I usually write my blog on Saturday mornings, after a pot of coffee and watching 3 hours of cartoons. But this weekend was different; we had a basketball tournament at our school. Alakanuk and Marshall showed up for a two-day set of games. They didn’t “just” show up, we knew they were coming, so we prepared. So I’m posting this a day late. Not that it matters, but at least Monica will know what I’m up to. That reminds me, I should call her one of these days.
One of my extra duties at the school is doing jobs “as assigned by the principal”. This means he gives me the "opportunity to gain valuable experience" on the jobs he doesn't want to do. (Plus the authority to use quotations as much as I want.) My valuable experience this weekend was to make sure the tournament ran smoothly.
I’ve mentioned before in my blog that when teams play, everyone stays at the school since we have no hotels in the villages. The teams sleep in our classrooms and the kitchen staff comes in to prepare food so everyone can eat. Things almost turn terrible for the kids this weekend.
There was a potlatch, a Yupik celebration, being held upriver this weekend. Many people, including our kitchen staff, planned on going to the potlatch. We were stuck with no kitchen help. When she made this announcement, the others helping out this weekend nervously looked at me. And not just because I was showing off my new sock puppets perform a new play I had written. I knew I had to do something to instill confidence, so I asked the cook where the Spam was. Now she looked nervously at me, but I think this time it had something to do with the sock puppets. Luckily for everyone involved, a snowmobile failure meant she couldn’t go. I know she was disappointed, but the kids were happy that they didn’t have to eat chili and rice for breakfast. Oh well, there was more for my breakfast.
The tourney went off without any problems. We were able to play 8 games and I only had to referee one game. I’ve found there is no quicker way to anger a crowd of people than by putting on a striped shirt and a whistle. My biggest problem was that I thought it was a dodge ball game for the first three minutes. Once they explained it was basketball and took my puppets away, the game resumed. Luckily there were others who could ref the other games and I was once again able to stand in front of the concession stand and tell kids to stop running in the hall. Yeah, I’m turning into that guy. One funny and new event for me to witness was one of our players standing in line at the concession stand. I peeked in the gym to see our team on the court, playing a game. I looked back at the player (one of my students) wearing his uniform proudly and ordering candy. Everyone seemed ok with it, even the teacher who smiled and told him good luck as she handed him his candy. But, I’m not the coach, so I only hoped that I didn’t have a mess to clean up on the court.
I dropped the last team off at the airstrip at 4pm yesterday in -20 degrees temperatures and was finished cleaning up by 5. I got home in time to watch 3 episodes of the Flying Wild Alaska show on discovery. That gave me time to mull over my reality show and to ask myself the question everyone has been asking themselves: Why in the hell are there so many reality shows about cupcakes? And why isn’t one enough? Add a sock puppet or two, now you have a show.
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