Church Bells

Kipnuk is similar to Los Palis, Haiti, in that they chime the church bells 15 minutes, and again five minutes before church is supposed to begin. Most people here attend church everyday and on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays is choir night - where the people just sing; and Wednesdays are Bible Study. I plan on going to the next big end of the month bash at the church - it's about three hours long, and people get up to sing (locals) and then everyone sings. It can supposedly help learn a bit of the language because they sing slowly - to really help get those guttural sounds down. It just started pouring down rain, and I can see people walking to church outside my window - the boardwalk passes right near our door. The side of the village that I live on has a pretty decent boardwalk system (you need to be careful in some places though, because if you hit an old board, you'll go through the wood into the murky water below). We are 136 steps from the school entrance, and we go up and down two flights of stairs before we get there. Outside of our front door we can see five huge water tanks which are solely for the teacher housing and the school. They fill it up for the last time in October before it freezes, and that has to get us through the winter. As long as the pipes don't freeze, and people don't waste water, we should be just fine. Let's hope there won't have to be repeats, or worse, of this morning. The maintenance men had to fix our sink, because we didn't have a hot water nozzle, and the cold one was pretty wobbly, and they turned off the valve that brought hot water to the shower. My other roommate and I filled up pots of hot water from the kitchen and brought them into the tub for a make-shift shower (we didn't find out we had the same thoughts until this afternoon when we all talked about it) and my other roommate didn't even think of doing that. We have hot water now, so hopefully we won't have to worry about that happening for a long time. It's time for a little bit of work, and then off to bed for me. Tomorrow and Friday are Parent/Teacher conferences. I had a picture in my head about how it was going to go, but after speaking to a veteran teacher here, I was way off. I have mentioned that this is a very non-speaking culture, and it's not just the kids who clam up. Apparently, if we have a discussion with the parents - it's not out of the realm of possibilities that they will not understand us. That's not any disrespect towards the people of Kipnuk, but it's just how they roll. It will be very interesting, and I will keep you updating and let you know what goes on. Wish me luck!