Sitka!!!

We arrived in Sitka on Saturday August 8 and were met at the airport by a slew of FJVs, our supervisors, and support persons which was awesome to say the least. Once we got to the house we brought all of our stuff in and talked for a few minutes with some FJVs who gave us a rundown of the house and Sitka. Our house is wonderful! We live above a business offering tours of Sitka, have 4 bedrooms (I am sharing a room with Greg, who I am sure will be featured here often), 1.5 bathrooms, a kitchen with more spices than I ever thought possible outside of a restaurant and our living room, which came fully stocked with books, comfortable couches and enough art supplies to power a kindergarten class for at least a year. Greg and my bedroom has one of the greatest views I have ever seen: when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see is the harbor (about 100 feet from our house) and mountains just beyond that that are often met by clouds along their peaks or just in front at a lower altitude. On our first night in Sitka, my housemates and I went out and explored the town. There are a good number of little shops along the main street along the water that seem to be geared towards the large number of tourists coming in from the cruise ships as well as a bunch of restaurants, coffee shops and pubs. We walked around further and saw the Russian Orthodox Church Cathedral as well as Murray Pacific (where we all got our Xtra Tuffs which are these boots that everyone in Sitka wears to stay dry) and a lighthouse on an outer island.

On Sunday morning, Eileen (an FJV from last year) took us to mass and had breakfast with us. Afterwards she drove us all around Sitka showing us where the trailheads for several trails were, took us to one of the largest sand beaches in Sitka (think maybe 30 feet of shoreline), and showed us where the roads end (there are 7 miles of road on each side of town.) Later on, she introduced us to Tyler, a local 3^rd grade teacher, who is a friend of the JVs and offered to take us fishing on Monday and Tuesday.

At 9am on Monday, along with Greg and Natalie, Tyler took us out to get ready for a day of fishing. After picking us up, Tyler taught us how to bait, which meant piercing the hook through the eye of a salmon’s head and ensuring the other end came up on the other side. We baited 15 hooks like this because we were going to lay a long line (think Mark Wahlberg in The Perfect Storm), hoping to catch some halibut when Katie and Evie returned on Tuesday to pull it up. After laying the long line and dropping a basket for crab, we set out to catch some salmon in Katlian Bay. Along the way I saw a seal and my first bald eagle!!! Before we got into the shallower water where the salmon were waiting to head upstream (they haven’t been able to head upstream due to the lack of rain this summer) we practiced casting and then started really fishing. Between the 3 of us, we caught about a dozen pink salmon and we headed for shore. Tyler then taught us how to fillet the fish (cut off their meat) as well as clean them off in the salt water to prevent the spread of bacteria and took us on a hike around Katlian Island where we saw thousands of salmon in the river, a bear bed and bear tracks! When we returned home, Tyler showed us how to bake the salmon that he had cased (gutted) and how to properly store the fish so that we can freeze them and have them in a couple weeks or months. Dinner was delicious and it was so exciting to eat something that we had caught ourselves.