Carnival! (and earthquakes)

This weekend was Carnival! It was really cool.  Let's start off with some carnival preparations.  All this week in school, the kids have been making food to sell at the dances this weekend.  I spent most of the week helping to make pizza rolls, but on Friday we made aqutak!

Here's a video of the kids making the 'icing' part of aqutak.  It's crisco, sugar, and water.  You have to stir it in the middle, then pick it up and flop it back down.  Why you have to do this, I have no idea, but apparently that's what you have to do.

Also, on Friday morning we took the kids down to breakfast at the old preschool.  

There they got to eat pancakes and talk with the elders.

After school there was an adult basketball tournament.  Basketball is taken really serious around here.

Then, that evening there was a bonfire and woodchopping contest.  It wasn't so much a contest as it was men chopping wood.

I was amazed at how many people were suddenly in Kokhanok.  Most people were able to get in despite two days of really intense wind here in Kokhanok. There was even a small plane that landed on the shore of the bay.

The next day, I started the day by eating moose chili and frybread for breakfast.

There was a dance Friday night, and Saturday night and Sunday night with live music every time.  And we also sold the pizza rolls and cotton candy and aqutak and everything we had made this week.

I also went to afternoon bingo.  

AND GUESS WHO WON!?!?!

Then that night I, and some of my students, performed in the talent show.

In order to get the piano in to the gym for the talent show was quite the adventure.

We had to put plywood boards over the wooden beams and roll it over from the end of the ramp in to the gym.  It took me and two grown men to move it from the building in the top left of the screen to the gym which was just behind me when I took this photo.

But talent show went really well too.  Some of my students won!  And I came in first in the adult category!!

On Sunday morning, I blearily opened a eye because I swear my bed was shaking!  I could not figure out what was going on.  I thought my water bottle was shaking too.  It only lasted about 3 minutes and then everything stopped.  So I go back to sleep and wonder if that really happened or if I just imagined it.  I wake up a couple hours later and think back to that incident and I still have no idea whether that really happened.  So I go about the rest of my day as if nothing happened.  Then, I was talking to one of my students and she says "Did you feel the earthquake this morning?" And all I could think was "Oh my god, that really did happen!"  So, now I can say I've been through an earthquake.

On Sunday, we had a banquet in the gym.  For $5 I could eat as much food as I wanted, and it was all delicious.

Then we had the raffles.  Here's everything I bought tickets for.

An adorable fox fur teddy bear that the high schoolers made in Yupik class.

Some North Face jackets.

Beaver fur and reindeer skin mittens.

Seal and beaver fur mittens.

I feel like there was more things I bid on too, but I didn't take pictures.  It doesn't matter anyway, because I didn't win anything.  I think my luck had run out by that point.

Anyway, it was a great weekend.  I had a great time.  And I got Monday and Tuesday off of school!