The Alaskan Adventure - Volume 3 - Settling In

The title for this blog seems to fit very well as it has been a week of settling in. Activities are still limited, but I have been trying to keep myself busy as best I can. For the outsiders reading this, you have to remember...there are no restaurants, no bars to have a drink, no movie theaters, no fast food restaurants and no festivals to listen to music and eat and drink until you explode. It's a simple and humble life and I have to say, more peaceful than any place I have been in a long, long time.

Outside of going into my classroom each day, I tried to get out and be a part of the village as best I could. I've been going for walks everyday and my reaching out started on Sunday. I was out for a walk in the morning and happened to be walking by the Catholic Church at 10:00 am. I decided to go in and take part in the service. I'm really glad I did, because it gave me a good opportunity to meet and introduce myself to a number of the people in the village. Pastor Aiden who was from a country in Africa (I forgot which one) was very nice to introduce me to everyone. I did the same on Wednesday night at the village's other church, an Evangelical Church, where I met Pastor Mark, his wife and several other very nice people from the village.

I've also been trying to acclimate with other aspects of the village and have been finding my way around to some of the mainstays in the village. Here are my ventures so far. I have been a regular at the Lower Yukon School District office, because of all the paperwork and questions I have. I'm actually really lucky that the district offices are in our village. I think I'd be pretty lost if I didn't have all the help they were giving me. The ladies are amazingly sweet and helpful. Lena, the administrative assistant at the front door who greets everyone, has become a happy and familiar face for me. I don't just sign in...we talk about her cute knickknacks, her kids, picking berries, and all the bear and moose sightings. I almost feel like I want to make up questions (which I don’t) just to say hi to everyone. I also met Isacc, the post office man, Barbara, the cashier at the food coop, Mike and Willie the IT guys and Chris, the main maintenance man for Mountain Village. Chris is a really funny guy and was playfully giving me a hard time from the beginning. He asked me if I wanted to go out on his boat this weekend and said that he would take me out to the middle of the Yukon River and push me out of the boat, with no life jacket! He said that is your initiation to the village. I then asked him if he could at least take me to the deepest part of the river, and we both had a good laugh.

This will be a little off the cuff, but I have to say that I really miss seeing squirrels. I love squirrels and loved seeing them back home. I just don't get to see them any more and it kinda bums me out. They're adorable little creatures, but just nowhere to be seen here. I guess I'll just have to find a new creature to love, maybe big, brown furry bears. No short supply of brown and black bears, or moose up here.

Speaking of which, there have been a lot more sightings of bear and moose right around and in the village. The bears are hungry and the moose seem to be on the move. I have been taking a lot of long walks on the beach, which sounds romantic, LOL, but first of all it’s a rocky beach and secondly I’m by myself. There have been a lot of bear sightings along the river, so the villagers have been cautioning me to be very careful. Yesterday there was a sighting of a bear right on the edge of town and a family of moose. I was kind of excited to spend more time time down by the river too, because this is the time of year when seals and whales are seen in the river by the village. I was under the impression that if I did see a bear I’m fast enough to outrun it, but from what I’m told, unless I have a good head start I may be their lunch. So now I tend to walk with my head on a swivel and with a little more caution just in case.

Since the first few moments of sunshine on Saturday when I landed, that quickly went away, and we now have our seventh day in a row of overcast skies, which is so exciting. I just wish tomorrow was the start of the four months of darkness! Are you picking up on my sarcasm, because I'm laying it on pretty thick. I'm not going to lie, it wears on your psyche pretty easily, but I try to keep my mind busy as best I can. I'm taking my Vitamin D and my 'mood lamp' is on it's way. Otherwise I just walk around with my eyes closed everyday, or try not to look up. :)

Some other neat additions to the week are that I am now an advisor on the chess club which meets every Wednesday afternoon and evening when school starts. And while I am sad that I missed it this last Monday, I’m excited to be a part of bingo at the Mountain Village community hall every Monday night. To the best of my knowledge, there is no karaoke in the village, but you will be the second to know. Another exciting development is that I was invited to go on the village moose hunt this September. That will be really cool and I'm sure pretty exciting seeing them up close. I'll share more about that when the time comes. And while I was joking before with maintenance-man Chris, he really did invite me on his boat this weekend (with a life jacket), to travel the Yukon River. He also said that it would be a good time see more whales and seals. Pretty cool!

The other teachers are starting to return to Mountain Village this week as well. There are five of us here for the first time, so I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'll get a little treat next week as we are being flown back to Anchorage for the week for teacher training and inservice. It will also give me a chance to go to some of the bigger chain stores to get food and supplies for the winter, that I wasn't able to bring with me. And...I might buy a new tv. My son Seth is sending me our family collection of dvd's and Netflix is sounding really good! It's going to be a lonnnnnnng, cold winter.

Stay tuned...