This blog has been moved to Wordpress

My new blog can be found at this link:
 brittanyinkosovo.wordpress.com

Check it out and follow my journey with the Peace Corps in Kosovo!

GILA Newspaper Article

One of my students in a journalism class interviewed me for our school newspaper. Here is the article in the Hawk Highlights about my acceptance into the Peace Corps:

Hawk Highlights: GILA staff member Brittany Rude joins the Peace Corps

Happy Halloween

If high school theater taught me one thing, it's how to make myself look old.

So I decided to put that knowledge to use and dress up as Grandma Brittany for work on Halloween. Students were shocked to see an old woman wandering through the dorms all day.

My apartment (with pictures!)

I absolutely love my little Alaskan apartment. I will be genuinely sad to leave it in May.

Although I am attached to my little home, there are a few downsides. Let me list them for your entertainment:
   

1. Mystery stain on the wall
 One of the walls in every apartment is covered with a canvas-type carpet. When I moved in I soon noticed a suspicious splatter stain on the wall next to the bed. I rearranged the furniture, covering the stain with a dresser, and have tried to avoid thinking about it since then.
                   
2. Torture shower from Prisoners

A glimpse of the offending shower. 

Every time I shower I think of the 2013 movie Prisoners. Remember that horrifying scene where Hugh Jackman puts that creepy dude in the shower and alternates spraying him with ice cold and scalding water? Well, that is my shower. It is also so small (a free-standing shower) that there is no escape when the water turns scalding. I'll be shampooing my hair, happily singing, when suddenly Hugh Jackman turns the water to scalding and leaves me yelling and scrambling to jump out of the shower. The good news is that it really wake you up.
   
3. The door
After living in my apartment in Chicago it became ingrained in me to keep the door locked at all times. Unfortunately my door here does not like to lock from the outside. I don't understand why it does this, but it usually takes me about three attempts at locking it before it actually locks. Once it took me 12 attempts.
                
One day a coworker saw me attempting to lock my door and said, "Why I you doing that? People never lock their doors here! I don't think I've ever locked my door."
           
After that I stopped locking my apartment door most of the time. If I couldn't get it locked in two attempts, I would just leave it. That is, until something happened in December...
                   
I was leaving my building when I saw a strange middle-aged man walking up the stairs. I had never seen him before. He smiled and said hello. I remember wondering who this random guy was.
               
About an hour later I decided to go back and lock the door to my apartment. On my way I ran into a coworker who lived on my hall. She looked surprised to see me and said, "I thought you were in your apartment."
               
I was confused by what she meant. She told me that she had just left her apartment and saw that middle aged man walk out of my apartment. He looked at her, said nothing, and left.
           
I hurried up to my apartment and looked around. Nothing was missing, but I was creeped out. We never figured out who he was. I now lock my door 100% of the time.

Home for Christmas

Miracle of miracles! I made it out of Alaska for Christmas.
      

Modeling the flannel pants my dad received
for Christmas. They were a bit large, so I used
the drawstring to tie them around my neck.

Interior Alaska was plagued with major snowstorms in the week leading up to Christmas. The majority of our students' flights had to be cancelled and rescheduled. Some flights were cancelled four days in a row. This meant that the residential staff had to work an additional four days to take care of the stranded students.

On the morning of Christmas Eve I arrived at our tiny airport to discover that my flight was delayed because of the weather. I eventually made it to Fairbanks, then to Anchorage, and then to Seattle for a lengthy layover.

Then I spent Christmas Eve in the Seattle airport. By this time it was 7:00 pm, and I had not eaten since breakfast. Unfortunately for me, every single restaurant or food vendor was closed for the holiday. In fact, the airport was a ghost town. I wandered the empty airport for the next 12 hours.

The final leg of my journey was the flight from Seattle to Minneapolis, where I was picked up by my dad to celebrate Christmas Day! After 24 hours of sleepless travel-time I was overjoyed to be with my family for Christmas.

Santa was generous enough to fill up a giant stocking for me,
complete with wool socks and a Happy Light!

I practically cried when I stepped outside and saw the sun. (And felt warm 20 degree air for the first time in months!)

My dad drove me to my parents' apartment where I got to see my mom, sisters, and Mei Mei (my dear little cat) for the first time since August. As much as I love Alaska, it is psychologically refreshing to get out for a little while.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Four odd things

• Eyebrow talk
       In Alaskan Native culture people communicate using their eyebrows. A slight raise of the eyebrows means "yes." An exaggerated raising of the eyebrows means "obviously" or "of course." To say "no" people slightly scrunch their nose.
        In my first few weeks working here I had many confusing conversations with students because of this. They would answer a yes/no question with their eyebrows and I would stand there oblivious, waiting for a response. There were also times I would unintentionally move my eyebrows.
       For example, a student would ask me for a favor and I would raise my eyebrows in an "Are you kidding me?" expression. Then their face would light up, "Thanks Brittany! You're the best!" I would stand there confused, wondering why they thought I accepted.
      It is now becoming much easier to pick up on the subtle communication.
  
• No toilet paper
        Alaskans do not call toilet paper "toilet paper." Instead they call it tissue.
        I learned this my first week working in the dorms. I was sitting on the girls' floor after lights out and a student walked out of her room towards me. "I need tissue," she said.
        I responded, "It's after lights out; just use toilet paper."
        The student stared at me in confusion. After a pause she said, "No, I need more tissue."
        Now it was my turn to be confused. "Why do you need tissue? We don't have boxes of Kleenix up here. Can't you use toilet paper?"
        This poor tortured student stood there and it suddenly dawned on me that she was talking about toilet paper. I apologized and helped her restock her bathroom with "tissue."
         The students have told me that they had never heard it called toilet paper until meeting white people from the Lower 48.
  
• No recycling    You would think that Alaska would be one of the most environmentally-conscious states, given all of the untouched beauty of the Alaskan wilderness. However, I have learned that recycling is not only uncommon here, it is almost unheard of.
         No one recycles. Our school does not even recycle paper. It may be because there are no recycling plants for hundreds of miles, so we would have to pay to fly our recyclables out of Galena. But even my coworkers from Fairbanks or Anchorage said that no one recycles.
         Instead we have a dump on the edge of the village where everything is piled. It is a great place to watch bears.

• Crooked teeth      In the Lower 48 crooked teeth are not very common, because almost everyone with crooked teeth gets braces. In Alaskan villages there are no orthodontists, so almost everyone has crooked teeth.
        Only the wealthy can afford to get their kids braces, because each visit to the orthodontist involves a plane ticket to Fairbanks or Anchorage. That is a minimum of $420 for one person's flight alone. Now imagine paying for that flight each month for two years, plus the cost of braces. 

The Basics

I am working as a Resident Advisor at a boarding school in Galena, Alaska. Here is some basic information about where I live and what my job entails:
          
Galena
Population: About 400 residents
Location: Interior Alaska on the Yukon River

Demographics: The students are 95% Alaskan Native. There are just a handful of white students.
Recent History: There was a devastating flood in Galena in May of 2013 which caused extensive damage to the village. The flood was caused by an ice jam on the Yukon. Many aid groups have made trips into Galena to help rebuild homes.
        
The School
Type: Vocational Boarding School
Grades: 9th-12th
Student Enrollment: 230 students
Location: Former Air Force Base
   
Being an RA
Full-time position with benefits
Work hours: usually 3:00 pm-11:00 pm; Off days are Wednesday and Thursday.
     Before arriving in Galena I assumed that this job would be very similar to being an RA in college. I was wrong. It is much more involved. RAs act as dorm parents to the students, supervise areas of life on campus, assist with homework, plan extracurricular events, coach sports, lead clubs, counsel distraught girls, and even break up fights from time to time. More than a handful of students call me "mom."

Sitting along the bank of the Yukon, enjoying the summer weather while it lasts.