I Don't Know About you... but I'm Feeling 22.

Weekly update:
A week later than everyone else around the country my class celebrated St. Patrick's Day with trapping a Leprechaun.  Thanks to all the bloggers, pinterest, and TPT people who helped me come up with a way to motivate my kids to write their hearts out and build traps around the room.  Here's just little taste of our Friday madness.

Alaska Cultural Update...
Every year there is a cultural festival held in Bethel, Alaska (nearest "town" to all the villages in our district) that everyone from the area flies or snowmachines out to see.  It's called Camaii (pronounced Juh-mY) which means "Greetings/Welcome/Nice to meet you" in Yup'ik.  This was my second and last year to join in for the fun, so Mr. B and I climbed on to his "snow-go" and high-tailed it to Bethel for the festivities.

Some of the neat things you're sure to see is a variety of Yup'ik dancing, drumming, and LOTS of native crafts.  Ivory sculptures, qaspeqs, parkas, fur hats... you name it it's probably being sold at Camaii.  Sometimes there's even other non-Yupik dance groups that get invited.  This year there was an African/Caribbean drumming group, Alutiq dancers, as well as a hula dance group from Hawaii!  So cool!

Yours truly managed to spend a bit more than she REALLY wanted to, but I walked away from Camaii a qaspeq and polar bear fur dancing headdress richer.  It was also really nice to spend time with some of the second years before I head back home to Indiana for good this summer. 

Hey I Heard You Were A Wild One... Show Me How You Do. I Wanna Shut Down the Club With You

All of that is made from animal hide/fur

Handwoven basket

I was able to go snowmachine in to Bethel for Camaii.  Camaii (pronounced JUH-MY) is a great gathering of different villages for a celebration of the Yupik culture.  The district I work for spends a bit of money to send out the First Year Teachers to be part of the neat experience.  Seeing the first years one last time was great.  Some will be coming back next year for yet another adventure in the Alaskan Bush, but others will unfortunately not.  The latter makes me quite sad, but I know that those people not coming back will have great luck and experience wherever they end up teaching, and I'm glad I was able to be part of their experience here.

Handwoven Basket

Whale or Seal Gut Coat

Traditional Yupik Dancing

My friend Patrick making fun of my seal skin owl.

This is the woman who made my seal skin owl.

At Camaii, There was so much to look at, buy, try, and see that I don't think I could accurately account for everything. I can tell you that I saw beautiful quaspaqs (pronounced kuspuks), hand-weaved baskets, dance fans, and headdresses.  I purchased some dolls, an owl made of seal fur, and earrings to remember the trip by.