First Week

Wow! I can't believe I've been here for almost one week and still haven't even gotten around to communicating with the outside world and letting them know what's up. . . :) Things have been crazy busy to say the least. I arrived here very late on Saturday night because of the computer crashes the Alaska Airlines was experiencing. I was slightly dissapointed that I would not be able to fly into AK in the daylight, but I believe if all goes as planned I will be leaving in the daytime. Upon arrival in Fairbanks at 1 to 2 am, I saw people walking around in boxers, shorts, and flip flops. I believe that this is some of the first warm weather they have experienced all year and it's around zero degrees. I spent the first night at some board members of the station in Fairbanks. They are super nice even giving me a guitar to borrow while I'm here! Yay!! I spent Sunday in Fairbanks going to church, shopping, and at the ice park. The ice park is a worldwide event where people display their pieces of art that they have carved out from the ice. Food up here is priced through the roof. Bananas were "on sale" for 89 cence a pound. It's priced twice as high as back home and in Nenana is probably about 4X. It snowed pretty heavy on Sun night taking us a little longer to get to Nenana than originally planned. The couple who I'm working with at the station have two super cute children (1 and 3 years). The one was singing "Joanna Baer, Joanna Baer" over and over again. I got here about midnight and crashed. The apartment I'm staying in is at the station. It's super nice and cute. I started off right on Monday jumping into things. There is a lot to do! I've been doing weather announcements, psas, helping update the music library, and a live program called Mukluks (people call us with messages for their friends/families in the bush). Monday was great though because I got to drive a snow machine for the first time into the wilderness. Super fun.. . even got it stuck. Tuesday, we went out to Dee's (the founder of the minstry) house. We had moose meat. It was nice to see some Alaska scenery on the drive. I'm particularly looking forward to the drive up to Fairbanks this weekend in this amazing Red Ford F150 I'm borrowing for a couple of weeks. Church on Wednesday night had the pastor and his wife, a couple of kids, and one lady. It felt different. This town is really small. They say the population is around 350 people. Everyone knows everyone and the unemployment rate is really low and the alcohol is quite high. It makes for some interesting situations. It is really neat to be part of a ministry that reaches these people. The impact you can have on someone's life through Christian radio is amplified here. Well. . I digress . .I love you all and miss you! :'( Will try to post more later. These extremely long days are making me stay up way too late. . . :)