Patrick Waska wanted to stay.
The day before he and four junior high classmates from Oscarville, Alaska, boarded a plane in Sacramento for the long journey home, ending their three-week stay in the continental United States, he grinned shyly and admitted as much.
"I want to stay with my other 'sister,' Christina," said 14-year-old Patrick.
That would be Christina Powers, 32, their teacher, who grew up in Citrus Heights.
She fell in love with Alaska at age 10, when she visited an aunt in Fairbanks and decided that Alaska meant freedom. For the past five years, she's taught students in remote Yupik Eskimo villages. She returns home to Citrus Heights each summer to visit her parents, Steve and Donna Powers. And usually she brings her students with her.
She pays for their airfare. Her parents pay for their meals and their adventures, which this year took these full-blooded Yupiks to the Sierra, San Francisco and Santa Cruz – and then on a road trip through Las Vegas to visit Powers' sister in New Mexico.
That's a lot of territory.
"The worst for me was being on the road," said Anissum Henry, 15, who took a few unhappy memories of carsickness back to Alaska with him.
In Oscarville, population 70, an outpost on the Kuskokwim River located 400 miles west of Anchorage, these five teens represent five-sixths of Powers' class at Qugcuun Memorial School.
Some are veteran travelers. Along with Patrick, Nicole Stevens and Nick Joekay, both now 14, visited Atlanta for a robotics competition three years ago.
Said Nick: "When we stepped out of the airport in Atlanta into the warm air" – and here, he hit his chest with his fist – "boom!"
The Georgia humidity proved difficult, in other words. Good thing for Sacramento's dry heat instead.
"I came here before everyone else with my stepmother for a family reunion in Denver," said Nicole. "So I got used to the heat."
There is much about their lives that seems frankly exotic to those of us not well-versed in Yupik culture. For instance, their families survive mainly through subsistence – hunting, fishing, gathering wild bird eggs and picking wild blueberries.
When Powers brought out a snack of dried salmon strips, her students eagerly tore off bites.
"They're a favorite for us," said Nicole.
Healthy snack food: What a concept.
"Try some," said Issa Egoak, 13.
You know what? Pretty tasty.
"Have a little more," said Issa, a born hostess.
And then there's the fact that these students are all related, in an intricate web of connections that they can reel off with ease.
"The whole village is a family," said Nick.
"She's my auntie," Issa said of Nicole, who nodded.
"Yeah," she agreed. "In blood."
"And her grandmother was my great-grandmother," said Patrick of Issa, and then he turned to Nicole. "And my grandmother was her …"
"Sister," said Nicole.
Sister?
"It's very confusing," said Nick.
They didn't especially like Las Vegas, where they stayed at Circus Circus.
"The hotel, not the casino," said Nick. "But we had to walk through the casino to get to the buffet."
"It was stinky," said Issa.
"Smoky and loud," said Nick.
"Too many lights," said Anissum.
"Too many faces," said Patrick.
The thing is, we're exotic to them. And their three weeks away from the small world of their village provided a taste of something that seems impossibly foreign to them: ordinary life in the rest of America.
"In school, there are a lot of things I can show them pictures of on the Internet," said Powers. "But they're seeing reality now. It's not just pictures anymore."
Anita Creamer's column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays in Living Here. Call her at (916) 321-1136. Back columns: www.sacbee.com/creamer.
