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!)