The project that Kasie and I started that I mentioned before was to reorganize all the books in the library because they were completely out of order. We made the kids "bookmarks" to use to hold their place while they're looking at a book so they know where to put them back in the correct spot. So starting after school Friday, with some help from Derek and Jeff, we've been organizing every book, one letter at a time and reshelving them, etc. After pulling all the books off of the shelves, we forced ourselves to get this part of the project done this weekend. We went in last night for a few hours as well and after a few hours this morning, we should be good to go. :) Like I said before, we let our OCD get the best of us but I think it'll be worth it and I'm excited to have it finished and move on to the next part. I have some pictures of the process but they're on my iPad and not on my computer so after I transfer them over, I'll post some of those!
Yesterday was a really fun day! We went out on the hondas again and this time it was Kasie, Derek, Jeff, Jerik and myself... and Heiden, of course. :) We went out to the beach again and this time we were able to drive the whole way down the beach - there were still ice chunks all over it so we had to do some manuvering around and riding in the water but it was exciting! Jeff had found a bear eating a Baluga whale that was dead on the shore the other day and so we saw that but all that was left was the bottom half of the skull/jaw and then some of the spine - it was huge! We went down the beach to a place that kind of opens up and it's full of pumice. That's where you get off and you just walk and skim through because that's where the glass floats are hidden. With some help from all of them at first, I found 27 of the glass floats. I know some people only find one or two at a time so I feel very lucky to have found that many. They're so intriguing to me and I felt like I was on an Easter egg hunt but in this case, it was the sea that hid the eggs! You just search through the pumice and sometimes you don't know what you'll find. There were some bottles and other random things. It was a lot of fun. We walked down a little farther until we hit North River.
I realized that some of you that are reading this may not have known what these glass floats are because I may not have gotten a chance to explain them before I left. I don't know all the specific details but basically, these glass floats are from Japan. They are glass balls that were attached to fishing nets in Japan that helped keep the nets floating in the sea. A lot of them have detached and they've been floating in the Bering Sea for 50-100 years! When the wind blows from the North, these floats wash up on the shore here in Port Heiden. If I understand correctly, they only wash up when there's a storm from the North and they are so neat. You just walk through all the pumice and all of the grass and you can find them. Some have different Japanese symbols, letters, numbers on them - not sure which. Some of mine have bubbles in them in the glass. They're all different shades and they can come in different sizes. The big ones are really rare I think they Jeff has two and they're really neat! The one on the left of the picture has a net on it still and it is covered in barnacles (spelling?) that have grown on it, I dug that one out of the ground. And there's some with nets and some that have imprints of nets on them. They're fascinating to me.
Looking down the beach!
The goal was to get across North River to the other part of the beach where there's apparently more glass floats, however, you can tell by the picture - this wasn't happening today! It's possible I guess at low tide on a good day but that wasn't the case yesterday. But it's okay because it was still an amazing time! I love it out there. This picture shows where North River opens up into the Bering Sea!
After we got back from our ride, we were told that the bear was just shot out past the airport, so we got back on the honda and headed out to see that. I think it was the same bear that we were following the other day and taking pictures of. They said it weighed around 500 lbs, meaning it was a baby really. When we got there, they had just drug it across the frozen lake from the tundra where they had shot it. It was big and smelled terrible.
I have more pictures but I was trying to over load this post so I picked the best ones. That was a long post... I'm off to get the last part of the books put away and sorted before we come back here to watch the Super Bowl! I'm a 49ers fan today!
:)
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