This blog post brought to you by the color green

It's FINALLY spring here.  A little bit of rain, a lot of sun, and warm temperatures have transformed the tundra and now all sorts of stuff is growing, including these flowers I saw on my walk yesterday:

The smelts came and went on Saturday.  Someone told me that he had never "heard so much misinformation and excitement about smelts than this year".  No one seemed to know when they were coming, and there were all sorts of rumors going around about when they would come and if they would come and maybe they had already came under the ice.  At any rate, the smelts came just after midnight on Saturday morning, and later that day I was able to take a 10 minute break from Saturday Market to watch people "smelting" on the sea wall.  Smelts are small silver fish that you catch via net.  The measurement for smelts seems to be in gallons, as in you will often hear people say something like "Oh I got 5 gallons of smelt" (I think that's also how much each person is allowed to get but don't quote me on that).  They only come once a year, so if you want smelts you have to be around when they come!  Right now you can see them drying outside of people's homes.

My parents came to visit me and I did some traveling with them around the state. I didn't post anything about that trip but I will soon.  Maybe tomorrow.  Our internet at work is acting funny.  This week I might go upriver to Kwethluk for a visit, to a fish camp to help prepare it for a camp (Teens Lead Ahead), and then back into Anchorage for my friend's wedding on Saturday!


I'm up late washing all sorts of stuff because today (Monday) is water day, meaning that sometime between 9ish am- 7ish pm a water delivery truck will come and fill the water tanks up with water.  In the dorm I have city water, meaning that water just comes in via outside pipes.  However most places in Bethel have "hauled/delivered water".  The greatest expense in getting water delivered is the actual cost of the delivery, so if you have a lot of water, usually the day before "water day" people start doing laundry and doing dishes and washing stuff to use up as much water as you can.  I'm house sitting right now with one of the JV's, so I did some of my own laundry and then washed the towels and sheets, washed dishes, filled the Brita pitchers, watered the plants, made sure the dogs bowl was full, and made some kind of juice mix.