Life in Manokotak, Alaska

I can't believe we flew out of O'Hare 25 days ago!  Time has just flown by as we have been super busy with the start of a new school year.  Our journey together started when we flew from Chicago to Seattle on August 3rd.  From Seattle we flew to Anchorage where Lucas's aunt, Celine, and her son Sam, came to pick us up at the airport.  Thank you Celine! :)  Some of you may not know that Lucas has family in Alaska.  His Uncle Greg and Aunt Celine live in Anchorage with their kids, Sam and Meredith.  Lucas's brother, Pete, has been in Anchorage for several years now since being stationed there for the Air Force.  His other brother, Adam, just moved in with Pete this June.

Greg and Celine were gracious enough to host us for the evening.  Both Greg and Celine took us to run errands.   They also fed us, Pete, and Adam that night :)  I needed a new cell phone because the only company that works in rural Southwest Alaska is GCI.  I get great service here and when we return to the lower 48, we'll pick up AT&T.   We also bought tons of dry foods and goods to ship to Manokotak.  A few stores in Anchorage let you shop, fill up your cart, leave your full cart in the store, and then ship your goods to the bush!  A very important tidbit to know is that you should not move to bush Alaska broke!  It is super expensive to ship all your belongings (or buy all new ones), and then to get food to the village.  There is one little store in town but the supply is very, very limited.  That, a gas pump, and a post office are the only businesses in the village.

After stocking up, we flew out the next day to Dillingham, which is 330 miles southwest of Anchorage.  Dillingham is where the Southwest Region School District Office is located.  It is also where we had our beginning of the year workshops.  I had two days of new-teacher workshops on Friday and Saturday.  We had all-district days on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Wednesday afternoon we flew to our village, Manokotak.  This was my first experience in a small plane- a really, really small plane.  At full, it seats 7.  7 people! If you watched Sarah Palin's Alaska at all on TLC, there was a small, blue plane in on the episode when they were in Dillingham.  That is the plane we flew on!  Luckily, our flight was less than ten minutes so I only squeezed the heck out of Lucas's hand for that long.  It is only about 20 miles from Dillingham to Manokotak, but there are no roads.  The landscape is wetland/marsh-y and there are two large rivers between the two towns.

Here are a few pictures to start.  The first two are before we got to Manokotak.  The building is the school, and the last two pictures are my classroom.   I'll post more pictures next time and let you know what outdoor adventures we have been up to!