Sitka Updates

While things have been relatively quiet in the month of November at the house, Sitka and at work, the past week was fairly exciting. Unfortunately this past week, our friend Marcus, the local youth minister, moved back to Juneau to take a job with the state. It's definitely better for him long term but that doesn't mean that we can't be selfish and wish he were still here. We helped him and his dad move his stuff out of his apartment and then watched The Taking of Pelham 123 the night that he left on the ferry. After saying goodbye to Marcus, we had the luxury of having our first visitor to Alaska who was not a member of JVC staff. Greg's buddy from SLU, who is a JV in Tacoma, came up for the long weekend and it was really nice to have a visitor (hint: come to Sitka!) We went out to a little bar in Sitka that we generally had avoided because it is usually empty but we ended up having a really good time. It was a quiet enough atmosphere that you could actually have a conversation and the bartender was hilarious! She definitely gave Greg a run for his money...always having something to say to him and sometimes leaving him with no response. It was a fun night. We had a fairly busy Thanksgiving as well. When I woke up, Katie was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade which reminded me of watching the balloons get blown up last year with Brian and Mo. Good times. Katie and I decided that we were going to play football with some FJVs and friends from the community which was a lot of fun. A bunch of high school students from Mt. Edgecumbe (local high school for Alaskan natives from throughout the state) played too, so we had a really good group of people together. After the game we hurried to get ready for our first Thanksgiving meal. We were invited to 'dinner' at 1 at the home of two parishioners from St. Gregory's. It was really nice to converse with them and Fr. Scott and they seemed to really appreciate having company for the holiday. During the visit we had some good conversations about history and the wide variety of historical artifacts that adorned their living room, ranging from every type of Alaskan license plate, to glass fishing buoys (from Asia), and a large number of pictures/paintings/images of wolves. After having an enjoyable time there, we went home, got everything together and moved over to the house where Greg was housesitting. Greg, his friend and I started getting preparations underway for deep frying our turkey. The girls (not thinking he could find one) told Greg that he could deepfry the turkey if he found a fryer and did it on his own. Contrary to what the girls say, no one was in any danger at anytime and the only casualty was the turkey who wouldn't fit in the pot originally and had to be cut into pieces. While it probably took us a little longer than it should have the turkey turned out really well and the girls did a great job at finishing off the preparations for the sides while fearing for our lives. Dinner turned out really well and it was really nice to have our own little family Thanksgiving.

I worked on Friday and had a much busier day than I had anticipated having. After doing a variety of little things for the children's program in the morning (and planning on getting ahead and planning something for our after school group on Monday), I did some women's advocacy in the afternoon. While it was quite difficult to hear the woman's story (and feeling not entirely comfortable because I hadn't really done too much advocacy for women thus far) it turned out to be a really good experience. While I can't talk too much about it, I was able to advocate for her in a variety of ways and was able to present her with information to help empower her that would allow her to advocate for herself as well.

Over the weekend, the art galleries opened themselves up which was really cool because there are so many really talented local artists and I saw a bunch of prints that I will probably look into getting later in the year. Saturday was a pretty low key day and involved a lot of relaxing and letter writing. We all spent Saturday night at the housesitting gig, playing Scattergories and watching one of my favorite movies, Up! It is so, so good! On Sunday, we attended St. Gregory's annual first Sunday of Advent mass at Centennial Hall that was presided over by Bishop Burns from Juneau. It was a really nice mass that included three Baptisms and the Confirmation of four others and culminated in a large potluck lunch for the parish community. A number of student dance groups from Mt. Edgecumbe provided entertainment and it was a nice afternoon.

The weather also continues to be consistently inconsistent, ranging from sun, snow, rain, hail, sleet to thunderstorms and changing on a whim. The only constant lately has been the winds whipping off of the Gulf of Alaska. They were really rough this weekend and caused the airport to shut down for several hours due to boulders on the runway! Only in Alaska.