Alaska Dreamin'

Welcome to my blog!  For those of you who know me, you know I’m always running off to the next “adventure.”  As I go about these adventures, I’d love for nothing more than to bring along all of my friends and family, but as that is a little inconvenient for those of you with lives of your own, I hope you’ll be able to enjoy my traveling through this blog.

 Let me first give you some context: A year and a half ago, at 20 years old, I moved out of my parent’s house and into an apartment in the Bronx with a college friend for my final semester in college.  Student teaching on the Upper West Side on Manhattan was a fantastic experience, and so I stuck around after graduation from SUNY Potsdam.  I moved to Nyack, just outside of NYC, and quickly fell in love with everything about the artsy little town; the preschool and daycare I worked and lived at over the summer, the Indian restaurant I waitressed at, and the wonderful little church I was quickly welcomed into.  This school year I’ve been teaching 4^th grade Math & Science in the southern Bronx.  It has been, well, an adventure.  In many more ways than one.  I have many, many ridiculous stories from my time in the Bronx, but we’ll save those for another day.

On a more exciting note; about a month ago, I was offered, and accepted, a teaching position in north western Alaska for next school year!  This weekend, I purchased my plane tickets to Brevig Mission, where I will be teaching 2^nd grade, and I am SO EXCITED!!  Here is my little village, on the red star:

Brevig Mission fascinates me; it’s a tiny little village, about 2 and a half miles long with about 400 people.  There’s a general store, post office, school, and quite a few caribou (or so I’m told).  The school is PreK-12.  I will be teaching 15 adorable 2nd graders, and there is on average 15 students per grade.  There is a special education program and what seems to be quite a bit of support for classroom management skills.  Along with the googled facts, I already know the people there seem wonderful.  My coworkers next year have already put up with tons of my questions!  As you venture there with me, we’ll be learning a lot more about the place. 

To get to that little red star, however, is quite a process.  Just from Syracuse to Anchorage is 3 flights.  From Anchorage to Brevig is another 2 flights.  In Anchorage, there will be veteran teachers there to help me shop and run some errands before heading out to my village.  I will only have about 24 hours in Anchorage with very little sleep, so it will be a whirlwind.  I’ll let you know how that goes. ;) 

Google tells me I'll be 3,547 miles from my little hometown.  The farthest I've been in my life.

But the flights, let me tell you I’ve never been through so much trouble trying to get these flights lined up and paid for!  This is, by far, my most expensive adventure, initially anyways.  But, I believe it will be so worth it.

Welcome aboard, as I start the first steps of moving to Alaska!

(Stay tuned as I attempt to pack my life into a few Rubbermaid Bins and ship them off where they will eventually meet me in Brevig!)