Gambell

I have been working 24 days straight (November 2- 25th)! I've never really thought that I would have overbooked my self. I must make sure that I take time for myself now and then. I also must make sure that I have some weekends where I have down time.

I'll start with my trip to Gambell, small village on St. Lawrence Island. On a good day, you can see Russia across the water (I did not though). I left Friday morning on a flight to Nome to get to Gambell at 5pm with a peer of mine, Kira. We were both attending the village to present CPI. It was a glorious way to travel. The night that I arrived I took a nice walk. Mind you this is no ordinary walk. Its walking on gravel. When I first envisioned the stories, I thought dusty gravel like a gravel road. This gravel was small pebbles. So with every step you took, you went back at least 3 inches. To further my amazement, the entire village was built upon this gravel. It was unreal to me. It baffles me to see how the ancestors lived in such a location or why they even settled there. Regardless, it was a good short trip as I spent the night there, presented the next day, took a 10 minute Honda trip around and left by 5:15. Same pilots that had originally brought us in. This time, we had to fly over to Savoonga, the other village on the island. We didn't stay too long, but had a chance to step off the plane.


School on the gravel

Whale Jaw

Gambell Post

Gambell Native store

We got back to Nome, were Kira and I were staying for the night. When checking into the room, we were given 1 key. We looked at each other a bit perplexed, but corrected after asking that it was a suite and that we had our separate rooms.


We unloaded our gear and went for a nice little trek to Subway- the only fast food restaurant in Nome. One of the best spent $12 for a foot-long meals. Also attached to Subway is a cinema. Kira and I watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. It wasn't all that I had hoped for it to be. It had been quite some time since I had read the book, but from what I recall it wasn't too alike. I think if you were a true lover of the book, you would have been disappointed by the movie.

We turned in for an early night. The next morning we went to the store, to lunch and went shopping for native art. We made it back to Unalakleet by 4.

Overall, it was an eye opening chance that I will remember for awhile. :)