Atqasuk and the house

More pictures from the plane of the Tundra

I could practly sit in his lap

the wall of clouds that prevented us from landing

again

 

Sign in barrow

After my great overnight stay in the city of Barrow, Alaska it was finally time to get on a plane to Atqasuk. I was loaded onto a small 9 seat propeller plane where Christine and I were the only two passengers,  well us and the mail. It was surprisingly smooth and fun to ride in a propeller plane. I thought that I would be very scared being in such a small plane but I was more interested than anything. I was able to see all the knobs, charts and lights that the pilot uses to fly. Anyway. we flew over the tundra and I really saw how cool the tundra is. From the air,the tundra looks like dinosaur skin. It has different textures in it, lots of lakes and still bodies of water. And, it is uninhabited almost completely. It is crazy to fly over land that has been untouched it really has a beauty about it. It was a short 20 minute flight to Atqasuk. We landed on a dirt runway and for the first time I got to see the town that I was to be living.  It was a cute town from a distance. I could see the fire station and a few houses but not much from the sky.  When we landed we were greeted by seven pick-up trucks racing to the plane. They quickly got to unloading the mail and supplies from the plane. We started to get off the plane, I kinda fell off the plane (it is very short and my posters got stuck on the top of the inside of the plane causing me to hit my head on the way out). We were greeted by the principal’s husband and were helped into the car and driven to our house. I have to pause for a moment and warn you. There is a running joke in Alaska that the mosquito is the state bird. I thought they were crazy. Well until I stepped off that plane. The mosquitoes were everywhere and they were huge! literally like the size of my thumbnail. We ran into the car and then went on a killing spree of the bugs in the car. After we fought our way into our house (we live in the 4-plex right in the middle of town between the post office, store and school) we dropped our things. Our house was HUGE! It made my apartment in Savannah look like a closet. We have a three bedroom one bathroom house. It has a huge kitchen with two stand-up freezers and a refrigerator, laundry room, arctic entrance, and a living room.

 

My house in the distance

 

SO the only problem about my house was that I only had one box there. Christine's boxes mostly all arrived and she was able to start unpacking. I on the other had had my suit cases (at least I wont be naked) and one box full of pans. The four boxes of food that I had sent priority mail had not arrived yet and we had no food at all. So after looking around our house we decided that It was time to go support our town by going to the grocery store and buy some lunch (seeing that we had only eating one meal the day before and were starving). The store was a very small store it sold chips, soda, some meats, and some caned goods ( I will get a picture of it later for you guys). We bought 3 days worth of food and set off back home feeling proud that we can support ourselves and work out our own problems. Can you guess how much it was? I will give you a hint. this is what we bought...

How bought a closer look?

yes this can does say $9.35

It cost us $103. Yeah crazy huh? Needless to say we needed my boxes to come stat. Anyways after a yummy lunch of grilled cheese we set off to explore the quiet town. It was beautiful. It was much like a ghost town. there was the store we had already visited, houses, a health center, and a baby blue post office. (PS you will see a blue house with a red roof. That one is mine)

There is one thing that we did find out quickly though. there was a reason that nobody was up and walking around. It wasn't the temperature.  The temperature was nice. I even put on short sleeves to go explore. Now lets see if you paid attention and see if you could figure out why no one was outside and not in short sleeves.... that's right mosquitoes. The wind was not blowing so the mosquitoes were out in full force. they were in our hair, ears, mouth, arms, we quickly changed our plans and ran back inside.











After becoming a little more smart with clothing choices we headed over to the school. When we first got there we go a key to the school but was not sure what door it went to. So there was Christine and me looking like we were trying to break into the school. We tried every door to get into the school and finally the key fit.