Ewok Village

Okay so I have just received my computer thanks to the Little's thank you! so i plan to make more blog entries now that i have a means and not clogging up the company's computer.

With that said I have lots to update you all on. Being that i have been here a month and only posted once! yoh.

Okay well first off camp. Sometimes i laugh to myself b/c it is as minimalistic or more so that my Africa conditions. We have no running water. fill up several large water jugs in the glacier water every few days and then pour them in to a large water jug we have up on massive spindles which has a hose that connects to our sink in our kitchen.

Oh the kitchen, ha also the living room, game room, dinning room and often the drying rack for our clothes. Is a plastic car port, about large enough for a suburban... and we store 6 peoples food/ cook etc all in here. Oh it does have a great wood burning stove. But let me remind you that i am in a RAIN forest and the wood is WET!!! building and starting a fire with wet wood is awful. but we have it down to an art to rotate wood on the store to dry it out then burn it. i think we have managed to create a system for just about everything... nothing is as simple as it should be :)

One perk those is all of us are great cooks and great at cooking with canned goods etc. So communal meals are very popular. We all pitch in ingredients and we rotate who cooks and then cleans. Works out great especially since we have such a massive cooking space to work with.

Oh we also have a very lovely outhouse. mens and womens sides. but all goes to the same pit so really it doesnt matter. I dont mind except when i have to go to the bathroom at 3 am and it is cold, rainy and there might be a bear hanging out near it...

Since we are in the rain forest the area around camp looks like the ewok village and it has affectionately been named so. Massive big evergreen trees with lichen hanging from the branches and lush lush green moss covering the ground. it truly is magnificent and never gets old.

Oh yes we have bears there are lots and lots of bears around here. I have been pretty much guaranteed that a bear will charge me at some point this summer. Super is all i have to say to that. so once i soil myself in front of the clients i will then regain composure and guide them to safety. B/c it turns out the proper way to handle a bear if you see one is... 1 . DONT RUN! if they charge you stand your ground and DONT RUN! (awesome) then make yourself look big and tell the bear to go away.. then slowly move away. sweet this sounds just lovely and i cant wait to experience this.

Oh also at camp we have our massive collections of vehicles, functioning and not. It resembles a junk yard more than anything else. We have our awesome green bus! two 4-wheelers, 2 vans, on which reaks of mildew and the other which we have a camp car in the back so we can all fit, 2 trailors, a broken red dump truck, a partially working old nissan pickup and another not functioning dilapidated pick up...

Or vehicles are always an adventure, i am told things come to AK to die...well we are pushing that to the limit. I have changed more tires, jumped more batteries, forced a tire on a rim, basically jimmy rigged more mechanical equipment in a month than my entire life and i know there is plenty more to be done.

But it is great, for some reason i love sleeping outside in the cold and wet, where my clothes are perpetually damp, cook over a camp stove etc. It is all great!