Northern Lights!

For St. Patrick's Day a bunch of us teachers got together for a progressive dinner. We had appetizers at the apartments where Katie, Matti, & Rita live, salad at Rob & Jenn's, potatoes at Beth's, corned beef and cabbage with dinner rolls at Joe & Rachel's, and irish cream and/or green mint brownies at our house.

Each house was a lot of fun with great food. The best part of the night though, was ending it with Northern Lights right outside our window! We've been waiting all year to see the lights outside our house. Usually it is too cloudy or the lights aren't powerful enough to see this far south. This night was just right though! And how fitting to see the beautiful green lights to end our St. Patty's Day. Unfortunately Beth & Matti were the only others who made it late enough (the lights didn't make their appearance until about 2 am) to share the awesome St. Patricks Day treat with us. Here are some pics -

March Adventures!

March has been a great month. It began with spring break and our first trip to Juneau with our friends Beth, Matti, Jen and Rob. We did a lot in a little amount of time. We left the island on Sunday by ferry over to Ketchikan, then flew to Juneau that night. The flight wasn't bad, we only had to make one stop in Sitka before arriving to our destination. And if I enjoyed flying, I might even say it was a beautiful flight. . . which was a nice change after my last trip on the milk run.

A beautiful Alaskan flight.

Beth & Matti excited to get to Juneau!

Jason and I ready to have some adventures!

This is the landing in Sitka. . . notice how it looks like you are about to land on the water??? Which can either be a really cool landing - or a really scary one! Thankfully this was a really cool one.

In Juneau we rented a van from Rent-A-Wreck. It was a lot cheaper and so we were able to get a van that fit all 6 of us. It was an adventure finding the van from the airport. For those of you who don't know - Rent-A-Wreck in Juneau closes at 5:00pm and if your flight comes in after that they park it "near" the airport with the keys in it and your name hanging from the rear view mirror. Well. . . the directions to our van that the woman gave me over the phone were less than great and long story short, Beth and I almost ended up stealing a random van. Thankfully the can of chew that we found led us to believe it was in fact, NOT, our van. I called the emergency number for Rent-A-Wreck and the woman talked us through the "17 second walk" to our van. . . which in fact was not 17 seconds. A free adventure with every rental!

Once settled in at the Silverbow B&B we took good use of the roof top hot tub. And from there on out the adventures just kept on coming!

Midnight Sacks & games at the Silverbow.

Breakfast with Jenn.

Jason & Rob.

Hanging out in our room.

Snowshoeing!

Beth, Matti, Jenn, & I with our snowshoes on.

Before snowshoeing we had delicious waffles at the University Waffle House, next to UAS.

The Juneau Boardwalk from our table at The Hanger.

Dinner at The Hanger - one of Juneau's "finest" place to get some grub. Ha ha. . .

Bowling at Taku Lanes.

Tour at Alaskan Brewery

Beth, Matti, Mine & Jason's bags. . .

Juneau has a Fred Meyers and a Costco. . . needless to say, we did some much needed shopping!

Finally it was time to ferry home on the Taku. This is our boat which took us from Juneau to Ketchikan. We left Juneau at 1:30pm and arrived in Ketchikan at 8:30am the next morning. A perfect end to a fantastic spring break in Juneau!

Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to reconnect. . .

Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to reconnect.

I read this in an advertisement recently in the Alaska Air Magazine on my way home from Anchorage from the District Test Coordinator Training. I found myself reflecting on our experience here upon reading it.

We finally broke down and purchased Internet for our house this week. After 7 months without it, we are now connected to the World Wide Web again. Living in a small rural area Internet can be spendy. We didn’t see the point of spending money on it when we are only blocks from the school where we can use the Internet for free any time we want. What used to be a necessity in Portland is now a luxury. And after paying off the remainder of my student loans last month, we decided we can now afford this luxury!

I complained a lot about not having Internet or cable . . . which may be why Jason finally gave in (ha ha). But in all honesty, I did appreciate the time we spent here disconnected from the rest of the world. We were forced to get creative. Watch old movies. Hang out with people and have actual – real – conversations. Or get up off our bottoms and walk to the school. We looked out the window, a lot, at our beautiful mountains and water. Things you don’t need to do when you have the Internet at your fingertips to entertain you. I hope that this new luxury doesn’t keep us from these things.

And who knows, our house just may be the new “Hot Spot.” With Internet and an espresso machine, we are sure to have many guests!

The World Wide Web is not the only thing we have been disconnected from. Moving to Alaska, we had to make the decision to leave all of our family and friends. This was not an easy choice to make. When we bought our house in Milwaukie we thought we were settled. We thought that we would be comfortable there and start thinking about having a family. Then we went to grad school.

Leaving Oregon was difficult, but probably one of the most important moments in our lives. Making the move to Alaska and leaving everything that made us comfortable helped us reconnect and become closer with many family members and friends. Not only that, but it made us appreciate what’s really important in life – relationships with those you love.

Disconnecting from our friends and family and from the rest of society, as most people know it, made our lives richer than we could have ever imagined. It reconnected us to what’s important in life. I would encourage others to keep an open mind when faced with opportunity. This journey for us began with a co-worker of mine at Concord recommending me to look at jobs in China! And when I went home and told Jason (still as a joke), I said “We couldn’t do that! . . . Could we?”