Aidan’s Take on Naraya

Aidan and I recently attended the New England Naraya ceremony.  Here is what he wrote about it.  [I retained some of the invented spelling.]

Clyde

Clyde is the head of Naraya. He does all these dances at night. And all the kids get to sleep in the middle in there sleeping bags. And in all the dances people pray for a good life, and a good life for all the animals and kids.

Clyde is real nice. He gave me a name. It is seeder boy and in Shoshone it is Wapi To-Ya-Ba. I got that name because at all the dances I help my dad with the fire and I put seeder in the smudge bowls for a dance or a saromony. And that’s Naraya.

 

 

Clyde

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Beach Story by Aidan

When did I start coming to Point of Woods?
I have been coming to Point of Woods all my life starting in 2006 when I was a baby.

What I like to do at Point of Woods?
The beach is wonderful. The beach is really nice. There are really nice houses to look at while you are here.

Why Point of Woods is so special to me?

I can scooter and bike around by myself and stop by my friends houses to play with them. You can go down to the park whenever you want to play basketball, mulch monster, and definitely gaga ball.

Earlier this year, I started grapping sand from the bottom of the ocean at the raft.

There is an ice cream truck that stops by every day. There are so many different flavors.

There is a camp called “rec” that is really awesome and all my friends go there.

We play manhunt at night. There are two teams. One team counts to thirty or more but they can have their eyes open. The other team runs off and hides while the other team guards the base and they also try and look for the people. It’s a fun game. It’s exciting and a little bit scary when it is nine o’clock.

I want to come back again every year.

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Kids’ Eye View of the Beach

I recently purchased a GoPro camera for our family.  The waterproof GoPro is great for capturing skiing, biking, and water sport adventures.  I taught my son how to use it and he eagerly “videotaped” him and his friends’ daily life here at the beach, which consists largely of biking, basketball, skateboarding, scootering, swimming and diving, and playing outside games like manhunt and hide and go seek.

I found that viewing and editing the videos gave me an interesting kid’s eye view of life.  While not inconsistent with what I thought was important to him, seeing the footage taped from his vantage point (first person shots) along with third person shots gave me a new appreciation for what his life is like.

Here’s a compilation of water sports we took over the last few days.

 

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Baseball Stats – Conway Minors

I got interested in understanding some baseball hitting stats and figured out the major ones for our leading hitters on on Conway Minors baseball team.  If only the Red Sox were putting up these numbers!

One thing that I learned is the difference between at bats and plate appearances.  At bats does not count walks and hit by pitches.  Plate appearances does count walks and hit by pitch.  So when they says so and so went 1 for 2 in a game, that  means they had one hit and one out and they may also have walked.  On Base Percentage (OBP) counts walks and hit by pitches and is thought by some to be more meaningful than batting average, which does not count walks.  Slugging average takes into account doubles, triples, and home runs and weighs them more heavily so it means the average base achieved per at bat.  Strikeout ratio is the simple ratio of strikeout to at bats.

I have not been keeping track of RBIs.  Davey would have a lot since he got at least 2 grand slams.  I did not have time to figure out the stats for all players but many other kids have also got hits and some are getting a high percentages of walks too.  However, these three in particular are hitting very well this year!

Name Batting Average OBP Slugging Average Strikeout Ratio
Aidan H 0.625 0.909 0.625 0.125
Aidan W 0.750 0.833 1.625 0.125
Davey 0.600 0.733 1.600 0.200
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Aidan Basket

Aidan gets a nice swish from way downturn.

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Cold

Everyone was complaining about the cold today.  I think it was -9 this morning.  It is 14 now.  Just got back from a wonderful snowshoe.  I was actually hot.  The New England forest is so beautiful in the winter.  And I love the way “grandmother’s white robe”, as my American Indian friends say, reveals all the animal activity going on that is usually much harder (but not impossible) to see.  Here’s some old bobcat track photos.  bobcat bobcat1

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Snowboarding 3 (Aidan)

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Snowboarding 1 (Aidan)

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Snowboarding 2 (Otis)

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Impressions of Europe

I am in Denmark and really enjoying my stay here so far.  Some things I have noticed here.

There are wide sidewalks here on both sides of roads with bike lanes and walking lanes.  You see people biking everywhere, full bike racks, and lots of families walking together.

People bring fresh bread to work and even the hotel food is lots of fresh bread, cheese, fruit, and yoghurt.  So different from American hotel food with fatty meats and commercial and packaged food.  There are high quality coffee machines everywhere but I had to learn the difference between kaffee and cafe americano and how to work them.  Also, decaf is made here by using hot water and instant decaf but the instant actually tastes good.

The design aesthetic is very attractive insides with lots of sleek, low furniture and appliances and cool fixtures.  The buildings here are low and fit into the environment yet are also add something.  I think a lot of American buildings are either just random and don’t work together or are made to stand out rather than fit it.

There is no AC or even fans in the hotel rooms.  Not sure if it is unseasonably warm.

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