A tour of SMK

SMK from the air

Let's call the top of the picture "north."  It's not, quite, but it will help for the moment.

St. Michael seems to me to be a peninsula (thought they tell me it's an island actually) that juts "eastward" into Norton Sound.  The road leads to the "west" about 15 miles, where the village of Stebbins is.  So far, I haven't been farther than the airport, about 2 miles west (time to get rid of the quotes) of town.

The town is mostly flat, but it does have a few hills, and larger ones visible in the distance.  It's very green right now, though with low vegetation--no trees--and very windy, at least compared to Anchorage where the wind never blows.  It feels to many of the teachers like the Scottish Highlands or the American prairie (but with a big ocean nearby).  It has a lot of natural beauty, and is no more run down than any town its size in Oklahoma or anywhere else in the lower 48.  Most of the buildings are on stilts, as you find in many coastal communities.  I think, though, the stilts have more to do here with the permafrost (can't dig too far into the soil), than with the possibility of flooding (though that exists, too).  Most buildings are one-story, and often have a modular look to them.  The water delivery and return system is all above ground, again due to the permafrost.

The school is on the north side of the peninsula, the long low building.  It's a beautiful, new building, and visible from almost everywhere in town.

The school from a distance--near sunrise

 A closeup of the school.  My classroom is just to the left of this picture.  Notice the ATV's out front--the most common form of summer transportation in SMK, other than one's own 2 feet.

The AC (Alaska Commercial) store, the only store in town, is on the southeast end of the peninsula--white building with a red roof.  Reminds me a lot of the TG&Y in Carnegie, OK, (my grandmother's home town), only with about half of the aisles being groceries.  Some prices are quite reasonable by lower 48/ Anchorage standards (I bought two boxes of cereal for $5); others are dramatically higher ($5.55 for a pound of butter, $6 for milk--a half-gallon of milk, that is).  I don't have a good closeup of the AC yet.

The Catholic church is the beige building on the south near the middle.  I'm looking forward to going tomorrow and seeing how I can be of service there.  One of my fellow teachers is also Catholic, and she and I both hope to do some CCD (Sunday School) if the pastor and parish administrator agree to let us help in that way.

My house is invisible from this picture (it might be 500 sq. ft., but likely not quite), but you can see the old school in which a lot of the teachers are housed (and where my "itinerant housing" was) just to the northeast of the church--the big building with the red roof.

To the west of teacher housing, a block or two (there's not a grid pattern to the roads in SMK--they built roads to the buildings, not buildings on the roads) is the post office (conveniently labeled "Alaska National Guard") and south of it the Assembly of God church/ coffee shop.  There is a community center between teacher housing and the AC store, but I haven't been there yet.  As far as I know, that's all the public buildings in SMK.

My next post will be about the people I've met so far in SMK--a great bunch.  I'll conclude this post with two pictures, one of sunset the first day and the other of sunrise the following day--but I'm not too sure I remember which is which!

AMDG

Tim

Sunset (I think)

Sunrise (I think)--looking "north" from the porch of the old school