Top of the World

Hello from Barrow, Alaska!!! Okay, okay, okay I know I have super failed at beginning this blog. But now that the wedding is through, the move, inservice and starting a new school year I can begin. All of that is excuse enough right???

Alright lets start from the beginning!

End of May Kaleb had surgery. Took a quite a few days of recovery but luckily with little bruising he is very happy with the result! From there was the end of my school year and closing up my class. You teachers out there know how much work that can be!!!! Of course we couldn’t just have a couple weeks break we had to move Kaleb out of his apartment and then came our most wonderful wedding. I can’t even believe how truly beautiful it turned out! Absolutely everything worked out just wonderfully! There were a couple of hilarious moments in retrospect but they just made the day even better.

From our wedding we took a little break and started to travel. We were up in Seattle to see a Manchester United game, fishing on the coast with Uncle Mike, in Portland for a Timbers game, Washington for my best friend’s daughter’s bday and Bend to see family and friends. And then we started the BIG MOVE. Now you folks down in your easy to move places, lower 48, paved streets, moving truck areas have it SOOOO incredible easy!!! We took our house and packed in into 10+ 18 gallon Rubbermaid totes which we drilled holes in so we could then zip tied them shut. Thank heaven for those sucker bags that you suck all of the air out of after packing like a million pieces of clothing. They suck down to such small pieces!  Anyway! That doesn’t even include all of the cardboard boxes and amazon boxes we sent up! We love us some Amazon Prime! FREE SHIPPING!!! This took us a strong two weeks to accomplish. Never mind packing our actual suitcases for the airplane. Eventually we got it all packed up though and on its way up.

Now packing for our trip on the airplane was another adventure altogether! We ended up with five suitcases, three carry on, a firearm and a dog. In order to get all of that through check-in we needed a strong 30 minutes for inspections, tagging and paperwork for Rylie. Our flights were all incredible smooth and there were no layovers. Kaleb did an excellent job flying and helping me juggle everything. We ended up meeting the nicest guy in Portland who is a fabricator for Ninkasi. Such an amazing artist! It was a redeye flight and by the time we got into Barrow at 11am the next morning we were sufficiently exhausted.

almost all of our stuff still missing four bags

We were picked up from the Barrow airport by NSBSD staff and taken to our new house. I think everything was a bit of a culture shock for Kaleb at first. It is so very different and yet so much the same from Oregon coupled with no sleep and being stressed out from the flights. From my perspective this place is sweet!!!  So much like a real town. Kaleb said it in the most perfect way it is like an old Astoria.

After getting into our new house and finding out none of our boxes arrived we decided to unpack what we brought up ourselves. I think I must have the curse. Boxes just aren’t allowed to come in on time around me. *Sorry for that Chels and K*  Our house is a very nice loft type of place. All of it is downstairs and our bedroom is upstairs. We live in a triplex type of place in the middle unit. There is lots of room and we have settled in very nicely….now but back to where we were we got some sleep and began to explore. Our house is right around the corner from the library and the AC (grocery store) and just across the lagoon in our school. The football field is a long bit away. If we need to travel longer then our feet feel like walking we just end up taking a taxi. There are many and usually the bill is around $7. Our favorite so far is to go for a walk on the beach searching for seaglass. We have quite a collection going and have even found some pieces of china.  

Everyone has been very welcoming and an absolute joy and help. It has been wonderful getting to learn so much about a new culture. During inservice we went out closer to the point to a place called piqnaq where people bird hunt. There they gave a presentation on the culture, we listened to a local archeologist and ate local cuisine. It was so very interesting and I am pretty sure I could listen to the archeologist talk for days.

Back to the boxes…..we ended up getting our stuff about two weeks late. Now see there is always something that is truly a pain in the rear about my terrible shipping curse. In my previous village our food was over a month late getting to us. That gave us a dickens of a time. Here our towels were late getting to us. Most people would be like oh no problem just run to the store and get a replacement and well we were just like most people however all they had were hand towels. Just FYI it takes about three hand towels to dry the body thoroughly. Okay for some of you that might have been a TMI but you will survive. Then there came the day when school finished and we walked home to a house full of boxes. Let me tell you Christmas came this August. Christmas came early. Now also mind you that we gave ourself our own Christmas by packing these boxes and shipping them to ourselves but when you get off from a long day at work and walk into the house to find a living room full of these self addressed boxes, man life was so sweet. Currently we are still waiting on a good many but the house feels more like a home now.

This past Saturday we went to a football game. Yes I said that correctly we are at the top of the world and we attended a football game. For those of you who really know K and I you should fully expect that we would do such a crazy thing. Well the super awesome thing about it was that we had to sign slips when we got there because NFL was filming us!!! Yes you read that correctly! We are going to be on some NFL show highlighting football at the top of the world. Kinda cool. We know. 

My classroom is huge and has an amazing amount of technology in it. My students have been an absolute joy and the staff have been so helpful! I am so excited for the upcoming school year!

Alright it is almost time for bed even though it looks like it could be 2 in the afternoon.

BTW it snowed today……