Days 23-28: On and Off The Rez

Hello, again!

I know it's been about a week since I've written a post, but I promise it's because I haven't had time or energy to do it until I decided to drink coffee tonight. Since I've been in Arizona, my "during the week" beverage choices are milk, chocolate milk, water, or Gatorade. On the weekends, I'll occasionally have a Coca-Cola or something else caffeinated just because I can. Tonight, I was really in the mood for a coffee. I didn't know what kind I wanted, I just knew I wanted something. Nick and I attempted to go to the Blue Coffee Pot (a local place here in Kayenta with pretty awesome reviews), but it looked like it closed around 9 PM. We went to McDonald's instead, which was actually a pretty good choice. I had a vanilla iced coffee, and I was pretty happy with it. However, I'm just now feeling it, about two hours after I drank it.

Here's an idea of how my week has been:

Thursday: I felt so excited in the morning, but quickly realized my brain did not catch up with my body. My brain was exhausted for some reason.

Friday: I started feeling a little sick... This was not good. I was also very excited because I knew that night I would be driving with Nick to Pinon to meet up with the girls there so we could go to the Navajo Nation Fair the following morning.

Saturday: Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, AZ!!! We got there after the parade had started, but got to see many floats and groups of people walking in the parade. Nick even had a popcorn ball thrown his way while at the parade. This was an interesting experience because I was just one of a few white people at this particular event. One thing that was funny about this was that when we saw other white people, we realized we were staring at them, too, like other people had stared at us. After watching some of the Pow Wow and Song and Dance contests, we stood by and watched part of the Fry Bread Contest and then ate some of the food and enjoyed a ride. It was much like the Sparkler at Holiday World, which is just a swing ride that is much higher in the air than the regular carnival swings. Since we felt like we saw it all, we decided to go find Window Rock, which is the landform after which the town is named. It's beautiful. I also climbed to the top. It was definitely the high point of my weekend (pun intended). After we were finished at Window Rock, we went to Gallup, NM to spend the night and relax off the reservation for a night. It was nice to be back in civilization (AKA: a place with Walmart) for a night. I got a pretty awesome sunburn on this day, so I made sure to buy my Hawaiian Tropics after sun lotion. It definitely helped, but this was probably the worst sunburn I've had all summer.

Some dancers in the parade... and some people just taking their ATV for a spin on the parade route... nbd.

Largest Produce at the Fair... Most of it was unimpressive, but the zucchini looked AMAZING.

Pow Wow in the morning.

Fry Bread Competition. You can't really see her, but the lady in the pink on the right looked like a shoe-in. Her fry bread looked pretty good, but then again, I'm no expert.

Song and Dance Contest. Groups would sing three songs while the dance competitors walked around the circle and danced. It was really neat to watch.

Window Rock, AZ. The soldier is a monument to the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII. There are so many different monuments and dedications to these soldiers on the Reservation.

In front of Window Rock, before the climb up.

Nick at the top!

View of what is behind Window Rock, from the top.

View of the park and the town from the top of Window Rock.

Nick was pretty stoked to be there!

Me at the top of Window Rock. You can't really tell, but it's pretty far up there. This picture doesn't really give it justice.

Looking through the window from the back side (I think).

Just a pretty great photo of it... You can see some people at the top right.

Black Mesa

One of the homes on Black Mesa, near the coal mines.

Beautiful... and green!

View from top(ish) of Black Mesa. It was breathtaking.

Another view from Black Mesa. We were driving back to Kayenta from Pinon.

I really love the sky and vegetation in this photo. 

Sunday: Drove back from Gallup, NM, then went to Flagstaff with Janace and Linda to get Linda a new phone and hit up the Walmart.

Monday: I took over a lot more responsibilities as a student teacher. I have all of the math portion of class now, and about 1/3 of the reading/language arts portion. As the week progresses, I'll take more and more responsibilities. I'm so excited to become the primary teacher in the classroom, but it's sometimes hard to read my classroom teacher. We definitely get along, but there are times where I'm unsure of how she feels about certain things. We talk about it a lot, which makes me happy, but I think I'm also nervous that I'm taking over her class while she gets to watch on and think about how I'm doing as a teacher. I know for sure that my classroom management (at least with this group of kids) needs some improvement. After school, I helped with the Pee Wee Volleyball team. We ended up practicing outside and most of the girls just wanted to lay on the concrete and do nothing, which made me want to make them run a lap to get energized. I felt like it was fair because I participated in running the lap with them until I noticed two girls who hadn't even started after I was about halfway around. The girls didn't seem to mind it, and it got them back on task. The thing that bothered me most was that they were complaining about it being too hot outside, yet no one was sweating. It was maybe 82 degrees outside, and looking like it was going to rain. Hopefully Wednesday's practice will be much smoother. I really want the girls to have fun.

Today: Today was relatively uneventful compared to Saturday. I went to school, taught some lessons, then came back here during what would have been volleyball practice. The older girls had an away game, so I didn't go, but the younger girls didn't have practice. I got an afternoon off, which was very nice! I went back to school for supper and then served the kids and helped clean up, as usual. Then we had out study hour with the girls, and they ended up getting ready for bed a little bit earlier than usual. I was exhausted and ready to hit the hay around 7:45, but I obviously didn't go to bed. This brings me back to the beginning of my post about the coffee... it definitely worked, but now it's wearing off. Good night, all! 

Hope you have an excellent week!