A lot has happened in the past two weeks...
We successfully completed TWO trips to the grocery store!!! Trust me, that’s a big accomplishment! Each person (we have 7) has a monthly food stipend of $72! Yes, that’s per month. I easily went through $72 a week at school and now I’m trying to stretch that out over four weeks. My roommate John calculated that we’re spending a whopping $2.66 on each person a day for food. Not bad considering that milk is $9 and a bag of Tostitos costs $10! Guess we won’t be having chips and dip anytime soon. The 9$ milk is the real killer. My diet at home consisted of at least a couple glasses of milk a day. Now….well I mix some powdered milk, pinch my nose and chug… The high prices in Bethel are due to the fact that everything has to be shipped in. Since Bethel is not connected by road to any other city everything is either flown in or shipped in by boat up the Kuskokwim River. As frustrating as the food situation has been at times it has definitely been a good learning experience. We’ve really had to get creative with our meals. They’re not always good…. Our fridge was looking a little empty yesterday so we had to get real ‘creative’…I was in charge of the pasta dish. Being the master chef that I am, I used my expansive knowledge and skill set to make a pot of pasta-roni, spaghetti, and tuna. John then expertly cooked some corned beef hash and spam in oil (because obviously we don’t have butter).
Tuna Pasta roni + corned beef hash + SPAM = wholesome JV lunch
Another really interesting thing about Bethel is that it’s a “Damp” city. Alcohol sales are illegal in Bethel. However, it is legal to possess and consume alcohol. So, to get alcohol people have to order it from liquor stores in other cities and ship it in or stock up when they leave Bethel. As you can imagine this is a point of huge controversy. Coming up in October the city is actually having a vote to make alcohol sales legal. Rates of alcoholism are extremely high in Bethel. Many of the crimes that take place are a direct result of the alcohol. The alcohol gets shipped in periodically (there are only 4 planes into Bethel each day) and when it does get shipped in people drink almost immediately it seems. Because of shipping costs, hard alcohol is the most price efficient (a bottle of 'cheap' vodka might still cost 80$) to have shipped in. What comes as a result of only having hard alcohol, and alcohol that gets shipped in periodically....is serious binge drinking.
Ok, so on to my job… I am working as a client advocate at the Bethel Public Defender’s Agency. A 'public defender' is a lawyer who is paid by the government and gets assigned to clients in the Bethel area who can not afford their own attorney. As a client advocate I’m helping both the lawyers and the client. I’m working specifically with CINA (said like ‘China’) cases. It stands for Children In Need of Aid. In these cases Child Services has removed children from the home because they determined that the parents weren’t fit to care for the kids. Most times this is a result of reports of domestic violence, abuse and alcoholism. Unfortunately, the Office of Child Services in Bethel is not exactly known for being the best run office in the state of Alaska. Many times our lawyers are arguing that the kids never should have been taken in the first place. Basically I, along with the lawyer, am helping parents get their children back from the state. That also means that in our position we are not necessarily taking into account what is "best for the kids." We are simply assigned to defend the parent's rights. My role in the whole situation...mostly I work with the clients to get them into AA programs or other treatment centers as needed. Essentially, I help them make the necessary steps to get their children back. I could rant on and on about these cases all day so I’ll spare you…for now
I’ll try to be more consistent with the blog posts in the next couple weeks! Miss you all. Lots of love from Bethel!
PEACE
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Salmon, Salmon and more salmon.....
So after an incredibly long journey I finally made it to Bethel, Alaska!!!!!
WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!!
Last week I was in Portland for orientation. We had to sit through a lot of workshops and lectures. Needless to say, I spent most of the week ready to get to Alaska.
We had to take 3 flights from Portland to Bethel on Saturday. All 3 flights were delayed for about an hour and half (each for separate reasons) and on top of that we were up at 4:30am so it made for the longest day of my life....LITERALLY. The sun didn't set until 11:30pm that night. Seriously. Sounds real cool except when all you want to do is sleep and your mind keeps telling you that it looks like its 2 or 3 in the afternoon even though its 10!
When we finally got here we were welcomed by a crowd of neighbors, "friends", and former volunteers who still live here. They brought us on a "tour" of Bethel. "Tour" is in quotes because
Bethel has one main road which is just a big doughnut. It's a 6 mile loop. The rest of the roads in town are dirt and gravel and branch off of it. The tour was literally just a drive around the loop in which our guides pointed out all of the big bldngs in town and all 6 of my roommates and I just sat with jaws dropped, nodding like bobble head dolls.
THIS IS WHERE WE ARE SPENDING A YEAR!?!?!?!?!?!?!
After the tour we were dropped at our house and given a few pieces of advice before being left to make ourselves at home. Bethel is essentially on a big marsh so all of the houses are on stilts. Our two story home is no different. The house was surprisingly nice. We have 5 bedrooms for 7 people. I lucked out big time and actually got a single with a queen sized bed. This happens to be in an old spa room so my bed is literally on top of an old hot tub!
Because Bethel is only 6,000 people EVERYONE knows who is town. Pictures of the seven of us have been circulating town on fliers for several weeks now. Word on the street is that these fliers have been posted in grocery stores and we actually saw a stack of them at church yesterday! At mass on Sunday they made all of us stand up in front of the parish and introduce ourselves then the pastor kindly invited everyone to OUR house that night for a pot luck dinner which we were hosting!
This has actually been such a blessing for our group. The community has been sooooo welcoming and takes a very vested interest in our well being. We haven't had to go grocery shopping or cook yet because of meals people have prepared for us and leftovers from the pot luck. We learned pretty quickly what our diet is going to look like this year. I'll put it this way....the only meal that I haven't eaten salmon at was breakfast this morning. We are right along a river where salmon are pretty abundant. People go catch their own salmon and eat it for almost every meal. We're planning on getting out on a boat this week to catch some salmon to stock up for the winter....which comes in October!
For the past week or so a couple of my roommates and I have been talking about getting ourselves a moose. They aren't that common in this area but we're keeping our eyes open!
Oh yeah, believe it or not gorceries are amazingly expensive. A gallon of milk costs 9$. Yes 9$! We're also thinking about just keeping a cow in our closet so we can have milk.
That is all for now. If you stuck it out this far you must really be my friend...or be really bored! Either way, thanks!.
Please post any questions or responses you have! I'd love to hear from you! If you have gmail I'm pretty sure you can just sign using your gmail account info instead creating a blogspot account to post.
WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!!
Last week I was in Portland for orientation. We had to sit through a lot of workshops and lectures. Needless to say, I spent most of the week ready to get to Alaska.
We had to take 3 flights from Portland to Bethel on Saturday. All 3 flights were delayed for about an hour and half (each for separate reasons) and on top of that we were up at 4:30am so it made for the longest day of my life....LITERALLY. The sun didn't set until 11:30pm that night. Seriously. Sounds real cool except when all you want to do is sleep and your mind keeps telling you that it looks like its 2 or 3 in the afternoon even though its 10!
When we finally got here we were welcomed by a crowd of neighbors, "friends", and former volunteers who still live here. They brought us on a "tour" of Bethel. "Tour" is in quotes because
Bethel has one main road which is just a big doughnut. It's a 6 mile loop. The rest of the roads in town are dirt and gravel and branch off of it. The tour was literally just a drive around the loop in which our guides pointed out all of the big bldngs in town and all 6 of my roommates and I just sat with jaws dropped, nodding like bobble head dolls.
THIS IS WHERE WE ARE SPENDING A YEAR!?!?!?!?!?!?!
After the tour we were dropped at our house and given a few pieces of advice before being left to make ourselves at home. Bethel is essentially on a big marsh so all of the houses are on stilts. Our two story home is no different. The house was surprisingly nice. We have 5 bedrooms for 7 people. I lucked out big time and actually got a single with a queen sized bed. This happens to be in an old spa room so my bed is literally on top of an old hot tub!
Because Bethel is only 6,000 people EVERYONE knows who is town. Pictures of the seven of us have been circulating town on fliers for several weeks now. Word on the street is that these fliers have been posted in grocery stores and we actually saw a stack of them at church yesterday! At mass on Sunday they made all of us stand up in front of the parish and introduce ourselves then the pastor kindly invited everyone to OUR house that night for a pot luck dinner which we were hosting!
This has actually been such a blessing for our group. The community has been sooooo welcoming and takes a very vested interest in our well being. We haven't had to go grocery shopping or cook yet because of meals people have prepared for us and leftovers from the pot luck. We learned pretty quickly what our diet is going to look like this year. I'll put it this way....the only meal that I haven't eaten salmon at was breakfast this morning. We are right along a river where salmon are pretty abundant. People go catch their own salmon and eat it for almost every meal. We're planning on getting out on a boat this week to catch some salmon to stock up for the winter....which comes in October!
For the past week or so a couple of my roommates and I have been talking about getting ourselves a moose. They aren't that common in this area but we're keeping our eyes open!
Oh yeah, believe it or not gorceries are amazingly expensive. A gallon of milk costs 9$. Yes 9$! We're also thinking about just keeping a cow in our closet so we can have milk.
That is all for now. If you stuck it out this far you must really be my friend...or be really bored! Either way, thanks!.
Please post any questions or responses you have! I'd love to hear from you! If you have gmail I'm pretty sure you can just sign using your gmail account info instead creating a blogspot account to post.
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