Kotlik Round 2 Days 4-7

Waqaa!

I skipped a few days as not much was happening so I figure I’ll sum them all up here. On Friday not much happened I read a little bit and worked a little bit and I managed to connect my computer to the LAN in the library so I downloaded a whole lot of podcasts to listen to when I have nothing else to do but don’t feel like working or reading. I also went and talked to the two elders I worked with last year and scheduled a time to meet for Monday, which was exciting! Things are starting to get going! After that I went back to the school and fell into that bad habit of watching TV over the internet (I found a site that wasn’t blocked to do so, so haha!).

Saturday was the Forth of July but it rained all afternoon and of course the sun doesn’t set until about 2am and then rises again around 3am and even that hour of “darkness” is more like early dusk where I’m from. So no fire works and no real parties but I got the Gmail hangouts working and managed to talk to some people back home which was nice. Otherwise nothing really novel happened. Its been raining on and off all day all weekend so most people have been staying indoors. As such Sunday was pretty much the same, I read a bit, talked to my parents, and then using Google hangouts J and I watched the new episode of Dark Matter together. So a nice relaxing day all in all.

That brings us to today, Monday. As it was the first day working with the elders it was an exciting day. I got all my materials ready, and triple checked my recorder was working then prepped my notebook. I spent some time in the library and found some cool Yup’ik children’s books to maybe translate into English to help build my lexicon and some good English ones to translate into Yup’ik. I moved around the tables and chairs in the library so everything would work nicely and the elders would have some nice chairs to sit on and then organized all my gear. I grabbed some cups and water (something they don’t teach you to think about in field method classes but is nonetheless important) and then I waited. And waited. And waited. And then said “well I’ll wait until an hour after we said we’d meet then go ask again tomorrow.” After about 30 minutes my first elder showed up, I guess that’s just village time… and then she called the second elder who said she had completely forgotten but would head over. So about an hour after we were supposed to start we actually started! They started talking together in English and code switching into Yup’ik and back so I just started the recording and listened. And that was how the whole hour went, so I didn’t learn much outright linguistically but culturally I learned a lot. They just talked about their parents and how they grew up and what life was like. How to make akulak (spelling?) (Eskimo Ice cream) the traditional way before they had Crisco, what kinds of plants they could pick and eat, what they hunted and when, how they used to preserve food, the many uses for seal oil, how they spent the summers out at fish camp, how clothing was made, religion and God, how to prepare meat, environmental conservation, berry picking, games they played to entertain themselves when they were kids (because kids today are always bored but never go just find a stick and play) and so on and so on. Throughout the whole hour they would code-switch and just throw out words for different things so I learned a lot but still have tons left un-translated. Throughout I asked maybe three or four questions and then just nodded my head and smiled. Different than I prepared for but I think nonetheless a great start to this summers work and a nice transition back into doing this. And best yet they agreed to work with me again on Wednesday at 3!

Since then I have named that audio file and moved it onto my computer and back up drive and now I am writing this… So yep that was my weekend and my day. Today was an anxious but ultimately great day, and now its just raining. But there is nothing like the smell of a summer rainstorm in the wildness whether in the mountains or on the tundra it is beautiful.

Piuraa!

P.S. I saw the sunset last night around 2am and it too was beautiful. Magnificent pinks setting over the village roofs, the river and into the sea!