Wow, it's been a while! Let's catch up.

We have been BUSY! Kimberly and I have quite a few things keeping our time occupied, both work and play (mostly work).
In an effort to catch up on our blog posting, we thought we'd simply touch on the events that have been taking place throughout Nome and in our lives. Of course, we mostly manage to document the fun stuff.
 

Our First Iditarod!

This is a big one. I had started this draft during the event, and unfortunately, it never made it past that stage. Many of our co workers planned ahead and had taken time off during this week. We did not, and found ourselves working through many of the most eventful moments. Next year we will be sure to set a little time aside to live into the festivities.

The Iditarod was here in Nome in March and there were many festivities! 71 of the total 85 mushers made their way into Nome and crossed the finish line. There were sirens blaring as racers came in to town and the news cameras were rolling. There was even a new track record set by this year's winner. Dallas Seavey crossed the finish line at 2:20am Tuesday morning with 7 of his original 16 dogs with a time of 8 days 11 hours and 26 min.
All the excitement had us up late Monday night trying to decide if we should stay up and wait to cheer the winner or settle into bed and try to get back up for the event. We had seen the last checkpoint record that Dallas had left the safety location at 11:40pm and had heard that it normally takes a few hours to cross that last leg. Since there is no live tracking, we asked around and the consensus was that 3am would be a good guess as to his finish time.We decided to sleep and set our alarm for 3am. Knowing that if he made better time the 15 minute warning of the fire siren would wake us up.


No such luck. By the time my 3am alarm went off, the first TWO mushers had come in and were already resting. We still had to get up and walk down to Front St. just to be sure there wasn't anything fun we were missing. Of course, everyone was just scattering back to bed or to the bars. Next year, we'll be sure to take the next morning off so we can stay up for the full event. This is a big week for the town and brings in a lot of money for the city. The town population has been known to more than triple for this week long event! Even for locals who have seen the same celebration year after year, this is a time when everyone seems to get excited.

Inside Out. 

Many of you have seen this movie by now, but it's a good one. Kimberly took on the planning of the community wide movie night this past March. It's the type of event that can really stress you out since you never know what crowd to expect. The last movie night had brought out nearly 300 people. Despite these challenges, she did great. We rented out the mini convention center and held our free showing with complimentary popcorn, cookies, lemonade and coffee. Things went well and we have perfected the setup for future movie showings.

Midterm Training at Global Ministries in NYC

We are already nearing the half way point in our missionary training. It hardly seems possible. This midterm training signifies a point at which our cohort of missionaries is able to gather and talk together about how perspectives have changed now that we have some experience in our placement sites. We talked about problems we are facing, how we might address them, and what more we might be able to do to further God's reach into each community.

We also attended Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington, DC. For three days, we gathered at this political convention, learning about injustices in our world. We learned about how to lobby for the interest of the people and we got a chance to put that lobbying into practice. On Monday, April 18th, we met with a House Representative for Virginia and a Senator for Alaska to speak about two bills currently in play.

Spring Breakup! Days are getting LONG

An empty truck and boat trailer. The sign
 of seal hunters out and about. So far, we've
heard it has been a very good year for
seal hunting.

Sea ice hopping

The temperatures have started to go up and the snow is fading. The ice covering the ocean is quickly breaking up and the town is bustling with people coming out to enjoy the warmer weather. Nome is a totally different place now that the snow is almost gone. It's the beginning of May and it is light out for more than 22hrs each day. The kids are out playing on the playground late into the evening, and it gets harder and harder to block the light from coming through the window to sleep.
With the warmer weather and extra hours comes even more opportunity for adventures. Recently Kimberly and I joined another couple to spend a Sunday afternoon on the beach. We drove southeast of Nome to an area along the mouth of the Nome River. It is the perfect place for a driftwood fire by the water and to let the dogs run free.

Here's Zoey burying herself in the sand by me. She's loving the warming weather. 

I borrowed a four wheeler this past Sunday and took it to explore one of the abandoned dredges outside of town. It's an amazing piece of engineering that was used (until a decade or two ago I think) to dig up the earth in search of gold. The dredge was designed to dig a pond size area along the stream to dig up gold. This abandoned dredge is one of the largest around and is still in good enough condition to explore.  We were able to see some parts on how it ran and what it would have looked like in operation. Although there are sections of the flooring that are rotting and a "basement" level that is below the water line, it's an exciting place to explore.

The crane-like tower is about
10 stories high.

This is probably the tallest
structure in Nome.

Exploring the levels of the dredge. 

Kimberly made it in the newspaper!

One annual event that is put on by the Nome Rotary Club, is the SOUP-ER BOWL. Twenty or so local artisans and college art students created one of a kind bowls that were put on sale for the event. With the purchase of a bowl, you were given entry to the cafeteria where you could try any three of the 16 wonderful soups along the buffet line. The best part of the whole event was that all proceeds went to the Nome Boys & Girls Club. We were stuffed by the time we had our share of delicious soups!