Fire Alarms at 1030 PM

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, we had the school fire alarm go off and wakeup the entire village. Turns out one of the boilers really started smoking pretty bad and it was hard to get rid of all the smoke. Tonight was one of the rare nights I am appreciative of the distance of my house form the school because the volume was not nearly as bad as my previous residence which is only fifty meters away form the school. I was going to call it an early night, yet this has severly put a bump into my groove. I haven't posted in while so i have decided to take this opportunity to give a heads up. Life is looking on the up and up out here. My kids are getting a little squirrely but nonetheless no worse for wear. Things are shaping up here, although I am still waiting for the barge to bring my 1000lbs of lumber so I can build my water storage facility. We just had a week of five rainy days and each drop that falls I stare remorsefully at its descent. One more drop which I wil not be able to harvest... But eventually it should arrive and once it is constructed I will let you all in on how my water purification system is going. My plans this year are pretty big, if this water goes through, I will be helping my father present it to the village and we will see if we can equip the every house in the village with a system. My friendship with the other teachers has grown immensly and we have begun taking excursions out into the tundra. These tundra walks have turned into quite the bonding experience, especially after we all got stuck in the mud on Friday. Some teachers were knee to thigh deep in mud, and another sacrificed her clothes to lay in the mud and dig out another teachers book which was about 18in deep in the mud. Using physics rules we thought we had forgotten we were able to pull ourselves literally by our bootstraps out of the muck and returned home. We were mired in muck for about an hour. We must have look ridiculous to the hunters passing by, four kossaqs laughing and falling over. However when I related the tale in the Maqii I was given two methods for how to walk in the mud. The first was to walk and become pigeon-toed when you hit the mud, this helps compress the mud and distribute your weight. The second is to walk springly popping your heels out first, almost like an over eager aerobics instructor. I have yet to test out these methods but I am trusting that they will definitly come in handy the next time we attempt to make another excursion. Well folks thought I would shoot a little something your way, til next time!