Unveiling the Beauty of Unalakleet

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”

-Anita Desai, author

The Bering Sea from Unalakleet. :)

I begin this post in the air, flying from Anchorage to Juneau! This week has been a time of beautiful sights and people, and some of my favorite moments have been spent looking out the airplane window at the gorgeous, snow-capped mountains and valleys below me as I explore this incredible state. I can now say that I have spent time in three different places in Alaska, and each are so unique and amazing!

Flying into Anchorage!

My time in Anchorage was the perfect way to start break. Sophia and I stayed with an awesome friend we made while playing in the Orfeo opera, so we got to spend time with her and two of her hilarious, young boys. When we weren’t attending the job fair, we were catching up on sleep, watching Downton Abbey and Lord of the Rings with our host family, and driving around to all the big sights of Anchorage (mostly so we could try to find a moose walking along the road- and we totally saw one!!). Although I only spent a couple days in Anchorage, I can definitely tell it has a different feel. It reminded me a lot of Seattle or even Chicago. It has an urban feel that honestly felt foreign to me! I think I have been in charming, spread-out Juneau for so long that I have grown accustomed to recognizing people wherever I go and never having traffic. It’s interesting that after living in one of the biggest cities in America for the past four years, I felt homesick for Juneau when I was in another big city. I will say, though, that I met some wonderful people at the job fair and heard about some intriguing opportunities- including a potential position in Anchorage. So I applied for a few positions, just to experience the process and keep my options open, but we will see!

And then on Sunday afternoon, Sophia and I boarded a flight to Unalakleet (Heidi was with us this whole time, but she had friends she got to visit in Anchorage, which was really neat for her, and then we happened to be on different flights to Unalakleet for some reason!!). I knew this week was going to be different when the attendant at the check-in counter asked to weigh each item I had and asked my current weight. I understood his reason for asking that when I saw how small of a plane it was! Passengers were placed strategically around the plane to balance out the weight, and we were off. The flight attendant passed out earplugs shortly after we boarded, and I realized as soon as the engines were turned on why those would have been nice to have!! That was the loudest hour and a half of my life. :P But I was seated next to a kind man who was from Unalakleet and has two children in the school where the three of us taught all week. So I got to hear all about his village during the flight.

NOT THE RAISINS!!

There are so many stories and comments I’d love to share about my time this week...it was really neat to live in a village in the Alaskan bush for a little bit. There were some things that didn't surprise me, and others that did. First of all, we had all been warned that the food would be very expensive in Unalakleet because it is so isolated, and that was definitely true! Thankfully, we all went to Fred Meyer (WOO HOO Fred Meyer!!) in Anchorage before we left and stocked up on all meals for the week. We did walk around the one grocery store in town a couple times, and I discovered that some of my favorite items were 2-3 times more expensive than what I normally pay. I will say that Juneau’s prices are also higher than anywhere else I have lived, so some of the items were about the same. The one that shocked me the most was, a regular-sized bag of raisins was $11.87! And a pack of Oreos was $8…! Another thing I was prepared for was the size of the village. It is only 3 miles long, so you can easily walk from one end of town to the other, which the three of us did often throughout the week. But the village looked so small when we flew in! It was pretty amusing because the nice man next to me pointed out the window as we flew over Unalakleet and said proudly, “That’s home!”, and I looked out and only saw mountains and water...I was so confused! I then focused my eyes a little more over the landmass and realized there was a tiny oval filled with colorful houses, nestled in the mountains. I had already replied enthusiastically before I saw it, but I was glad it ended up being genuine. :) And the village definitely had the small town feel I expected. Everyone knows everyone, and many people share the same last name. I was actually observing a third grade math class all week and noticed that five kids in the class had the same last name. I turned to the cute, bubbly girl next to me and asked if she was related to the boy across from her, and she sat back in her chair for a second, looked up in deep thought and simply said, “Hmm...I don’t know!”.

Our dorm that houses many teachers in Unalakleet!

Besides that, there were many surprising things about Unalakleet that really blew me away. First of all, people drive snowmobiles as vehicles! I got off the plane and picked up my bag outside of the tiny airport terminal, and there people went, getting on their snowmobiles and zooming off to their houses. Many people also had cars, which was surprising to me. People have to fly their vehicles up there or put them on a barge, which is very costly. And yet, so many people do it! Other surprising things: there were dogs EVERYWHERE! It was HEAVEN! Most residents had dog houses outside their homes, and their dogs would be hanging out outside all day. Some dogs were even running around the village and would come up to us to say hi. We met an adorable husky puppy yesterday and had a blast chasing her around (or was she chasing us…?!). I also saw a dog that legitimately looked like a POLAR BEAR. SO CUTE! Another surprise: I totally thought we were going to be sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of an unheated school, but I could not have been more wrong! First of all, Unalakleet has a really nice school. It is one of the nicest buildings in the village. You can tell as you walk around the school that the village makes education a high priority. There is a strong wifi connection (something else I didn’t expect!), a nice gym, SmartBoards in every classroom, a beautiful music room, and anything else a school anywhere else would have. I was incredibly impressed with the facilities, as I was equally impressed with the teacher dorm we stayed in, which was a 5-minute walk from the school! Sophia, Heidi, and I got to bunk together in a toasty, wifi-filled room, and we shared a bathroom, two showers, and a living room between the three of us. So I didn’t super need the pillow, blanket, and sleeping bag I brought! The one thing I wished I had brought, though, was a towel...oh well! Make it work!! Haha! But I did learn that Unalakleet has only had cellphone coverage and paved roads for 5 years and wifi connection for 3 years. Those were not surprising to me, but still shocking because it’s honestly hard for me to imagine a life without those privileges!

Husky!!

So these last few aspects I talked about may make you wonder, “How is this village so developed?”. Or at least, that’s what I was wondering as I walked around! It was totally not what I pictured the Alaskan bush to be like. I thought for sure that I would have no Internet access and possibly no plumbing. And there are definitely villages in Alaska that are like that. But because of its size, location, and its Western influences, Unalakleet is more developed. It was heavily influenced by Swedish/Swedish-American covenant missionaries who opened up a church in 1887 in the village, and a boarding school in 1954. So it is more similar to my life in Juneau than I realized in those ways, but it definitely had its distinct characteristics.

The playground of Unalakleet school!

In addition to the snowmobiles and dogs, I loved the atmosphere of the people in the village. Unalakleet’s people are very, very warm and friendly. People picked us up and dropped us off at the airport, everyone waves to everyone with a smile, and the principal and the music teacher at the school were super gracious and easy to talk to. And the students!!! They were sooo sweet! Just adorable. The three of us had the privilege of shadowing the Unalakleet school music teacher, Tim, for the week, which included watching him team-teach that third grade math class I spoke of earlier and teach general music and ensemble classes, all the way from kindergarten to twelfth grade! Unalakleet only has one school, so it was interesting for me to see how a school accommodates students of all ages while keeping a tight knit community. First thing: the classes are much smaller because we were working with a community of about 700 people! So each class ranged from 3 to 20 students. It was cool to see how the dynamic of the classes changed with the size. We also learned how having such a small class size can be debilitating, especially when students travel for their various sports and music competitions (such as the Native Youth Olympics, which I just learned about this week!). Also, I learned that the people of Unalakleet, who are mainly Inupiat, Yupik, Athabascan, or of another native group, are rather reserved. This means that trying to get a group of seven middle school students to sing in front of one another is pretty difficult! We also saw this shyness play out each time students walked into Tim’s room throughout the day and saw three random strangers sitting around his desk- I am not joking, every time this happened, a student walked in, looked at us with huge eyes, and bolted! They are very shy! But they eventually came back, and we promised them we weren’t scary, which seemed to keep them in the same room as us. :) They warmed up to us by the end of the week, I think! And so did we! After we observed him on Monday, Tim let us take over his general music, choir, and band classes (because he has no orchestra students currently), so we each got to teach a different general music class and lead rehearsals. I even gave a private lesson to a trombone player, which was super neat! He and two other high school students are the most advanced in the school, and it was a really good collaboration for us to work with these two wind players and one percussionist, and I know they valued our instruction as well.

The music room was full of instruments, just as Lorrie’s magical, musical room in Juneau is. So I was lucky enough to borrow one of the three cellos there. Because Tim has significant experience teaching band and choir and doesn’t have students interested in playing stringed instruments, those instruments have sat in the closet for a while. And because of the village’s more isolated location, most of the students in the school had never seen or heard a stringed instrument. That’s why we were very excited to take the instruments out and play them for the students. A couple of the students said they had seen our instruments from movies, especially from Titanic, which was pretty funny. One of the elementary schoolers excitedly said, “Yeah, they played that instrument as the ship was sinking!!”, when I asked if they had seen a cello before. So we had the treat of introducing our instruments and playing some simple pieces for each class! It was an inexplicable feeling to see the amazement and wonder on students’ faces as they heard the first notes we played together.

Playing for one of the general music classes in Unalakleet School!

We were all super impressed with the school. We observed various teachers and talked with Tim and the principal a lot, and everyone was very genuine and very invested in the village children’s education. Tim grew up in western New York and moved to Unalakleet 6 years ago and has remained there ever since, which is rare for outside teachers. He told us that the two questions students asked him when he first arrived were, “How old are you?”, and, “How long are you staying?”. It was a little heart-breaking to hear that second one. But he has totally stuck with it and has built a great program. He is teaching his students all the essentials of being a hard-working, successful musician- from practicing tips to rehearsal techniques, he’s giving them a great musical education, and that was so good to see. He also adapts to the needs and desires of the community. He tailors his lessons to these smaller, shy classes, and focuses on performance to help students come out of their shells. He’s doing a great job. And the principal is also not from Unalakleet- he moved to Alaska over a decade ago from California and has invested in the village as well. He is so sweet- he took the three of us to the end of the roads in the village to look for seals along the ocean! We totally saw giant bearded seals that were as long and as heavy as SUV’s!!!! LIKE, WHAT?! They were way off in the distance, but he had binoculars so we could see the giant, round, caterpillar blobs lift their lazy heads up off the icy water.

The Eskimo Ninja at Peace on Earth!

Besides the seals, dogs, kind people, and epic vehicles, Unalakleet is famous for a couple other reasons. First of all, it is the first stop in the Iditarod, the popular dog sled race. It also has a couple awesome restaurants- one of which was called Peace on Earth and the other, The Igloo. Peace on Earth has fantastic pizza that is a whopping $36 for a large pizza….the three of us went out one night with a friend we made from the dorm, and splitting the price between four wasn’t too bad! The other awesome things about that restaurant were, it had beautiful hand-made kuspuks, which are Alaska native hooded overshirts with pockets, and jewelry, a bunch of instruments sitting out we were allowed to mess with as we waited for our food (picture Sophia on the mandolin and singing, me on electric bass and then piano, Heidi on guitar and tambourine, and our new friend taking pictures… :P), AND you know who works there because his parents own the place?! The ESKIMO NINJA! You might wonder who or what that is…you know, I did too before I met him! Basically, he was a contestant on a competitive tv show called American Ninja Warrior where participants go through seemingly impossible obstacle courses, and he was known as the Eskimo Ninja. So he made our pizza, and I totally asked if we could get a picture with him. He also told us that he built an obstacle course in the village to practice before he went on the show and it’s open to the public! So post-pizza coma, that’s exactly where we went!!! I think it’s safe to say that alas, I am not the next Eskimo Ninja. But Heidi might be!!! She was pretty excellent at jumping post to post with one foot!

Although the three of us chose to spend our Spring Break traveling and teaching in a rural village in Alaska, we all agree that we had a slower-paced week. We spent time walking along the beach, watching the sunsets (which were at 9pm!!), and watching movies. We loved getting to learn about a new place that is so rich with natural beauty and amazing qualities in its culture and land. I’m finishing this blog post, sitting on my couch in my toasty house-sitting home in Juneau, glancing up at my wonderful parents who also flew in last night and will be here this next week. :) Yeah, life in Alaska is good. :)