Things I've Learned and Things I've Done... Lessons/Tales from the Reservation

Hi!

I decided to make a compilation of some of the life lessons and other interesting things I've learned while I've been on the Rez.

Environmental lessons:

1. Sand and dirt get through everything. Everything. 
2. Don't step in the weeds. You may have stepped on some bullheads, which are just annoying and painful if they get through your shoes.
3. Climbing rocks is actually pretty easy... at least the rocks I've climbed.
4. Driving an hour to get somewhere isn't really all that bad.
5. Once on the Reservation, you'll want to take a dog home realllllllly bad.
6. If you want a training course for how the dirt roads are out here, go to Monument Valley Tribal Park and do the loop drive. It's just as bad as most of the rez backroads. 
7. Take as many photos as possible.
8. Always carry cash with you... try to keep fives and ones if possible. If you buy something from a vendor, they may not have any change.
9. If you're ever in the area, go to Goosenecks State Park in Mexican Hat, UT at night. The stars are fantastic, but it's super windy. Take a jacket, and possibly a sleeping bag.
10. Canyon de Chelly is pronounced Canyon de Shay. It's from the Spanish spelling, so it's easily confused. Also, Canyon de Chelly is pretty cool. It's free, and it's awesome. You should go if you can. 
11. Fair season is the best. There is always something going on each weekend, and there are constantly parades. It is also pageant season for the little girls and the older girls who want to be their school princesses.

School lessons:

1. Kids are kids. No matter where you are.
2. The kids here eat way too much ground beef at school. And it's supposed to be a "healthy" lunch menu.
3. Some kids have no respect. Their home lives are very difficult, and it is hard to deal with, but it's reality. You just have to do your best and try to get through to them.
4. Being fenced in isn't fun.
5. Don't talk about school with anyone. Ever. Just don't do it. It's really hard not to, but you'll be thankful you didn't talk about it.
6. Always stay positive. Even when it seems really hard. I learned this with one of my students. He was having difficulties behaving in class, so we talked to his parents multiple times about his behavior. They said they had no idea what was going on with their son, and that they would talk to him. It worked for awhile, but his poor behavior started to creep back. I just had to remain positive with him and get really excited when he was having a good day. It turned out there were some issues at home the parents either didn't care to talk about or didn't think would matter.
7. Some kids like sad or mad faces on their homework instead of happy faces.
8. Smelly stickers are the best.
9. Dances for 1st-8th grades are kind of crazy. 

Fashion lessons:

1. Cowboy/cowgirl boots are acceptable as everyday footwear, all year long.
2. Dresses are the best, because if you happen to lose some weight, they usually still fit. Especially if they have a tie around the waist.
3. Leggings make for great fall fashion underneath those dresses you wore all summer.
4. Layering is essential. When you leave for breakfast at 6:30 in the morning, it may feel like it's 35 degrees out, but when you're walking back to the dorm at 4, it could be 80 degrees out. Also, if you layer a more conservative cami under your tops, there will be no worries about showing too much skin. Standards are different here than at home.
5. The super-lightweight breathable tennis shoes are wonderful, but sand gets into them SO easily. 

Lessons about home:

1. Missing your family and friends is hard, but talking to them on the phone or skyping with them can be enough to get you through four months away from home.
2. Texting is an excellent way to keep in touch with people.
3. Facebook is an important link to those near and far. Sometimes it's even better than the phone. Sad, I know.
4. Home is where you make it. I keep calling the dorm "home."

Lessons about relationships:

1. The phone and Skype became my favorite ways to contact people.
2. Post those photos to Facebook. It will help others feel connected to you, and you'll feel the love because people will probably comment on them. :)
3. Even just a text a week can make someone feel super-loved. Keep that in mind.

The Home Stretch...

Hey, all!

What can I say?

Only two more weeks (and a couple of days) until I'm going back to Indiana. I have loved most of my time here, but I am SO READY to be home. This next week is starting to phase me out of my classroom... :( I'm excited to have a little bit lighter load, but also sad that I'll be leaving all my kiddos here. I cannot tell you how many times I have been called mom in the past few weeks, which really makes me laugh. So many of my kids in my classroom randomly call me mom on accident, but the girls at the dorm seem to do it on purpose. I always tell them, "I'm too young to be your mom!"

Tonight was our Thanksgiving program. We wrote an acrostic poem about what Thanksgiving meant to us. I will probably post it later. The program was fantastic. You could tell people put a lot of effort into doing the different parts of the program. I would post pictures and the videos I have of the two dance groups, but I don't have permission of parents to have photos/videos of their children on the Internet.

I'm really hoping the next two weeks fly by. I'm going to miss the people here at the school, but I am more ready to graduate (25 days!!!), get my teaching certification finished, and find a job. I know I want to be close to home. If there's anything this experience taught me, it's that I need that support system of mine nearby. It was kind of a struggle being out here with just the other student teachers, but it made me a bit stronger. I had to deal with certain feelings and emotions on my own without those I love most physically nearby. That was really hard. I love being able to just sit down with my friends and hang out. That's when we have the deeper conversations. Just the "hey, how has your week been?" for the past 14 weeks has been rough. I've been able to have semi-deep conversations with friends on video chat and whatnot, but I miss the face-to-face, real-life connection.

I also miss my churches. Both of them. So much. The churches I've attended here have been great, but there's something about my home churches (in Mooresville and Bloomington) that these churches just didn't have. Maybe it's the people. That's all a church really is. I did enjoy the people at both of the churches I attended, but there's something about being at Calvary, seeing Jackie McDonald's smiling face, getting a hug from Debbie T., or hearing Mike and Barbie sing. There's something about seeing Pastor Stewart and his family come into the building on Sunday mornings, all six children in tow. There's something about Life Line, being around all of the friends from my teenage years, hearing Pastor Tim preach, going to our large Sunday School classroom with the College kids and another class. There's something about seeing my best friends and worshiping God with them. I miss it, and I just can't wait to be home.

I miss all my family and friends so much. My dad changed his profile picture on Facebook to a picture of him and me from my senior prom. I almost cried, because I felt like that was his way of saying he misses me and can't wait for me to be home. I miss seeing my mom. I showed a picture of my family to my cooperating teacher, and she said I look just like her. I do, and I miss seeing her so much. I miss my friends. I miss having sleepovers and talking in parking lots until our parents are wondering where in the world we are because we said we'd be home an hour ago. I miss hanging out at Megan or Lyndsey's house and playing games with everyone. (Which, by the way, should totally happen much more often than it does...) I miss randomly going over to Rusty's apartment to hang out and watch TV or get OrangeLeaf frozen yogurt. :) I miss going to Brittany and Stacy's apartment and cooking in their kitchen or making trips to Walmart because it's so close.

I miss things being less than an hour away. The closest Walmart is over an hour away. The closest big city is 2 hours (and some change) away. Luckily we have some amenities here (a video store, movie theater, grocery store, 4 fast food chains, and several restaurants), but it's still like an hour and a half to a Walmart. That took some getting used to. Not that I needed to go to Walmart a lot,  but it would've been nice to have a place to kill time where people didn't notice you walking around so much. Bashas' (our grocery store) does, however, have much better music than Walmart. Does Walmart even have music? I don't remember, to tell the truth. Now it's Christmas music (which should wait until at least this Friday), but they used to play the hits from the 80's and 90's. It was amazing.

I miss trees. It sounds weird, but it's true. the only trees I've really seen on the Rez have been pinyon trees and a couple of cottonwoods (WHICH I HAVE AT HOME!!) in a town called Cottonwood.

I miss cooking and baking. So. Much. No ovens/stoves are in the dorm, so I've been making everything in the microwave or just eating food you don't need to cook. I am stoked for this weekend, for I will be making a pie. And possibly lots of other things.

Well... That's about all I really need to say tonight. Bottom line is that I miss home so much, and cannot wait to be back. However, these next few weeks will be bittersweet, as is leaving any place. I'm just hoping I make it through alive and well, without too many tears. :)

Low Point

30 Days Until I Start to Go Home...

I have really hit a low point this week. All I want to do is go home. I love my kids, and I'll miss them dearly, but aside from that, I'm pretty much done. There are times when I just need to talk to someone or be away from school for a day, but that's not always possible. It's frustrating, tiring, and I'm just so drained in multiple ways that I don't even want to function. It's sad. I just want to be back in Indiana with my family and friends.

My only complaint about this experience is that you don't really get to know the people you're with until you get out here. Spending about two hours a month leading up to this doesn't really prepare you for living with someone for four months. In my case, the first two months were great, but the last few weeks have been really crappy, for lack of a better word. Since the ladies moved upstairs, I've been a bit of a loner, and I don't like it.

I'm really hoping the next four(ish) weeks go fast. I'm tired and I miss Indiana.

Sorry if this was really complain-y, but it's just how I'm feeling. All I want to do is just go home and stay there for awhile, so I cannot wait until December 8th, when I'll start driving back home.

Days 40-55: untitled. Too much happened...

Hello, there! It's been a long time. Here's a few snippets of what's been happening since September 22...

September 23: Had a wonderful relaxing day. Definitely needed that one.

September 25: Student of the Month party!! Those are always a blast. This time, there were a lot of boys and girls slow dancing together (which was cute), and all of the little guys and girls just jumped around.

September 28: Took the bus from school to Monument Valley. This was a really neat experience. Some of our kids at our school ride the bus for over an hour to get home. Sometimes the bus drivers don't get home until almost 7 PM when the buses leave the school at 3:30 PM. We got to see many awesome rocks and landscapes that were different from what is right around our school. It was amazing to see where some of the kids from our school live. There were even a few in Utah. I thought that was really interesting: living in one state, going to school in another. I guess it's different on the reservation, though, since the BIE schools are run by the federal government. Speaking of the federal government, check out the entry for October 8. You might laugh a bit.

September 29: I woke up at like 5 AM on this day. I had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room and the woke up, ready to go at 5 AM. Nick had mentioned wanting to go see the sunrise over Monument Valley, so I texted him to see if he wanted to go. No response. He was still sleeping. I ended up going anyways. It was BEAUTIFUL. Here's some pictures...

The moon was gorgeous, but my camera could not capture what it actually looked like. It was so cool to watch the moon go down as the sun was coming up. I probably would've seen both of them at the same time if it weren't for the big mesa the moon ducked behind.

The sun is just barely peeking out...

This was about 15 minutes after the previous photo. I went for a little drive to see if I could find a better spot to take pictures, but decided this one was great. 

I changed the setting on my camera to get this one. This really captures the true colors. It was gorgeous.

The rocks behind me when I was watching the sunrise.

 September 29 (continued): After I got back from Monument Valley, Nick and I went to go meet up with the girls from Tuba City and join them on their trip to Sedona, AZ. There's a nice park where people can go camping, fishing, hiking, and such. There's also a really touristy area, which is where we went. It was fun, but the stores were the same things over and over again. After we figured this out, we went to Flagstaff for the afternoon. The two girls and I wanted to go shopping, so Nick dropped me off at the mall with them while he went downtown for a bit. This was where I found my new jeans. Compared to the ones I currently have, these are a size or two smaller, which is pretty cool. Here are pictures from Sedona!

Awesome rock we saw.

Beautiful rocks. I never get tired of seeing more rocks.

This area was really cool. Once you get down to where Sedona is, there are some creeks and a forest. It definitely reminded me of home.

I just took a picture of this because of the improper use of the apostrophe. 

September 30: I went to church at Kayenta Baptist Church (formerly First Baptist Church of Kayenta) and then spent the afternoon over at my teacher's house. My teacher had her family over, along with some of the people from my church (they're kind of related... long story). It was nice to see them and eat some awesome food. She and her husband made pork chops and chicken on the grill and all kinds of sides. I had some green salad, my teacher's famous potato salad, corn (off the cob... stupid braces), and a grilled jalepeno popper. It was delicious. If you've never had one, it's just half of a jalepeno filled with some cream cheese, wrapped in bacon, and grilled. SO GOOD. After lunch, we watched The Avengers, which was a great movie. I hadn't seen it yet, so I enjoyed it! I also did the pesky CC report. I like reflecting upon what I've done, but sometimes I just don't feel like it. Spetember 30th was one of those days.

October 1-4: This week was Native American Pride week at KCS. I must say, that even though we had less instructional time, I think my kids learned a lot about their culture. We did a lot of art projects that pertained to being a Native American. My kids also wrote about why they're proud to be Native American. Since not all of my students are Navajo (or Dine', which is the term for the people), we made sure we just said Native American. In our school, I'm pretty sure there is only one non-Native student. I haven't actually talked to him about it, and I may be making an assumption, but I'm pretty sure he's white. It's mainly because of his hair color and eye color. Almost every student in our school has dark brown hair and brown eyes. He has blonde hair and gray eyes (I think). I only see him in the mornings when I help serve breakfast, so it's hard to remember his eye color. They're definitely not brown, though. I'm sure he was still included in everything. I definitely felt a little Native American this week. I didn't take a picture, but one of the cafeteria ladies, Julie, did my hair for me on Thursday. She put it in a traditional bun, which was pretty neat. I also wore my turquoise jewelry I bought, and since it was the last day of the school week, I wore my jeans and boots. Another cool thing about Native American Pride Week is that there are the pageants for the girls. Each day was another pageant, with two on Wednesday and a talent show on Thursday. There was Miss PeeWee KCS (K-3rd grade), Miss Junior KCS (4th-6th grade), and Miss KCS (7th-8th grade). They were all really neat to watch. In the younger pageants, the girls could choose whether they wanted to do traditional or modern talents/dress. Most of them did traditional. One little girl from the dorm did a modern dress/talent and got second place. I was so proud of her. She sang "Baby" by Justin Bieber. It was cute. The other girls mainly did dancing or singing. A lot of them sang in Navajo, which was really cool to hear. The Miss KCS pageant is different, though. The girls do both modern and traditional talent/dress. Most of the girls sang, but the winner of the Miss KCS pageant recited poetry for her modern talent and did a jewelry demonstration in Navajo for her traditional talent. She did a great job, and had apparently been trying to win any of the pageants for a long time. On the same day as the Miss KCS pageant, there was also a baby pageant. Our school has a program called FACE, which is basically to educate the family as a whole before the child comes to school. The parents can start going to classes as soon as they find out they're having a baby, and the kids are there until from age 3 to 5. This pageant was to showcase the students in the FACE program. It was adorable. The winner of this pageant sang a song, and was definitely okay with being on stage. She did cry when she was the only one up there, though. They crowned a little mister, too. Here's a picture from their pageant:

The little girls were so precious. The little boy apparently didn't really want the crown. :)

October 5-7: On these days, I went on a trip to Colorado Springs with Nick. It was a lot of fun. The last time I had been in Colorado for any length of time was when I was 4 years old or so. I went skiing with my family. It was definitely an unforgettable experience. This time, it was with my placement partner friend, Nick, and we were going to Colorado Springs. No skiing, which was probably good since I don't really have the gear. On the way out, it was dark basically from the Cortez, CO all the way to Colorado Springs. Even though the kids didn't have school on Thursday, the teachers had some meetings and such to take care of before we could have our weekend, so we couldn't leave K-town until 5 PM. Cortez is apparently the place with the closest Walmart to us. Usually we go to Flagstaff because there is more there, but Cortez seems like a nice little town. It reminded me of Indiana. There's definitely more grass in Cortez than there is in Kayenta. There's more grass on Pike's Peak than there is in Kayenta. :) After getting through Cortez, it started getting dark. Nick drove most of the dark way on the way out, which was nice. He was a champion and drove through the foggy part of the mountains all the way to Colorado Springs. We got to CS safely around 1 AM. We spent the weekend with Branden and Shelby, one of Nick's friends from home and his girlfriend. They both moved out here in the past year or so. They have a dog and a cat, who are both adorable and lovable. Their names are Diana Ross (the black lab puppy) and Barry Manilow (the black and white cat). It was fun to play with animals again since there are really only the rez dogs here, and they don't really like to play. They just want food. Since Branden and Shelby are both real adults with real jobs, he had to sleep on Saturday morning, and she had to go into work. Nick and I went to Garden of the Gods, which was pretty cool. I would've taken more pictures, but my phone was charging in the car while we were in the central garden, or the main part of the park. After we got done with our hike, we went back to Branden and Shelby's apartment and waited for Shelby to get home from work so we could go out to lunch. She works an early shift, so she gets off in time to have a late lunch. We went to Phantom Canyon and I had some amazing buffalo chicken nachos. They were awesome. And pretty cheap, too, since it was still lunch time. After dinner, Shelby and I got to hang out and watch Hocus Pocus when the boys were hanging out with some other people they knew. We had a nice little girls night. The next morning, Shelby had to go to work again, and Branden had to get on a flight to Cleveland for work, so Nick and I said our goodbyes to them and went to Pike's Peak. Pike's Peak was probably the coolest part of the weekend. Both literally and figuratively. It was SO COLD at the summit, but the view was so worth the cold and drive up the mountain. I have a ton of pictures that will show up below... The best part of the day after going up then down from Pike's Peak was definitely our lunch. We got to have Popeye's, which I haven't had in a long time. I forgot how much I liked their red beans and rice. After getting our Popeye's fix, we scooted out of town and came back to Kayenta. The drive back was much nicer. No fog, lots of stars, great music. Nick took the first leg and I took the last. We ended up getting home around midnight, which was great, because I really needed another day to recover before getting back to school. My legs are so tired (in a good way) from hiking and climbing rocks.

Nick climbing at the Garden of the Gods. 

I'm pretty sure I was telling him not to die when I took this picture.

Always looking for a better perspective.

You can kinda see Colorado Springs.... no? I know I could when I was taking the picture.

The Siamese Twins.

Nick in front of the Siamese Twins.

Sitting in the hole at the bottom of the Siamese Twins.

Barry Manilow 

He's such a sweety... made me miss my cat. And wish she liked sitting of people's laps.

He was checking out my phone.

Diana Ross and Nick were both still asleep on the couch.

In front of Crystal Lake. (I think that's what it was called...) You can tell I'm pretty cold.

Above the clouds...

This is the train that comes to the top.

On some rocks near the edge of the summit.

Nick looking out from the summit.

Summit photo!

It was so windy. My hair was blowing everywhere!

Tourist photo and windblown hair.

We stopped on the way back down at this awesome group of rocks.

On top of the world...

Looking down at all the beauty.

The real reason we went to Pike's Peak was to find Bigfoot. (that was sarcasm) The kids at school call Nick "Bigfoot," so we decided to take this photo of him crossing by the sign.

The sunset on the way back was phenomenal.

So pretty... even better in person.

Blanca Peak, I'm pretty sure. Another one of Colorado's Fourteeners, and higher than Pike's Peak. It just doesn't really seem like it from where we were.

October 8: Today is Columbus Day. Happy "some guy came to what he thought was this land" day. It's ironic that my school has the day off, but the other schools in town don't. It's because our school is federally run. We end up getting federal holidays, even if they could be seen as offensive to the people who observe them. Oh well! I know my kids were stoked to have a four-day weekend. :)

Having a wonderful time!
(and hopefully I will not wait two weeks to post again!)