Last weekend, I got to go on my first village trip–and relive the glory days of elementary school.
I visited Unalakleet (YOU-nuh-luh-cleat), a community of 800 nestled on the Bering Sea. Laureli, the News Director, came with me, to show me the ropes and show me around her hometown. I travelled there to do a profile on the Unalakleet Elementary School fifth grade class’ salmon incubation project. And on Friday morning, I tagged along on their outing to the North River, where they saw the habitat of spawning salmon and watched biologists take eggs from a female salmon. I had a blast seeing the egg-take and talking to the kids, teachers and biologists.
All in all the village trip was awesome. Check out the photos for more!
We flew to Unalakleet on Bering Air, a local airline.Just the pilot, Laureli and me, 10,000 feet above the sea.We drove to the North River, where I got to see a real-life forest! Nome is too cold for trees, so it was a treat to see thousands and thousands of trees together.After the field trip, the fifth graders, biologists and I headed to the school cafeteria, where we made fish prints on Unalakleet Wolfpack t-shirts. We started by massaging fabric paint onto the slippery, scaly salmon.Then we carefully laid the t-shirt over the fish, patted it down for a minute or so, and finally, pulled off the t-shirt.The results of our hard work! We laid the t-shirts out to dry on the cafeteria floor.Laureli and I stayed the night at her dad’s house in the hills of Unalakleet. We had a great time with her family–and her brother, a hunter, caught a bear the night I was there!All in all it was an awesome trip. On the flight home on Saturday morning, I could see our final destination, Nome, through the pilot’s window–and it felt good to be coming home.
