Hello!  This is your friend, Braison Domingo Running Bear, writing!  Hope this finds you well!

I'm afraid I'm not doing too good.  I'm flunking school (now in sixth grade) and Grandfather and Grandmother are both giving me grief about my grades.  In addition to that, we're snowed in, and more snow is expected tomorrow.  We just got our power back on the other day; what's to say we won't lose it yet again??

Seems a good part of this winter we've spent plenty of time in the emergency shelter they had set up at the high school.  I'm so sick of school; it's bad enough I have to go there in the day:  do I have to spend the night there, too????

We have had more than enough "snow days", which means that in the summer, us kids have to make those missed days up.  That means a shorter vacation period.  I was not happy when I heard the news!  Now we might miss even more days due to the impending winter storm due to come in; I am so sick of snow I could just spit nails!  I am more than ready for spring!!!!

The little kids in my family (Benjie and Brandon, 3, and Bitsi, 6) have been sick all winter; they've been sharing their colds with each other -- and with us.  I don't know when I've coughed or sneezed so much!  I think we just about used up all the Kleenix in the house; but we can't get any more until Grandfather and Grandmother both get their Social Security check in two/three more weeks.  So until then, we've had to resort to using toilet paper or paper towels to take care of our runny noses, which, to me, is gross!

School is nothing more than a big waste of my time.  I'd rather sleep in than to get up with the wolves or sit in a stuffy classroom, listening to the teachers drone on and on about boring stuff, or having to put up with the non-Native kids picking on us Native kids, calling us stupid names that only ask for a fight.  I'm already in deep doo-doo for punching Timmy Wight for calling me a "savage" once too often!

Why can't the non-Native kids just learn to accept us?  We were here first before anybody else came to this country!!  We're not going away anytime soon!!

Well, I gotta get ready for school and wait for the stupid bus; before that, though, I gotta eat.  I will write in here again; pray that spring comes soon, and pray we don't lose our power to another stupid blizzard!!  I'm so sick of doing things by candlelight when it's dark out, and besides, I can't play my video games or use the computer when there's no power!  Thanks!  I'd greatly appreciate it!  This winter has been major suckage!!!!

~Your friend in Oklahoma, Braison Running Bear.  :(

*to be continued.*