Greetings from Platinum!

When you're living in the bush, one lesson you have to learn pretty quickly is that, quite often, events are entirely out of your control. Take today, for instance. We took the day off to fly into Bethel for a doctor's appointment and to check out the annual Native dance and arts fest, Cama-i. It was a beautiful sunny day so we walked down to the airport to wait for the plane to arrive. The plane arrived in a few minutes, the pilot unpacked his load, and we were off soon without incident.

We stopped in Platinum to pick up four more passengers. Once we were airborne, I put in my earbuds and settled in for the hour long flight to Bethel. But a minute into the flight, I looked up, feeling the plane making a hard bank to the right. Soon, we were back on the ground, the pilot telling us that the engine was acting funny. He said he would risk flying the plane back to Bethel himself, but he wouldn't do it with 6 passengers on board. So he unloaded all of our stuff, we hitched a ride to the school, and now here we sit in the teacher break room in Arviiq school in Platinum.

Which is fine, actually, because every time we fly into Platinum to pick up additional passengers, we always try to spot the school amongst the houses and other buildings, always without success. So, we decided that we may as well take some pictures and write a post while we wait for another plane to come pick us up. Welcome to Arviiq!

Hallway outside the combined Jr High/High School classroom.

I'm not sure what the intimidating, gap-toothed fellow is all about.

The breakfast room. Students go home for lunch in Platinum.

Kitchen/food storage.

The unassuming facade of the school. There are less than 20 students K-12, and only two teachers and a principal. Today, the principal is away for meetings, so Devin, the high school teacher, is acting SA (Site Administrator). It's interesting how a person becomes acclimated to their environment. While we often are told by friends and family in the lower 48 that they can't imagine living in a small coastal village like we do, teaching in a K-12 school with 50 students, it has become routine for us; it's just our daily life now. And yet, after 30 minutes of exploring the school and the village here, we both find ourselves saying "I can't imagine living/teaching here!" 

This is a recurring theme in Alaska. When we first moved up here, I got my haircut in Anchorage, and my hairdresser had spent a month in Bethel as part of an exchange program. She was horrified by how small and remote it was and she got out as quickly as she could. This past weekend, in Bethel, we got into a conversation with some locals who, upon learning we lived on the coast, said "Oh my gosh, I can't imagine living so remote out there! I couldn't live without chocolate ice cream!"

UPDATE FROM BETHEL

After hanging out in Platinum for three hours, we got a call that a plane was finally coming to pick us up, so we packed our stuff up and headed back to the airport.

We discovered that our pilot was not able to fly the first plane back out to Bethel after all.

They sent out a mechanic, so as we packed up and headed out, 

the pilot and the mechanic started to work on the engine.