Meet Anya:)

So they don’t tell you that when you move to Alaska you’re going to be given a dog when you get to your village! What a welcome present:) Anya is a 2 year old black lab mix. She knows a few tricks and she also likes to go for runs! This factor is perfect for me, especially because there have been some bears out recently.

Which is where I get to the part where I reveal the truth about Anya. Sadly, she’s not my dog, although I would gladly bring her home with me (we all know what happened last time one of the Norman girls brought a puppy home). She is, however, my new running escort due to the bears in the area. Anya belongs to one of the families in the village and they so kindly offered her to me as my own personal running buddy.

Once again, I find myself surprised at how kind and welcoming the members of this community have been since I’ve arrived. Within a few days of my living here, the villagers realized my love (slight obsession) with being active. They’ve seen me running, walking, and even turning the school playground into my own personal gym.  While I knew that they’d seen me out and about, I found it incredibly sweet to find out that they care so much about my safety. When I got here, I asked around  to find out about bear activity, and I’d gotten the “go-ahead” for the path around the village. But in the past week, a sow and her two cubs have been spotted close to different houses in the village.

The day they were first spotted, we had multiple visitors come to the school to specifically tell me about them. Each person said something along the lines of “I know you like to run, but you don’t want to get between a sow and her cubs” or “maybe stick to running in the gym for a bit”. It means so much to me, a stranger to them all, that they went out of their way to make sure I knew about the bears.

And that’s when Anya’s services were offered to me. She really is a comfort to me when I go out on my own and I genuinely appreciate her owners’ generosity and concern for my safety. It’s the things like this that show me that this tight-knit community is okay with me being here for a while:)