Where did they say they were going?

Sign on one of the main roads here.

We made it to the island on July 20. So exactly where is said island? Well, as the sign points out it is 3,585 miles from New York, 2,962 from Portland, 2,489 from Vegas, 632 from Homer, and 570 from Anchorage. The island is located off the Alaska Peninsula and was formed along tectonic plate boundaries. Due to its location, the island is said to experience "intense seismic and volcanic activity, and highly susceptible to tsunamis generated in the Pacific Ocean" (Black*, 1999). Looking at the places we've lived, one might think that we were in it for the extremes. On our first island adventure, we experienced typhoons and the last was located near a super volcano whose time was just ticking away. Then again, every place has some questionable element, right?

Enough with that, so what would it be like to visit, live, or explore you might ask yourself? As a matter of fact, we have been doing just that. Though we are limited without the use of a vehicle, we have done some exploration on foot. What we have observed is that the island is lush with vegetation, the sky is always overcast, and there is a constant breeze. The plant life here seems to look as if we were high in the mountains. The ground is covered with small bushes, flowers, and red dirt--from what we have seen so far. The sky looks like there is a giant cloud overhead at all times, once in a while the sun peeks out then quickly disappears. The smells here are different too. Sometimes the air smells like ocean, other times there is a hint of flowers. Though each day with the changing of the day or the shifting of the fog we observe something else in the distance.

What about the reason we came here, how about the classrooms? We have seen them, briefly, but have not obtained keys just yet. My room is subject to change as the walls in some of the classrooms are movable. The reasoning behind the flexibility of the room size is due to the ever changing amount of students in each grade. It seems that I will have ten students and Nate with around 50 seeing as he teaches many different aspects of one subject.  His room however, will not change in size and quite nice actually, but he certainly will have his hands full setting it up as there are things jammed in every storage spot available. 

One last thing. The, 'it stays light out until midnight-ish thing'. Rather than fight it, we have resorted to staying up late and enjoying it. At first, I thought, no prob Bob, I take naps during the day all the time. Easy peasy. No. It is different.  When we mentioned this to a local, the person responded with, "well, take everything you can from the light, because soon it will be dark until darn near 10:00 in the morning, and believe me, you just make the best of the light around here, don't you notice that everyone stays up real late around here?" Actually, we did notice. On our second or third day here we were sitting in the living room reading when all of the sudden, we heard a lawn mower fire up and begin hacking away at a nearby lawn. Keep in mind this mowing was at 11:30 pm--in the night--during the middle of the week.
*Black, L (199). The History and Ethnohistory of the AEB. Fairbanks: Limestone Press

Our living room view.   -it is hard to tell here but past the houses is ocean and that mountain may be another island (still learning about this place)