Yes I have Denali in my Backyard

The sight of those mountains has certainly helped my long travel day go better. I was really waiting for it- this is my best shot as we lowered from our elevation of 36,000 feet. My first few days at Anchorage was quite interesting, I learned a thing or two:

1) Anchorage is small and local, people know others--you bump into your old classmates in malls. I got stopped when I was going on a run by a friend!

2) My very interesting episodes with bees in Alaska, the sweeter you smell- the attractive you are. I wore my vanillary solid perfume from Lush and amount of XX bees couldn't stop flying up close to my lens! Figured, if I have a bee tattooed on me- gotta own it.

3) When I bump into random strangers, they strike a conversation with me (amusingly.) and once they learned that I can lipread/hear/talk a bit- they would praise me. "I am SO proud of you! That IS impressive" Okay now that is NOT a compliment,  it is very offending. Once I have the potential of doing something that is considered a normalcy to the society---all of the sudden, I am not that bad anymore? Please do not ask me to lipread, talk, and hear you out--or even praise me if I can do those. I am Deaf and I use American Sign Language, period.

4) Training constantly with the agency I current work for makes me truly forget that there's beautiful mountain scenery right there by the window. I'm liking the job so far- just getting used to the routine.

5) The daylight doesn't go out til around 11ish, we're losing our daylight hours on a daily basis. I'm getting ready for dark winter days. Vampires, much?

6) The air is so fresh that it does my skin good, the problematic acne I always endured magically disappeared. I call this a long-term usage of Proactiv, don't buy the sets...move to Alaska. I'll be a friend, promise. (Think about a trip to Talkeenta to see the Denali, sampling beers @ Denali Brewing Company, and enjoying trail runs with me.) Did my pitch work?

7) You make friends at a random places, talking about doing some agency work at a school and bumping into a realllly cool science teacher that knows one of my friends. A conversation was made and the next thing? Number exchange- and we're all gonna get together tomorrow. Wow, never thought I was capable of making friends in this manner. Zero of that awkwardness.

8) This morning, when I was working on this post- an earthquake occurred.  I freaked a bit and decided to check on my roomie, he said it was an earthquake. It's so normal for Alaska to have quakes often in various areas and he showed me a list of daily earthquakes with measurements. Now that's a bit of California here! 

and here's a first picture of me with Anchorage Downtown backdrop- and this time as a newbie Alaskan.