FAQs about Life in Ketchikan

        It's been a pretty laid-back week for Matt and I- six days of work straight since my last post so we haven't done too much else. Today, however, we finally got our fishing licenses- we've been talking about getting them for a while but have been hesitating since they're a whopping $145 for non year-round residents. We've also been trying this new thing called "cooking" where we think about what we want to eat and find recipes for to make them. Other than spending money on fishing and food we haven't done too much else this week so I thought I'd take some time to answer a few questions I've gotten about living here in Alaska.


            1. How do you get around the island without a car?

Good question! We walk to work because we live in the downtown district so we're very close to all the tour headquarters and stores. We use the city bus to go grocery shopping. For everything else, I travel in the back of pick-up trucks. The first time I did this was to go to a bonfire and I was pretty skeptical, seeing as it's not legal to do anywhere else I've ever been. Then again, it's legal to smoke in bars here so I shouldn't be surprised that it's also legal to pile ten people and a dog in the back of a pick up truck that may or may not still have its tailgate attached.

Ketchikan, where daily transportation is like an 80's Coca Cola commercial

            2. How do the islanders get food and supplies?

By barge! Wednesday is barge day so Thursday is the best day to go to the supermarket around here, when the produce is the freshest. Shopping is a strategy on an island because you need to learn what lasts a long time and what doesn't. After weeks of painstaking research, we have concluded that: bananas and grapes last a long time, cucumbers and watermelon spoil almost immediately after removal from the grocery store.

Da barge

            3. Is it as easy to get a job in Alaska as everyone says it is?

At least in Ketchikan, it is really easy to get a job because many of the locals here aren't too keen on working. Also, there aren't too many locals here in their early 20s because many leave for the lower 48 after high school, so employers are eager to hire young out-of-staters that aren't expecting salaries or benefits, or anything above ten bucks an hour.

           4.  Are the lumberjacks you work with big and scary?

Some of them are, some of them are pretty skinny and small. All of them however, are strong and always spoiling for a fight. Every lumberjack function I have attended thus far has ended in this:

Lumberjacks bonding over punching each other in the face

          5. Do you make real food or are you still living like college neanderthals?

As I alluded to earlier in the post, we have just recently started meal-planning which has been both fun and a challenge. My mom sent us a cookbook about how to cook meals for both omnivores and vegetarians in an attempt to encourage our cooking endeavor. After a two hour conversation on whether we could pull off one of the fancy meals in the cookbook, we achieved our first cooking success: biscuit-topped chili!

Yummmm!

Matt serving the chili to our first guinea pigs, Tom Sr. and Tom Jr.

This is just the first installment of FAQs. Ask me some more questions and I'll post the answers, hopefully with a picture or two if I can snag one! Other upcoming posts to look forward to are: People who Ride the City Bus and The Truth about Walmart.


Stay Tuned!

Bridget