Adjusting in Bethel, AK

It's a strange feeling that you get when you're walking to work in -10 temperatures with a -30 wind chill. There's nothing anyone in my home town of Richmond, Virginia could have done to prepare me for that. I would usually only have a ten minute walk each morning, but when I can actually see the wind whip around me in the darkness as I concentrate so hard on not slipping on the icy roads, it quickly turns into a twenty minute journey. Not to mention the entire time I'm walking I can't help but to think of how bad my hair is going to look when I get to the office and undo my many layers. That's the girly-girl in me. Probably my main characteristic that screams "Not from Bethel, Alaska!"

It wasn't really a hard transition moving to "the bush" (as people like to call it out here.) It was just different. I knew most of what I was getting myself into. I knew it wasn"t the pretty scenic Alaska everyone always talks about, and I knew I was going to be more isolated than I have ever been. In a way that's the part that excited me the most about moving out here.
In the midst of all the research my friends and I did on Bethel, one of my best friends, Arya, read somewhere that only twenty percent of the buildings have indoor plumbing. I remember him turning to me and giving me this look like, "Ummm, and you're okay with that?" "It can't be much worse than using port-a-potties at a concert." I thought. But to my surprise (a very delightful surprise), there is plumbing in Bethel. So I get to use a real toilet, not just a bucket. Most of the villages surrounding Bethel don't have plumbing. They use 'honey-buckets' which are basically 5-gallon buckets with a trash-bag liner and a seat on the top. And many use rain water for drinking and showering. In Bethel the water is pretty rough, since it is hauled in by trucks. A lot of people order water coolers, like the kind in offices, for drinking water in their homes. So it takes adjusting.

But my biggest adjustment wasn't the water being a little smelly, or even the sun shining on my face at midnight. Honestly, my biggest adjustment was probably having an 8-5 job, since I was used to sleeping in on most days. I started volunteering in Bethel at the end of April, just following three months of post-graduation freedom. (Also known as waiting tables and bar hopping most nights out of the week.) So I needed to get away. Five years of art school (okay so six years, three different majors) with little travel off of the east coast, led to a degree in Interior Architecture and the burning desire to start traveling as much as I can while I'm alive and healthy.