Alaska Day
Alaska Day is October 18 and it commemorates the 1867 exchange of Alaska from Russia to the United States. While it is a state holiday, Sitka is the only place that actually celebrates it and celebrate they do. The whole celebration lasts an entire week and includes a large number of events and hundreds of people flowing into town from all over Alaska and down south. My housemates and I officially began our Alaska Day celebration on Friday night by attending a concert put on by the 9th Army Band from Ft. Wainwright in Fairbanks. Prior to attending the concert I had expectations of seeing an orchestra dressed in tuxedos or dress uniforms playing classical music. That was most definitely a false assumption! The band played in their camo and band t-shirts (which were awesome...they had a polar bear on the front) and played a wide variety of music ranging from 1950s rock and roll to funk to Rob Thomas and Toby Keith. It was an awesome show and a great way to start the weekend! After the concert we met up with a bunch of Americorps volunteers and saw Where the Wild Things Are. Greg and I were really excited about seeing this movie and I have to see that I was not disappointed. I thought that the movie was really good but I don't think that I felt happy at any point in the entire movie. It was a really, really heavy movie but it was well done and I could definitely feel what the characters were feeling.
Saturday brought relatively nice weather (50s cloudy and dry) and a trip to the U.S. Coast Guard open house! It was most definitely geared towards families with children but I made the most of it. My housemate Katie and I were by far the most excited people at the base. The hangar was full of representatives from the fire department, police department, the local search and rescue team, the Coast Guard and the Army. We had the opportunity to go on a C-130 airplane, a Blackhawk! and a Coast Guard Jayhawk (a modified Blackhawk.) I met a rescue swimmer from Rhode Island (he saw my red sox hat and I noticed a red sox patch on his helmet) and chatted with one of the pilots for about a half hour about the helicopter (while sitting in the cockpit), life back east (he went to the Naval Academy) and sports. It was totally random but I learned a lot about the aircraft and it was a great conversation. My housemates and our support person were convinced that I had enlisted on the spot and I am pretty sure that they see this as a very real possibility before the year is over. NOTE: I have no intentions of joining any branch of the military so don't worry. After the Coast Guard open house we explored the Russian Bishop's House, which is part of the National Park system in Sitka and is directly across the street from our house. It was interesting to learn about the Russian history of town and the way that it continues to exist today as the chapel is often used for services. We had a relatively quiet night at home playing card games with a couple friends and gearing up for Sunday.
Sunday was by far one of the busiest days I have experienced in Sitka so far. I got up early and went to mass and then headed over to the docks for some blackened Cod and rice with Greg which was absolutely delicious. We stood along the water and watched the Coast Guard and Army helicopters circling the harbor preparing for their flyover of the National Cemetary Memorial service. Shortly after lunch we headed up the street further into town to get a spot for the parade. It was a total community effort. There were groups marching from the schools (the high school marching band in matching rain jackets and xtra-tufs), community groups, local businesses, the Coast Guard, the army, bag pipers from Juneau and the Pipe and Drum band from the Seattle Fire Department! After the parade we headed over to the house where Meg (my supervisor) was housesitting to wait for the Coast Guard's rescue demonstration near the bridge. This was without a doubt one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life! One of the rescue swimmers jumped into the water from a boat and waited to be "rescued" by another rescue swimmer who jumped out of the helicopter. It was really exciting and it happened about 200 feet away from where we were standing! We could see everything and were getting hit by the spray created by the helicopter! After dinner, a few of us went back to Meg's to hang out. Her and I baked some cookies and then we all headed out to the Pioneer Bar to hang out. There were 8 of us and it was entirely JVs and FJVs. After about an hour or so of hanging out, the bagpipers from Seattle marched in playing! After they finished playing, they stayed to hang out too. The atmosphere is one that is very difficult to describe but it reminded me of St. Patrick's Day. It was a fun time and a great end to the weekend.
Retreat
After a busy week at work, we departed for Anchorage very early on Friday morning to meet up with the JVs from around Alaska for our first retreat. We picked up the Juneau JVs on our flight and rather than sleeping for the roughly 2 hour flight to Anchorage, I found myself deeply engaged in conversation with a Mormon missionary from Idaho (the Juneau JVs thought that we knew each other.) We had a nice discussion of different theological issues and differences between Catholicism and Mormonism and we talked about his mission and my JV year. He acknowledged pretty early on in the conversation that he was not going to try to convert me which definitely helped in keeping the conversation going. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and I got off the plane carrying the book of Mormon which the other JVs found extremely amusing. Sometimes I wonder how I get myself into these situations but my hosuemates are definitely getting used to the fact that I will inevitably get into a conversation with some random person pretty much wherever we go.
The retreat itself was really good for me and my community! It was not an intense retreat like Quest, Manresa or a Kairos but it was one that helped me evaluate my own perspective on how I am doing in community and at work, helped our community share our own thoughts on what is important for us in community (we created a community tool box full of little rules and advice that we think are important for us living in community) and brought us closer together as we had a really good affirmation session where we shared about how each person has inspired, challenged and pushed us this year. There was a good amount of free time built into the weekend which was awesome because I got to spend time with Alex and Avanti and I got to bond with JVs from the other houses. I had a lot of really good conversations over the course of the weekend, I loved hearing about the various placements that people are at and it was great to talk to JVs working at other domestic violence shelters throughout Alaska. I also feel like it will now be a lot easier to call and e-mail other JVs because I didn't really feel that connected to the other Alaska houses prior to this weekend.
The retreat also featured a coffeehouse social where members of various houses performed some dances/songs. Katie, Evie and Natalie serenaded Greg to their own version of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" essentially because he left the house a few days early for retreat to hang out in Anchorage and gave them enough time to 1. come up with this idea and 2. practice. It was one of the funnier things I have seen/experienced this year.
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