Slippery Walks & Barking Dogs

I know that I have not yet posted anything about my teaching experiences this week.  I started trying to write something earlier this week and there was just too much to say and I didn't have enough time.....SO I am going to put my whole first week's teaching experiences into one huge post this weekend.  I'll try to stick to the important parts so that it doesn't get TOO long, but I promise I will post something about the actual teaching part of this whole adventure soon.

On a different note.....

This is a picture of my apartment building from the back door of the school.

This is the bridge/walkway that I walk on to get back and forth from my apartment to the school.  There is a lot of black sand in Perryville which gets all over your shoes and makes a mess, so it's nice to have a walkway.....not that it's necessary.

This is the walk I make every morning/evening back and forth.  Quite a trek ;-)

This morning the pathway to school was very slippery and icy.  I noticed that it was very slippery and was being extra cautious as I walked so that I didn't biff it.  Unfortunately, there is a slight downward slope to the walkway coming into the door of the school, and even though I was inching along ever so carefully...my legs slipped out from under me and I landed hard on the wooden planks.  Another contributing factor could have possibly been that I was wearing my Danskos, which don't have the best traction in the world.  Thankfully, I had a pretty tight grip on my coffee travel mug and my teacher bag, so I didn't lose anything....but my tushy was pretty sore.  Thankfully also, no one else is out that early in the morning (except the other teachers, and they weren't around to see) and even though my bum was a little hurt, my pride was not because no one saw.....as far as I know.  Who knows, maybe someone was watching the whole thing from their window, but as long as I don't know about it I'll be fine :-)  So I suppose that I might have to start wearing my Keens for the walk in the morning and change into my Danskos once I get to school....at least on the days that it's icy. 

On another non-school related topic....one thing I have noticed about this village is that it seems like everybody has a dog...or 5.  There are seriously dogs everywhere.  I don't know if it's to keep the bears away or just for company, but there are SO many dogs in Perryville.  The past few nights I have been woken up in the middle of the night by the yapping, howling, barking sound of the dog(s) (there's one in particular that is especially annoying) outside my bedroom window.  I always think that it will stop soon, but right when I'm just about to fall back to sleep it starts barking again.  And this isn't the low and rough kind of barking - that's not so bad - this is a high pitched yapping.  It's awful...especially at 4:00, 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning.  It's happened at different times every night, but any time I get woken up in the middle of the night when I could be sleeping is a bad time!  I need my sleep!  I have been half tempted to get up out of bed when the barking starts, wrap myself up in my sleeping bag, and move into the next room.....but I never want to get out of my big warm bed to move into a smaller, colder bed with no sheets.  Can you blame me?  Now I would consider myself to be an animal lover.  I have always loved pets, but if that dog wakes me up in the middle of the night one more time, I swear I'm gonna........well I don't know, but I'll definitely be thinking angry thoughts in my head!

Well, I finished writing this post during my lunch break, and haven't gotten to eat very much of my food.  I have a few minutes left, so I'm going to try and scarf down as much as I can before the kids come back.  Here's one last picture before I go.     
 

That white thing in the distance is Mt. Katmai (I believe) the volcano.  It is hard to see in this picture, but I will try to get a better picture of it a little later.