We Have Arrived!

After 3 days and almost 5,000 miles of air travel (it's hard to say for sure, since Google maps won't calculate distances in the bush. Must be something about no roads...), we finally arrived to our new home in Goodnews Bay, Alaska! It's been a whirlwind of a week since we flew up here 9 days ago- we've been busy setting up our new home and classrooms- but allow us to flood you with some pictures and a few brief stories to tide you over until we catch our bearings and can post a bit more thoughtfully. To those who have been following our posts on Facebook, this will mostly be a repeat performance, but know that in the future the majority of our news will be posted to this blog...so be sure to check it from time to time!

We spent most of our time in Anchorage shopping for food, since groceries in the bush are scarce and expensive. We purchased, packaged, and shipped 600 lbs of food...the friendly postal worker said it might last us 2 months, but we're hoping a bit longer!

But it wasn't all work and no play...of course we caught a Pirates game as well!

                  Forget Texas...everything is bigger in Alaska!

Our first real indoctrination into bush life came when we flew into Bethel, the main hub in our district. Due to low hanging fog, we ended up stuck in these seats for a total of 17 hours over two days as we waited for Yute Air to end weather hold. We discovered first hand just how much those in the bush villages truly live and wait by the bush planes. 

Thankfully, someone from the district office came and picked us up so we didn't have to spend the night at Yute. We slept on couches with a few other teachers who ended up stranded in Bethel too.

You've gotta have a sense of humor about bush flying and the waiting that it often entails....check out the YUTE Technical Weather Window 5.0! We learned later that there needs to be 500 feet of clearance in order to fly into the villages.

All of that waiting didn't put a damper on our excitement to fly on a bush plane!

 The wait was well worth it. The first leg of the flight to Goodnews Bay is full of endless lakes and streams (see above). This is where we saw massive beaver huts as well as a pair of moose feeding on the grassy lowlands.

Once you hit the mountains, you're almost there! The Cessna 207s that service the villages fly between 500 and 3,000 feet. We flew right alongside these mountains.

                         This was our first view of Goodnews Bay.

Here's a video of our landing in Goodnews. The large blue structure you first see is the school. Our house is on the far end of the village. The bush flights are not nearly as "dangerous" as we thought, but the views are just spectacular. 

Welcome home, weary travelers.

   Lots of unpacking awaited us...4 suitcases, a dozen bins, and endless boxes from Amazon Prime!

                         A shot of the school off in the distance.

Home of the Bears! Literally and figuratively- our first day in Goodnews, a bear warning went out over the VHF. A bear was spotted on the other side of the hills behind our house.

We discovered that we had opposite dilemmas in our classrooms. Not enough stuff in Simon's room....

...and too much stuff in Christina's classroom! We've spent the last few days working on our classrooms and trying to shape them into spaces conducive to learning, discovery, and community. Stay tuned for photos of our finished classrooms!

A plane flying over the bay. We depend on these for our mail and packages. Some days we get 3 or 4 flights and sometimes we'll go days without a plane.

Most days when we walk back home from the school, we are greeted by a group of young kids saying "Hi! Can we come over and visit?" These crazy kids were jumping off the railing of our porch into the tall weeds. We had a couple of kids over the other night and we taught them how to play Uno. No doubt they will keep things lively for us, especially over the long winter.

One day, we went out looking for crowberries (the locals simply call them blackberries), elusive little berries that grow on the tundra floor. It wasn't until we stopped to take a few close up pictures of wildflowers on our way back home that we spotted them...only to discover that we had been walking on and amongst them all along! They literally cover the tundra floor for acres and acres. 

The view on a hike the other day. The term "God's country" is not altogether unfitting.

One of our finds as we cleaned out Christina's cabinets. I guess they're teaching safe sex earlier and earlier these days?? 

Our view on the way to new teacher training back in Bethel. We ended up stuck in Goodnews for a day and a half, so we only caught the last day of training, but it was fun to meet some of the other new teachers (56 new teachers in the district this year). We took the jobs at Goodnews being warned that this was the "geriatric club," but as it turns out, there is another young first year teacher here in Goodnews and two mid-20s teachers across the bay in Platinum (about 6 miles away). When the bay freezes in the winter we will be able to 4-wheel across it to Platinum. We all plan on having some adventures together, so we're thankful for more young people in the bush!

Speaking of Platinum, here's a shot of the most remote village in the district. To the right is the edge of the bay, and to the left is the Bering Sea, where the next landfall is Russia. Goodnews and Platinum, being the most remote villages, can also be the hardest to fly into and out of.

Strangely, we've found ourselves with a few more creature comforts than usual. We were prepared to buy inexpensive flip phones for the bush, but it was actually cheaper for us to get smart phone plans (and better for all of you, since we are taking many more pictures than we typically would). And thanks to At Bat, we can watch every major league game live for just $10 a season....there's no blackout restrictions up here in the bush! So we'll be cheering on our Pirates as they make a postseason push once again. 

Every morning, we walk outside and think "Whoa- we're in Alaska!" I'm sure as the days progress, that shock will lessen, but we realize how blessed and fortunate we are to have such an opportunity as we do. The district here is incredibly supportive of their teachers, the locals here are very friendly (more on some of the people we've met in another post), and the views are simply breathtaking (the photos we've put up simply do not give it justice.) So, hopefully we still are as upbeat after our first week of school...check back next week to find out!