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!.

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