SEVEN Things Tag-ged AGAIN...

Mrs. Tompkins of Live, Love, Laugh and STAMP has also tagged me this week.  This tag is the Seven Things Tag.  Have you visited Shannon's site?  She recently married her true love which changed her last name from the one we shared "Grant" to "Tompkins".   No matter what our last names are we both LOVE to stamp-stamp-stamp.  Be sure to visit Shannon.  I know she'd love for you to stop by.

Thanks for the tagging Shannon.  I've posted my answers for this game before and thought maybe I'd share them again. See below:

1) I live in a village called Barrow. In Inupiat it is called Ukpiagvik (A Place to Hunt Snowy Owls).

2) I am half Inupiat and Caucasian. The Inupiat are the native Alaskans that live on the North Slope of Alaska. Inupiats along with the Eskimos of the northern nations (like Canada & Greenland) are collectively called Inuit. At least that is the way I understand it. Technically, I would say that I am Inupiat.

3) I am a Californian raised Eskimo. This means that I grew-up not here in the village but in California. I love my childhood in California and as an adult I am very happy to be settled here in Barrow.

4) When traveling from the Lower 48 to Barrow it takes an average of four to five stops and at least three air plane changes before you arrive to my town. Air fare is outrageously expensive and the travel is long.

5) Our roads are pavement-less and boy does it get dust during the summer. We have a water truck that sprinkles the main roads to help keep the dust down. Speaking of roads... we don't have any road systems that connect us to the rest of Alaska. Sometimes there is an ice road but by the time I would want to travel it it is long gone and melted away.

6) We don't have door to door mail services. The only way to receive your mail here is through the Post Office. When I first arrived in Barrow there weren't any PO Boxes left. I received all my mail as "General Delivery". This meant that I had to wait in line to get my mail every single time I went to the PO. This was a big social event. You could visit with so many different people while waiting for your mail. At least a quarter of town used to flow through the PO after work. It's so different compared to the PO's in the Lower 48 ...no one talks to each other and everyone are strangers. Not up here. I know at least 95% of the people I see at the post office.

7) Just for fun I am including this tid-bit. I don't live in an igloo and I've never seen couples rubbing noses. I've seen babies rubbing their faces into their mommy's neck but I don't think that counts as rubbing noses.

See the full post here.

PHOTO DETAILS: I took this photo the day we left for our holiday.  It was windy, cold, and snowing.  You can see the flakes glistening in the flash.  I must admit that I miss the comforts of my home but we are enjoying our time in the warmer climate.