More pictures

Reindeer and a Car

As we walked home from school this afternoon, we were quite surprised to see a reindeer in the back of someones truck. In fact I believe my exact words were "oh shit, that's a reindeer" The school is building a vo-tech building right next to the school. One of the construction workers had a reindeer tethered to the bed of his truck. It was just standing there, eating. It was very odd.

We bought a car (truck)! A kid here in town is going to the U of A Fairbanks in a few weeks and isn't bringing his truck with him. It will be wonderful not to have to borrow the schools van anymore. Andrew put 5 gallons of gas in it, and it cost $30. Ouch. Good news is that you can't drive too far.

I am having problems adding pictures and will try again later.
Current temp: 52

One Shoe :(

We had a nice relaxing day today. On a sad note we had our first broken items today in box #17. Two of our platters broke and in a broken box Erin lost a shoe, just one. Luckily we have insurance and should be able to get reimbursed. We now have some furniture so we don't have to sit on boxes anymore, Yea! The T.V. came in the mail just in time for the Olympics' opening ceremonies, and we have enjoyed watching the games. Erin and I took a self tour of the school on the 8th and found our classrooms (Erin's classroom is newer and nicer than mine and she has fun reminding me of that). The school is in great shape and we are getting more and more excited.
We got this email from our principal yesterday and thought it says alot about the community:
Greetings. I am looking to purchase a dried walrus stomach for an Inupiat drum.

Thank you.

Karlin
More later. Current temp: 55

Blue Skies!

Day two and we're moving right along. We got our land line set up and think we will be getting rid of our cell phones because we get no reception in our apartment. The new number is 907-387-0440. It was a nice day today with very little cloud cover so we took the opportunity to walk into town and saw some fun sights along the way. We saw a dog sled team sunning them selves on top of their houses, and we were able to see the "hills" in our back yard (it's hard for this Fargonian not to say mountains). The weird Stonehenge things on top of the hill are satellite dishes from back in the Cold War, if the Ruskies sent a missile it would be our responsibility to warn the rest of the country.

First Day

We had a busy day running around town. We got our cable, internet and landline set up. We get very limited cell phone reception out where we are, so we will use a land line as well. That number will be coming soon. The guy that helped us set up the services grew up in Sebeka, MN which I thought was kind of funny. We got a library "card" (account), as well as a video rental account.

We knew groceries were going to be expesive, especially the first couple of trips to have the staples in the apartment, but I had no idea it would be that expensive. A gallon of milk was $7.49. Toliet paper was $30. It will defently take some adjustments/budgeting!

The good news is that everyone has been super nice. Everyone has welcomed us and told us about the town. The school let us take the car for free today because no one else has used it all summer, which we really appreciated as we had lots of groceries! Our principal, Janeen, who picked us up at the airport last night, made us Banana Bread so we wouldn't be hungry this morning. Andrew said it was wonderful (a side note, my Celiac test came back positive)

Our apartment is wonderful. It's 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom. The kitchen has all new appliances, including a microwave. There is a large pantry with an extra freezer. The building is very quiet considering how many kids live here.

Current temp: 46
More later.

Anchorage

We made it to Anchorage and so did our luggage which was a good thing as our bed we will sleep on for the next couple of nights was packed in one of the bags. The flight was beautiful and the Captain of the plane said it is never as clear as it was today.
When we we tried to check in and check our luggage to go to Nome, we found out you can only check in 4 hours prior to the departure time. So we had to hang out with our luggage for 2 hours.

Boxes and T-Minus 16 Hours

We sent our final two boxes today in Hamel. The final count was 41 boxes and just under $1500 to send them all. Not bad considering we were quoted at $15,000! We leave Tuesday morning at 8 am. Wish us luck!