A Tour Around Town

A beautiful sunset right outside our front door.

Purple Mountain

The Duncan Cottage

A little park, near "the ball field."

The dock where the float planes come in.

Church next to the high school.

The wellness center - which includes an almost olympic sized swimming pool & about 10 treadmills.

The clinic.

The post office.

The police station.

The middle school.

Covered basketball court.

The elementary school.

The high school.

A grave, beautiful decorated.

The cemetery.

Our beautiful ocean.

The town hall.

The abandoned airport.

It used to be that you flew into Annette Island to get to Ketchikan. Now, Ketchikan has it's own ariport. You can come out here to let off fire works, golf, or get your car up to 100 mph.

Another view of the mountain.

A totem pole right outside the senior center, next door to our house.

Puppies!!!

I just couldn't help but share this picture of the puppies that live in between our house and school! They are too cute and so playful. A special treat on the way to work or after a long hard day at school :)

Fish Day!

So I’ve gotten behind on my blogs, in case you couldn’t tell. It’s been a busy week. Wednesday was “Fish Day” at the hatchery here. What is “fish day” you might be wondering. . .

We’ve heard stories of the hatchery giving away free fish. Everyone sounds pretty excited for this, like when Starbucks gives out free coffee or pastries. So we have been keeping our ears open for such an event. Tuesday we missed it. It was “Fish Day” while we were at school working. Our friend, Beth, managed to get a couple of fish and made a deal with Jason that if he cut them up and packaged them with the food saver that we could have some of it. That seemed like a good deal. I was disgusted by the amount of blood in our kitchen and made Jason do all the cutting. I did the food saver-ing and packaged everything very nicely though.

But Wednesday was what Jason would describe as “epic.” Wednesday I heard from the High School Secretary that it was “Fish Day” again. Since we were both working, again, I asked my friend Rachel – who’s husband works at the high school (and so she just happens to be hanging around a lot), if she would go get us some fish to share. She was ever so willing. Thank you Rachel!

Rachel took a couple of garbage bags with her and went to the “ball field” where the hatchery truck was waiting to give away fish. She waited in line and was given 13 salmon! Yep, 13! Some people, who had the means to do so – were given up to 40 fish. 13 was definitely a good number for us.

So Rachel met us at our house after school and we began the process of cutting up 13 salmon. Her husband Joe is the middle school girls basketball coach and unfortunately couldn’t join in on our fun. I thought cutting up 2 salmon was disgusting. . . I was wrong. 13 salmon is definitely more disgusting. But I had to help this time. There was no getting out of it. We were head to toe in fish guts and I’ve had to sanitize the kitchen over and over again. But the freezer is flush with salmon. We won’t go hungry this winter, that is for sure!

Besides cutting up fish and working we’ve also managed to hit up the gym for the first time. It’s really nice. They have an almost-Olympic sized pool which Jason loves to swim in. He’s also gotten re-certified in scuba. I’ve been on the treadmills with my friend Jen. They have about 10 of them that look right into the pool area. So while I’m running I can watch Jason practicing with the scuba team or swimming laps. He went on his first dive in the real water today. . . pictures to come soon!

Miss & Love you all!

Sushi!

Well this could have been a pretty depressing weekend. We were planning on going to Ketchikan with our friends Joe & Rachel to do some shopping. However, we found out when we went to buy our ferry tickets that the entire island had the same idea. It was booked full! We didn’t know this ever happened. Apparently Thursday was “Dividend Day.” This is when Alaska citizens get their checks for living is this amazing place. This year it was something like $1200 per person (including children). So naturally, people made plans for shopping in town – and we were stuck here!

This could have turned out to be the beginning to a very dull weekend. However, our weekend started out anything but dull. We completed another busy week of school. This week I supervised the state testing at the high school, which was a new experience for me. Everything went flawlessly but I was still ready to relax! Friday afternoon we walked to the grocery store on our way home to get stuff to make nachos for dinner. A nice treat after a long week. . . but we were in for an even bigger surprise! The sushi restaurant next to our house was open! This is only the second time that we’ve seen it open since we’ve lived here. So when we saw that open sign, nachos automatically got pushed back to Saturday.

The sushi place is small, there is nowhere to sit down – so you have to take it to go. Which is fine, especially since we literally live next door. It’s owned by the family who lives just across the street. The husband is a social studies teacher at the high school with us and his wife runs the shop. They also have 3 kids, which is why she isn’t open very often.

I was excited because the shop also has a lot of trinkets and art. It was fun to look at and we got a lot of ideas for Christmas presents. The sushi was delicious. We ordered three rolls; an avocado roll, kipper salmon roll, & a kipper salmon/sea asparagus roll. Sea asparagus was new to us, apparently they collect it on the beaches here. It was a really thin green thing – kind of like a skinny, salty green bean. And the salmon was cooked, FYI.

The rest of the weekend was pretty low key. Saturday was stormy, so we spent some time at school getting ready for this next week. We had nachos and invited a couple of the teachers from the high school over for a game of hand and foot.

We are looking forward to a trip to Ketchikan next weekend. . . we’ve bought our ferry tickets in advance.