InsideOut Travel--English Spoken Here

by Amy C. Fleitas

"It's cold up there, isn't it?"

That’s the question I hear most often when I tell people I lived in Alaska. It seems like a silly question, but it's so common, I've decided it must be a knee-jerk reaction to ask—sort of a Pavlovian response programmed in by third-grade textbooks with illustrations of igloos and ice fishing.

When I first decided to go to Alaska, I didn't know anything about the culture, the people or the climate—except that I did expect it to be cold. I like to tell people that I went because it would be an adventure, that I wanted to live with the wolves and that I always wanted to see the Great White North. Those things are all true but that's not why I went. I went to Alaska because I needed a job.


	My Life in the Alaskan Bush
	by Amy C. Fleitas "It's cold up there, isn't it?" That’s the question I hear most often when I tell people I lived in Alaska. It seems like a silly question, but it's so common, I've decided it must be a knee-jerk reaction to ask—sort of a Pavlovian response programmed in by third-grade textbooks with illustrations of igloos and ice fishing. When I first decided to go to Alaska, I didn't know anything about the culture, the people or the climate—except that I did expect it to be cold. I like to tell people that I went because it would be an adventure, that I wanted to live with the wolves and that I always wanted to see the Great White North. Those things are all true but that's not why I went. I went to Alaska because I needed a job.				Three months before I became an Alaskan, I was laid off from my writing job in San Antonio, Texas. I had been anticipating my impending unemployment so I sent out my resume. I spent three months out of work. When I was offered a job as a reporter in the Southwestern bush of Alaska, I accepted without much thought. I had two weeks to pack up, buy all new clothes and study up on my new home. “Every time you leave your house, you need to let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.” I stepped off the plane a little green—OK, a lot green. I had no idea what I was doing. It was the first week of October and the first snow would fall in four days. In the next few months, I would make a lot of mistakes and shatter my ideas about life "in the wild." My Alaska friends and I laugh about the questions people ask us because they are all the same and so horribly stereotypical. But my laughter is a little self-conscious, because it's exactly what I asked when I was frantically posting in Alaskan message boards from my computer in Texas. more >> << home
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ENGLISH SPOKEN HERE

My Life in the Alaskan Bush

by Amy C. Fleitas