Damon Hargraves

Last Thursday and Friday was Dance Festival. St. Michael , Golovin , Kotlik , and Wales came to Stebbins to dance and share native arts and crafts. Here are some pictures of a few things we did. Above: Ivory soap carving. Below: Making Akutaq (Eskimo icecream). Below: Fishing for tomcod . Above and Below: Of course, lots of dancing. All in all we had a busy and very fun couple of days.

I've been trying to get this movie posted for weeks now, and I've FINALLY been able to upload it for your viewing pleasure. This clip is from our school Christmas program back in December, and shows Heidi's class doing an Eskimo dance about hunting geese. The woman in red is one of our school's bilingual teachers who taught them the dance.

Lately, one of our favorite things to do has been taking walks on the ocean with Neffy. Sounds weird, but it's beautiful and there is plenty of space for Neffy to run. Above: Here's a shot from the ocean looking back to "bluff" and the village. Below: Notice the booties Neffy is wearing. My mom sent those. The ice can cut her feet and give her frostbite, so it is important that she wear them. Thanks Mom! The large building in the right of the picture is our school. The tanks just to the left of Heidi's head are the village water tanks.

For all of you wanting to see a little broader take on life up here in the Arctic, you might want to take a look at the BSSD Student Broadcast Team's vodcast . Students in Unalakleet do most of the work, but stories from all sites are reported by local team members. New segments are released for download about every three weeks. To access these vodcasts you will need iTunes . While in iTunes, simply go to the iTunes music store and do a search for BSSD. Subscribe to the student broadcast and you are ready to go. Also, here are some video clips about each village site in our school district.