Weekend Possibilities and Bears

I was just talking to Christian, the middle grade teacher, while the kids were playing games in gym, and it sounds like he might take me on a hike this weekend.  The hill he wants to take me up looks pretty steep, and I don't think there are really any paths, but apparently you can see 360 degree views of the entire village and the ocean.  So as long as I can make it to the top, it should be a pretty neat experience.  We'll see if I can handle the hike ;-)  I'll be sure to take my camera with me and post some pictures. 

We're definitely going to need to bring the bear spray on this hike, though.  I guess that last night several of the village dogs were killed by bears that are hanging around.  One of my oldest students, Lydia, told me this morning that there were about 4 bears (I don't know if that's an accurate number or not) outside her house last night and they killed one of her dogs.  I told her I was sorry that her dog died, but she didn't seem too upset about it...I guess this must not be an unusual occurrence.  She said that they were all up very late trying to make lots of noise inside the house to scare the bears off, but they didn't leave for a long time.  She also said that they almost alerted the whole village of the bear danger.  I have no idea what would happen if the whole village was alerted, but if it has anything to do with those sirens they use for the tsunami warning then I'm glad we were left in the dark, because they would have been going off at like 2:00 in the morning.

Anyhow, so I guess that there are bears around the village.  I have yet to actually see one, (even though I keep hearing about them) but I'm not in a hurry to come across one (or several) while I'm out.  I'd much rather see them from my window and the safety of my apartment.  I think Christian has a shotgun that he normally carries when he goes out, so with the bear spray and the shotgun, hopefully we should be okay.  I can't say that hearing about the bear activity doesn't make me a little nervous....I might wait a day or two before I take another walk down to the beach on my own....but as long as I'm with someone else who has a shotgun I think I'll feel pretty safe. 

I'll let you know how the weekend goes!