Hello From the Interior

Well we are finally (as well as one can be living in a hotel) settle in Fairbanks.  The good thing is that the hotel has a little fitness center and a small pool.  I've been able to work out almost every day since we got here.  Tomorrow it will be 2 weeks.  First off, the weather for the most part has been gorgeous!  We have had temperatures in the high 60s for most of that 2 weeks.  Today is a little chilly because it's partly cloudy, but it is still 65.  I haven't taken any pictures, but I will have plenty of time for that.

We went on our first official house hunting trip on Friday and took a look at 5 different houses.  Didn't really see anything that looked promising.  One of them had a gorgeous kitchen that I would love, but there were really close neighbors and the garage was way to small for the truck to fit.  The first one we saw was really dated, I don't think the current owners spent any money to update anything in it from when it was built in the 70s!  Plus, it smelled like dog really bad!  Another one had potential, but a bachelor lived there and it was completely a bachelor house.  I just couldn't picture myself in that house at all.  We have another trip planned on Tuesday afternoon with 4-5 more viewings.  We are looking for something with a little land, so I think that might limit us.

I've been enjoying having some downtime, but I am definitely missing not being back in SD/ND/MN like usually am during August.  Come September, I will be working again for the university, but it will be from home, er hotel.  There is only a year left on the grant that I was working on while in Bethel, so I was able to convince the director to let me stay on.  I will have to make a few trips back to Bethel throughout the year and I will be back in Bethel next summer for the final season of summer camps.  It is going to be so sad next summer.  I started to let the kids know this year that next summer would be the last year and I had so many students ask me why and said they didn't want the camps to be over with! I even had a few of the high school kids tell me that they would write letters of support for us.  So sweet!  I'm hoping we will be able to go out with a big bang!

Well, I will try to post some more after the house hunting tomorrow.  Later!

Final Post from Bethel

Well, summer camps have wound down, but the summer is long from being over.  Quite a few of you have heard, but for those that haven't we will be moving from small town life (Bethel) to big town life (Fairbanks, abbreviated FBX from now on).  Eric got a job with one of the refuges there so we will be moving the beginning of August.  The movers are here and packing us up.  Boy, you don't realize how much stuff you can accumulate in 4 years!  Good thing we are being moved!  We have the reservations made for housing and I just completed the car rental reservations until the truck gets there.  The hardest part so far is having to decide what to keep back and what to have the packers pack and move. There is a possibility that we may have up to 60 days without our stuff!

House hunting is going okay.  We found a few online that we want to go check out, but we need to actually be in FBX to do that.  We know a few people who have recently moved to FBX and they have given us a few recommendations as far as who to go with (realtor wise) and where to live.  We are hoping to find a few acres not too far outside of the main part of town.  FBX is spread out and there are 4 or 5 smaller towns surrounding it plus Ft. Wainwright and Eielson Air Force base.

Well, this is the final post from Bethel.  Next post will either be from the Anchorage airport or the hotel in Fairbanks.