back and the Poltese slough is in the front

Piling back into the van to go back to school

      The students that went berry picking had a great time. The plan was to take the berries and make some Eskimo ice cream. However the ride home was about twenty minutes and by the time we got back to the school the students had already eaten all the berries. Overall it was a great trip. Next year we will go sooner so that there is more berries.

District Track Meet in Marshall

     Last week Marshall School hosted the district track meet for the elementary and middle school students. Overall it was a success, there were some minor hiccups but for the most part things ran smoothly. One major bummer was the cold wind and rain. The entire time the students were running the wind howled and it rained sideways. Now before you say "duh its Alaska, of course it's cold" right now it is sunny and 54 degrees at 8:30 at night. Even though it was cold the students braved the elements and ran good races. Marshall had two students race and they each placed in eighth place in their races.

Teams were arriving while we were still teaching so they had to put their stuff in the gym

Nicole running the store during the dance

Cody in his Kilt, one of the students told me, "he dresses in woman's style"

Breakfast the day of the run

This was the first lag of the race

And there off

Students huffing and puffing in the cold

My friend Jana, she was wearing a bag over her walking cast. Unfortunately the bag had holes in the bottom and by the end of the meet her cast was pretty dirty and wet.

 

 Two of my fellow teachers, Mary in the front and Susan in the back

      After a few cold hours of standing in the rain the teachers went inside the school and had a great lunch and laughed for about an hour straight. We will all have to get together again soon. We had a great time.

A Walk Around Marshall

     Shelly keeps asking me for more pictures of the different buildings that we have here in Marshall. So I took advantage of Labor Day and walked around the village and took pictures of most of the buildings around town. Although Marshall isn't that big it took me awhile to get around because every little bit there was someone who wanted to chat or a student asking me what I was doing.

 The American and Alaskan flags at Marshall School

 The utility station

 

The main store in Marshall (there are two others)  

 

 The community center, never was finished

 The Russian Orthodox church

Marshall's Post Office

 Good Advice

 The poop pond

 The road I was walking on

 Beautiful mountains around Marshall

 A cool old machine (not sure what it is)

The Yukon was raging. It was a very windy day!

 Someone's fishing boat

 Fish drying out (jerky)

 City offices

 The pool hall (one o is missing)

 Another store, I've never been inside

 Fuel storage tanks

Generators that produce electricity for our village

 The lone fuel pump

 Evangelical Christan Church

 Teacher housing

These next few pictures are for my boys. I wish that they were here so they could see these big tractors and trucks work. They would love it. 

Large tractor

 Giant dump truck

 Bobcat style tractor with tracks

 

 Mobile crane

 

 Our village garbage truck

 Loading drywall into the second floor

 Stacks and stacks of insulated pipe

     Well here it is, Marshall Alaska in one blog post. There are some other buildings that didn't make the cut. I still need to take some pictures of the airport, but it is a three mile hike one way and there has been bears seen around there, so I need a gun. For some reason I didn't take a picture of the Catholic Church, not sure why I walk by it everyday. I also didn't take a picture of the store that is near the gas pump. Maybe in the next few weeks I will add those pictures to another post.