first week highlights

I got here a week ago Saturday and what a week it has been!  After flying all day, we were approaching Kodiak and things got interesting because the runway starts in water and ends at the bottom of Barometer Mountain- I'm told that often a couple tries are needed to get just the right approach, luckily we landed on the first try.  My boss, Tina, was there to meet me and explained how the airport is more like a bus stop because everyone knows each other.  It seemed like everyone on the plane was a fisherman.  People say that everyone fishes here, whether they are out in a boat or in town, everyone's work is connected to fish- mostly because they are so abundant.

So, on Sunday I met Tina who got me my car (I get my own car AND they pay for gas) and oriented me to the road system.  It's funny that they call it the road system, but I think they do that just to distinguish it from the rest of the island which doesn't have any roads.  On our way into town, I noticed eagles perching in the trees.  I guess Bald Eagles hang out in town until the snow clears- they are everywhere!  All over the harbor on boats, trees, buildings, it's cool to see these guys flying all over town.

It was lonely here the first night and day, but then I got some roommates on Sunday- Chad and James and got to work on Monday and felt more at home.  My coworkers are great and everyone I have met thus far has been super friendly and welcoming :)

this week's adventures:

• Hike along Monashka Bay- saw a river otter, seal, black-tailed deer, sea otters and lots of birds- cormorants, harlequin ducks, pine grosbeak, grebes and a couple from home- mallards and chickadees!  The deer are coming to the beaches (black sand) to eat kelp that has washed ashore because there is still a good amount of snow on the ground.
  
• Moose steak and homefries for dinner!  One of my roommates brought moose from SE Alaska that his boss had killed- it was tasty!  He was working as a dog handler for a big-time musher who has won the Yukon Quest a couple times, which is a race just like the Iditarod.
  
• Went for a walk in one of the harbors downtown to check out the sea lions that hang out there- they were all taking naps, except for one who was stretching his flippers.  I met a retired fisherman who had fished the Bering Sea for 22 years!  
  
• I had a Sarah Pale beer from the local Brewery, ha! and cod & chips at Henry's (a restaurant downtown).
• WWII remnants in Fort Abercrombie State Park and moss like I have never seen on the trees- apparently you can find a layer of ash from the 1912 eruption of Novarupta under the moss.  
• Met Larry Van Daele- a wildlife biologist for the warm and fuzzy critters on Kodiak, he told us about the bears in particular.  When they stand on their back legs, they can put their heads through a basketball hoop and the males can weigh up to 1500lbs.  There is one bear per square mile of the island.  The males are just starting to wake up from hibernation, there was one sighted not far from the bunkhouse near one of the popular salmon runs around here.
• It is Whale Fest here this week, so there are lots of activities centered around whales and celebrating the migration of the Gray Whale past the island.  I went to a talk about how the Native people of the island, the Alutiiqs, used to hunt whales 2,000 years ago.  The hunters were shaman-type members of the village and would dig up bodies of people that used to be important in the village and use the rendered fat from them on their spears...ewww