Kotzebue

So there I was. Touched down in Kotzebue around 10:00 or 11:00 in the smallest airport I had ever seen. It was very crowded and people were pushing and wedging their way to the front in order to grab their baggage. It was almost too much for an overly polite guy from the Midwest to take. Thankfully, the school district was kind enough to have members form the Human Resources department come to pick us up. They suggested that we wait for the crowd to clear out before we even attempt to grab our bags. This ended up taking 45 minutes to an hour. Finally, we gather our bags and stick them on a short bus. Altogether, there are 4 new teachers. Will, McKenzie (A friend from college), a new teacher from some other place in Alaska, and myself. The district was kind enough to take us out for lunch and then we began our four hour training process. At lunch, the Human Resources department inform me that everyone else's planes will be leaving at some time the next day while mine was leaving later that night. After the training, I realized that my phone had not worked since I had been in Alaska. Turns out, Sprint does not exist in Alaska (wonderful).

Human Resources ended up cancelling my evening flight so that I could get a cell phone. This turned out to be very fortunate. The flight I was supposed to be on could not land in Kobuk. The plane landed in the nearest town (Shungnak) and the passengers on the plane had to ride on snow machines over to Kobuk (roughly a 30 minute ride).

While in Kotzebue, I could not comprehend how many ravens I could spot. They are EVERYWHERE and they are much larger than I had thought a raven would be. I was later informed that the inupiat people have a great respect for ravens. It is considered very bad luck to mistreat a raven. Later, I would learn that ravens are very intelligent birds. I also would soon learn that inupiat people will shoot almost any animal. One animal that they do not shoot on sight is the raven.

This is a picture of the plane I was about to ride in to Kobuk.