5 Weeks!

It seems incredibly hard to believe that there are only five weeks of school left - to be precise, five weeks and one teacher workday (but we also have this Friday off), so it sort of all evens out. In that time, I have 5 concerts and 2 play performances. Here's the schedule:

4/25 - HHS Spring Concert
5/2 - MS Mass Band (up the road in Kenai)
5/12 - HMS Spring Concert
5/17 - HHS POPS concert
5/20, 5/21 - Drama Class Play ("Just Another High School Play")
5/23 - Graduation
5/24 - Last Day with Students
5/25 - Teacher Workday, Last Official Day of Work

The summer's not going to be much calmer. I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to take a Professional Development course through the district - it seems like a really good deal, just means spending two weeks up in Kenai (on the plus side, they pay for my hotel room, I just have to pay for food and travel). That'd be 5/31-6/10 (with the weekend off). My parents arrive mid-June and stay for a week, and then I head back to the Midwest on the 4th of July. Some time spent in Houghton, and Green Bay, and downstate, and Peoria - I'm going to be busy! On the way back, I stop in LA for a week, Seattle for a weekend, and then I'm back just in time for inservice and school to get going again. It will make for a busy summer, but that's all right. I'm not working anywhere other than working on getting more organized, and relaxing. I deserve it.

The weather up here has been quite a bit nicer than my friends in the Midwest have been dealing with. 40s most of the week, and almost all of the snow is gone. Of course, that means that my allergies are here in full force, but I'm going to be heading to the allergist at some point and seeing if we can figure out something to make this better. It's not horrible - I can still teach - but there's a not-fun cough and other annoyances that make teaching rather annoying.

I got to have a "true Alaskan" experience this weekend - I went clamming! Clamming is when you go hunting for clams. I went with my friend Mary on Ninilchik Beach, and it was definitely an interesting experience. Let me set the scene...

There must be a low tide, specifically a minus tide. You get dressed nice and warm - waterproof jacket, boots that go up to your hips - and then head out onto the beach. Plan to use your thigh muscles pretty seriously, because walking through all the muck and the silt (that's normally covered by water) is quite a workout for your legs. Next, once you find a dimple (created by the clam spitting out water as it digs), you line your clam gun up over the hole and begin to dig. You press the edges in, and then cover a small hole on the handle to create a vacuum. Pull up on the gun, bringing all the dirt that's inside with it. Dump the dirt out and kick it quickly to make sure you didn't get the clam, and then repeat, going further down into the hole. Repeat again, and again, until you either get the clam or the gun is not useless. At this point, get down on your hands and knees and begin digging to try to get the clam. You've got to do all of this pretty quickly, because the clams will dig away from you if at all possible.

Once you've got the clam, you have to clean it. Toss it in boiling water to get it out of its shell, and then into ice water to keep it from getting tough. Clean it up by cutting it open - make sure you cut each of the valves, as well as cutting the digger away from the organs - toss the organs, keep the digger. Mince it up, and you've got fresh clams!

We also managed to get some mussels, so Sunday night (we went clamming Sunday morning) I made some homemade seafood chowder with clams and mussels I got earlier that day, as well as some halibut and veggies I already had. It was a pretty cool experience to eat something that I had caught myself just earlier that day. Of course, I was also pretty sore from the work, but it was the good kind of sore.

I'm hoping to get a few more experiences this summer - more clamming, camping (like, the kind in a tent!), fishing - I bought a chest freezer, though it's going to be really hard to bring myself to clean a fish. I hate the feeling, though I was pretty proud of myself for cleaning the clams!