The First Day

On the first day, I started my day by visiting Laura, one of my co-workers, at the radio station. Being the Saturday deejay, she goes to the station for a few hours about 3-4 times that day to answer calls, broadcast information from local rangers and police, and make sure that the news and weather reports are constantly reported. When I was there, she informed me that I will be doing what she is doing on Sundays when I start work.

After I left the station, I walked back to the house to meet one of my roomates who was doing a story in Kodiak.

I have 4 roomates, John, Laura, Danelle, and David. Each one of these people are different in their own way and are very passionate about this radio station. Danelle loves the outdoors and loves volunteering and sports. Laura is very soft natured and sweet with an amazing talent to cook. John is huge on video games and always seems to come home with a different game (he came back with a Wii fit the other day). David has been here the longest. He is a Harvard grad and is very helpful to any new person who comes to the station. All of these people are very outgoing and friendly.

After meeting the final roomate, we decided to have a "family" breakfest. Danelle, Laura, and Laura's boyfriend made potatoes, eggs with tomatoes in them, muffins, pancakes.... and probably several other things that slip my mind right now. It was nice to get to sit around and get to know everyone.

After the meal, Danelle and myself decided to go on a hike. She took me to a "mountain" called Anvil mountain. It looked more like a rather steep hill but there was so much fog that it covered about half of the hill giving the appearence of a tall mountain. Climbing up, we sall an area that looks like it could be a condemed mine. Danelle said she thought the military used to use it. The mountain, from a distance looked like it was covered in dead plants but up close it is very alive. The plants are so unusual. The ground is covered in brown grass, moss, and a lot of flat rocks. There are several patches of flowers on the way up but if you weren't looking hard for them, you would never see them. They are smaller than a buttercup flower varying in two colors: creme-yellow and purple. On the climb, we ran into a lot of fresh reindeer poop so we were on the lookout for them. We got about 2/3rd to the top and had to turn around because my shoes weren't built for that steep climb.

We drove back to town and decided to go on a walk. I wanted to walk along the water. Since there was rain in the morning, Jeff said a lot of gold washes up on the shore and comes down from the mountains after a storm. I wanted to walk along and see if I saw anything. Machines were lined up all along the sandy side of the beach, which suck up water and sift the gold out of it. One man from Minnesota gladly explained what he was doing and said if we come to the beach any time this week, he will demonstrate it for us. His machine wasn't running at the time.

Walking back from the beach, we decided to stop in a grocery store. The cheapest box of orange juice was $9.19. The cheapest bag of family size chips was $9.50. These prices are insaine! One unique feature of the store is how it ads a mile on your Alaska Airlines mileage for every $2 you spend.

When we got back to the house, David and Laura decided to join us on a walk around the city to introduce me to my new home. We walked down main street and the town is really cute with some buildings trying to look similar to how Nome looked in 1901. I'll have pictures later. We walked into the senior center because there was a rubbage sale. Since yard sales are unrealistic people would sell their stuff at the senior center. I got a bag full of warm clothes for $1. After walking around downtown, Danelle headed back to the house the rest of us continued to a place called Airport Pizza. It aquired the name because the restraunt has a deal with a local airlines to fly pizza to villages out in the islands off the coast of Alaska. After some coffee and smoothies, we saw the Lutheran church, a few more grocery stores in town, and the little "suburb" outside of the city which looks like a small patch of 2 story houses.

We headed back to the house and had a low key night. Three roomates and myself watched movies and joked around. As cheesy as it sounds, it felt like we were a family.