Tour de Barrow

Today was a day for sight seeing. After a good nights rest we all awoke to a bright sun and an exciting day ahead of us. We had a delicious breakfast at Ilisagvik College (I mean this breakfast was so good it gave the caf a run for their money...) with our professor Debra and local Barrowites Steve and Vanni.

After our tasty meal we headed out to see the sights, visit the point, and see where we will be teaching tomorrow. We stopped along the way for several photo opps and enjoyed the views. The views being the snow and ice which was surprisingly beautiful. We toured all of the schools in Barrow, Barrow High School where Brittany will be teaching, Eben Hobsen Middle School where Meredith will be teaching, and Fred Ipalook Elementary School where Kristian, Cassandra, and Trevor will be teaching. All of the schools were amazing and I can speak for all of us that we are so excited to begin our student teaching stint in Barrow ASAP.

We returned to Ilisagvik College for some dinner and we headed over to the recreational center. Brittany played some basketball with students and locals from the college and she got us a little street credit with them. It was a fun time.

To continue our tour of Barrow we stopped by Joe the Waterman's place for a tour. Why would you stop at a persons house for a tour you ask? Well Joe had an assortment of objects crammed into his tiny living room of his apartment so of which were a stuff polar bear, caribou antlers, random ivory artifacts, and many other Arctic tidbits. It was a fascinating place and the owner was even more so. Joe had so many great stories and so many great notes from visitors (including one from than Govenor Sarah Palin) it was a great little adventure.

Tomorrow we have our first day of student teaching and we are all so pumped and cannot wait to get into the classroom and just get a move on. But it is a little tempting to stay up all night and hang out with some of the students at Ilisagvik because the sun does not go down until 11pm and even then it is still pretty light outside. All of us are excited for a lot of sunlight but we will see how this affects our sleeping patterns.

Oh and on Day 1 so far no polar bear sightings.

Stay warm!
Meredith