A Weekend in Nondalton

I wasn't the only one waiting on the plane to come

I am going to try to keep this post short and sweet because it is a beautiful Sunday and I want to go explore my village a bit! I just wanted to post about my Saturday at home in Nondalton (the first in over a month actually). Yesterday was a pretty lazy day in the scheme of things. I spent most of the day at school getting caught up on shows on Hulu and I loved every second of it. In the afternoon, I received the phone call that I was excitedly waiting for; a call saying that a plane would be landing in the village in twenty minutes. 

All of my yummy groceries!

The reason I was so eager for this plane was because it was bringing with it groceries that I had ordered the day before. When I had come out to tutor, I planned my shopping to last me until the end of March. However, I was offered an extension in my contract, and I accepted. This means that I will be in Nondalton until mid-May and it also meant that I would need more food. The easiest way to get what I needed was to place an order with a woman at Lake Clark Air. The service is great because I am able to order exactly what I want from basically any store in Anchorage. Once the woman goes out and does the shopping, she sends it out on a plane. I can’t describe the feeling, but the joy I felt at getting my two boxes of groceries was incredible. The almost sad part about that fact was that I knew every single item I was going to be getting, and I had just placed the order the day before. Nonetheless, it felt like Christmas morning when the plane arrived (over an hour late…)  and I got to take my stuff home to unload. 

Aqutak

Another thing that happened yesterday was that the village held an appreciation dinner for all of the workers, teachers included. We met at the community building for a potluck where I almost went into a food coma after ingesting mass quantities of smoked salmon. I also finally got to try akutaq (a-goo-duk) or eskimo ice-cream! This is something all of my students in PIP talked about, and something I have been hesitantly eager to try. The reason I was so nervous to try it is because the only three ingredients are: berries, sugar, and crisco. Yes, ice-cream made primarily of crisco. I tried one bite and while it was sweet and tasty, I just couldn’t erase the fact that I was eating spoonfuls of crisco. While I’m happy to try anything and everything native, I am content to leave more akutaq for everyone else from now on. 

The start of Indian Bingo

This Saturday night spent in Nondalton ended by playing a game called Indian Bingo. Why it's called Bingo I do not understand at all, but what I do know is that it got my adrenaline pumping. The game involves everyone putting a present in the middle of a large circle of people. Then they hand out a bunch of pairs of large fuzzy dice to every few people. When the game starts, you roll the dice and if you get doubles, you can pick a prize and roll again. If you don’t get doubles, you pass the dice to the left and wait for the next set to make it to you. It starts to get really fast, and then it lasts until all of the presents are gone. Sounds fun, right? But that’s not all! Once all of the presents in the middle are gone, a timer is set for two minutes. In this round, you play by the same rules except if you roll doubles, you can steal presents from people. This turned into two minutes of people running back and forth stealing gifts. There were two specific large boxes that people wanted which lead to it getting cut-throat and intense. When the timer went off, people ran off to open their gifts. I walked away empty-handed and mind-blown by how this whole game lasted no longer than ten minutes. Just another Saturday night in the bush!