Quick Trip: The Village

I realized in looking through my past posts that I have shared a lot of little tid bits about my life here in the bush, but I have failed to actually show any pictures of the village where I live.

I guess I should qualify that statement and first let all of you know that the teachers live separate from the village. Not by a lot, but we are up on a hill with the school. The village is about a 10 minute walk down toward the river (and is responsible for most of my exercise here.)

We have a post office where I go about twice a week to check my mail. It has regular post office hours and if you call down ahead of time sometimes they will let you know if you have any packages. This comes in especially handy if the weather is poor and you're not sure that you want to make the trek in the mud (since our roads are not paved).

We also have a store here that is referred to as "Askinuk." I am not really sure what that means, but they have a pretty decent stock of canned food, frozen meat, baking supplies (minus the eggs), and occasionally the $1.60 cans of soda and eggs and apples that are so rare that you don't even check the price.

 
The village is pretty easy to navigate as long as you keep your eyes open and steer around the potholes and deep ditches filled with water. If you ever get turned around the locals are always happy to chuckle a little bit and point you in the right direction.

The tundra is still beautiful, sunset is coming earlier and earlier every day and the colors are shifting into a pretty autumn yellow. You can see by the little lights in the photo (courtesy of M.) that we do have street lamps. I have not been down in the village at night, but it makes the view from our houses somehow cooler... seeing the village and then the river and finally the Bering sea.