Anchorage!

This year, we have a four day weekend for our "spring break." Having not had many excursions out of the village this year, we decided what the heck, let's take a little mini-vacation.

The weather tried its best to thwart us. Snow, rain, fog, freezing rain, freezing fog... Ma Nature threw her worst at us. Small planes wouldn't fly. The JET wouldn't fly. But Our principal, his wife, Shaun and I remained naively optimistic.

It became evident that the airplane gods were not deciding in our favor. But did we let this stop us? NO! We waterproof-bundled the four adults, plus two babies (Isaac and their daughter) and hopped on snowmachines (or, in the case of the men, into sleds). A wet-but-warm ride later, we were eating dinner at an airport restaurant (or the Bethel version thereof). And that's when things got weird.

Shaun, Isaac and I headed back to the Alaska Air terminal, leaving our travel companions at the restaurant. We waited at the airport for about 15 minutes for them to follow us, but they never showed. Instead, we got a phone call... apparently the wife had suffered a serious seizure and was on her way to the hospital. We boarded the plane, sans travel buddies, much sobered by the news.

She was Medevac'ed, unconscious, into Anchorage that night, and Thursday morning we did our best to help out our friend and his young daughter (she's 5 months old). The daughter had previously been exclusively breastfed, and was not taking formula at all. I never thought I'd do it (I had never really considered it), but I offered to nurse the baby, and the dad agreed. It wasn't as weird as I thought it would be, and it felt good to help out a little one who had no clue why her mommy was no longer around to feed her. The mama's now doing much better, and the future looks bright.

We've done a little shopping (though not much... we may be moving villages this spring and are trying not to accumulate much stuff) and, this morning, went to the ceremonial start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. It was cool, though we couldn't see much.

Pics to come. :D