Things Change, Roll With It

Here I am sitting with my new friends watching the game as the men finish cutting up the moose they caught this week and I can count the ways in which my life has changed. 

Akutaq, Eskimo Ice Cream.
Not as bad as I was told it was,
 but I was told this was more fishy than normal.
It usually has more crisco flavor.

1) My diet. I used to HATE fish. I mean, I really didn't like the texture, the smell, or even the look of fish meat. Now, here I am, eating akutaq (a-goo-tuck) and baked salmon and everything! I don't all of a sudden like eating fish, but my stomach handles that food better now. I also never liked tea, and last night sitting in the living room watching television drinking a cup of hot tea and actually enjoying it. 

2) Hobbies. I always loved reading, but now I do a lot more of it than I used to. I also can't go bowling or hang out at the shopping areas, go get coffee, or really anything that I used to do. We don't have places to go hang out except for our houses. I enjoy reading, playing games, and watching television shows with my co-workers more than I have ever done before. It is nice, in a way, to not have places to go and be able to spend quality time with the people around me. They are pretty interesting people.

3) New Respect For Meat. We spent most of today processing the meat from the moose one of the other teachers caught. I didn't ever think about how the meat was processed. I just went to the store, or waited for my parents to take the cow down to have it cut up. Today, I helped do all the work. We even had a meat grinder and made ground moose meat. CRAZY! I never realized how much work it was. And when you take the cow to a processing plant or pick up a pound of meat from the store, it probably hasn't been done the same way as we did it today. We did everything by hand. The meat grinder wasn't electronic, the guys had to use their muscles and pump the grinder. It was a lot of work, but I'm glad I was part of it, now I'll have more knowledge of the whole thing than I did before. 

Moose head from the moose we processed

4) Speeds higher than 15 MPH scare me. I am not going to lie, I have a little bit of a lead foot, but since being here, the only vehicle I have ridden on is the four-wheeler. All we have are dirt roads, so there isn't really a reason you would go much faster than that. I was thinking about how I used to drive 50 MPH coming home from college, and now that just seems way too fast. 

Me eating the akutaq

5) Saying Hello to Everyone. I walked home from the restaurant the other night and almost everyone I walked past I knew and said hello to. Back home when you walk down the street or even through the store, you ignore everyone or just smile. Here, you know everyone in town, so you say hello to everyone. It is cool, and it sometimes makes me feel like a superstar. I like the community feeling here. 

Despite the fact that my students have been frustrated by my lack of knowledge of the Yup'ik language (that is the traditional language of the people) and the Yup'ik teacher said that the dogs crying at night means something bad is going to happen, I'm truly enjoying it out here. It has been a great experience. I love everyone out here. I love everything I have done. And I love the lifestyle I'm living out here. I know that I am truly blessed.