Snow Bike Tires, Robotics, and Inadvisable Trekking

Winter's now covered the un-raked leaves with snow and I find myself with jars of home-made crab apple sauce, studded snow tires on my (mom's) bike, and a job teaching at Pacific Northern Academy (PNA), a private K-12 school in Anchorage, Alaska. I teach dance two days a week after school and substitute teach for PE (run around! now do it again!), Math (rise over run), Science (you're supposed to kill all these fruit flies?), Music (recorders!), Spanish (se habla español?), and whatever else they call me for. The whole school thing is all rather strange to me, but I'm getting used to the constructed format, classroom management techniques, and imposed social standards. Then the Robotics teacher quit at PNA. Knowing nothing about robotics or the devious nature of my 4th and 5th grade charges, I was happily coerced into that job too.

My Robotics kids will (hopefully) compete in a Lego sponsored competition called First Lego League that has two parts:
Part 1: Research Presentation. Learn about different forms of energy (all over it), do an "energy audit" on a building in their community (check), figure out a way to make that building more energy efficient (they're pretty excited about destroying the building to reduce its energy consumption to 0), create a presentation about their solution (ummm), and present to the community (great things take time...).
Part 2: Get quirky Lego-loving kids to program uncooperative Lego robot to complete 13 energy related tasks, like replace a red Lego truck with a cool black and yellow bumble-hydrogen-car, not spill oil into the ocean (40 point deduction), and collect all the Lego coal from the mine. With creative classroom management techniques in place (Robotics Bucks!), which my robotics masters briefly allow me to coerce them with, we've figured out how to launch the solar powered satellite, place the wind turbines, and get our wave turbine stuck on the red truck. Not bad.

To fully complement my opposite-normal-working-hours schedule, I'm taking evening EMT classes at the University of Alaska, Anchorage (UAA), learning all sorts of ways to get people from injury to ambulance in a fashion that hopefully lets them survive all the way to the hospital. However, I rode around on an ambulance a couple weeks ago and saw far less emergencies than I'd expected. The EMT on duty growled that most of his patients need social services more than emergency medical services, and I think I'm inclined to agree. I'm also curious and concerned as to what happens when the couldn't-afford-a-cab-so-called-an-ambulance folks get an emergency medicine sized bill.

Grand Canyon from the South Rim

In pursuit of my own ambulance ride, my family (and pretty much family) reunion-ed at the grand canyon to hike rim to rim in September. Serious Advisory Notice: DO NOT hike in the Grand Canyon without a whole lot of water and snacks, as even beautiful, young, athletic folks die from trying. As Mom, Chris, Chris Loken, me, Uncle Kim, and Lucille didn't resemble any of the beautiful, young, athletic people on the warning pictures, and came fully equipped with about a gallon of water each, tasty vittles, and enough energy bars to fuel all the unprepared individuals we could find along the way, we set out before the sun rose from the North Rim.

Uncle Kim Living Dangerously

Down through the layers we plunged, stopping for a lunch of smoked salmon, cheese, and chocolate at the bottom in 101 degree weather (melty). Then along the Colorado river, and up towards an increasingly distant South Rim. Soon the sun set and our pace slowed from dawdle through trudge, verging increasingly on stumble. Our courageous Dad and Jim support crew patiently watched our headlights inch closer until we emerged from our marathon-length journey with water still on our backs and enough energy to swap exhaustion-enhanced tales of inadvisable trekking. Only a day's drive away, we next re-visited my childhood hiking grounds, where support crew and all wandered into the Havasupai canyon for a three day trek full of fry bread, mule manure, and green waterfalls.

Dad at Mooney Falls

Chris Playing in Havasu Falls

My exercise regime has continued in the great North with daily bike rides towards a more sustainable planet and an increasingly aware Katie. I've moved from my folks' castle on the hill to a flat in the low country that's complete with Dustin Madden, golden retriever Aurora, roommate Derrick, and a close enough proximity to bike where I need to go. I'm beginning to understand how zoning effects transportation (no light commercial in residential areas makes for a long ride to the grocery store), socio-economic stresses (how could anyone without a car get any sleep with a full time job and Anchorage's roundabout bus system?), and weather effects (leaving freshly washed hair outside the jacket induces freezing).

In dancing, Dustin and I teach a weekly social dance class (this week, Argentine Tango!) where we laugh and move around a bunch, although we took a break last week to guest instruct Lindy Hop at UAA, where there's a dance floor and mirrors and very dancer-y students, oh my! The teenagers of the Society Working to Improve Negative Grooves (SWING) jive and jump on a monthly basis, while the die-hards also show up on Thursdays for their fix.

Move Your Story!

And I got psyched about dancing with purpose and organized a movement and story-telling workshop ("Move Your Story") for women at UAA, which helped me figure out how to teach a movement and story-telling workshop, and how to get a group of folks to create a dance about something specific. Awesome. Also at Move Your Story, one of the dancers shared a story of a Dia de los Muertos party where everyone brought the favorite food of someone who'd died that they wanted to celebrate. My Mom and I shared a mischievous look, and schemed our own Dia de Los Muertos party last weekend!

Dia de Los Muertos is a Mexican tradition where folks believe that the dead come back to party around Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. We had some trouble with planning so our dead folks had to stick around a little longer for the party. We celebrated by bringing the pictures, stories, and favorite foods of our esteemed post-life guests to the party. However, after a dinner of tortillas, salsa, hard-boiled eggs, sour cream and herring, mashed potatoes and corn, carameled apples, and creme de menthe parfaits, I think I need to make some dead friends who liked more tummy-agreeable foods.

Planning for the future, I'm awaiting numerous conflicting opportunities to unveil themselves to me. I applied for the Artist in Schools program and if they like my poor-quality dance video, I might be able to guest instruct in schools around Alaska. The principal and staff at PNA hint at future teaching opportunities, potentially in writing, after school care, and Spanish. The Anchorage School District is set to give me my substitute teaching number sometime last week so I teach in Anchorage's public schools. And my Tanzania/China friend Dan Tuttle is currently feeding the insects of the Solomon Islands and constructing an HIV/AIDS prevention program from the ground up with SIC, who I worked with in Tanzania. Depending on how effective Dan thinks I could be there, I may head down in January to dive back into HIV/AIDS Prevention and language acquisition (pidgin!).

Until then, the banana bread is on the stove and Dustin and I are dancing tango in the kitchen.