Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jog

Well, I'm back in Alaska. And you know, it's surprisingly the same as when we left.  Most of the same people are here, and the city is pretty much the same. I thought things would be weird and different, or that I would be weird and different when I came back, but it feels like Sydney was just a dream, and I never really left home.

One thing I'd kind of forgotten about is how Alaska smells in the summer. The air has kind of a sweet smell to it, kind of like rotting vegetation or something.  I think it might be all the peat in the soil rotting away. When I first moved here, I thought it smelled bad. I said something to Ethan about it, but being from Alaska, he couldn't really smell it. He thought every place smelled like that in the summer. After a long time of living here, though, I've grown to love this aroma, because it smells like summer and fresh air to me. And when you're hiking and that sweet smell becomes mixed with the spicy smell of rapidly growing vegetation, or the lemony scent of the warming Alpine tundra, it's hard to imagine wanting to be anywhere else.

In other news, I have gotten a job back with the National Weather Service here in Alaska, so we are returning on a more permanent basis than we had originally planned. I'll be a program manager, so I am (hopefully appropriately) a little bit nervous, but also excited to move into a management role.  

Even though a lot of things are the same for us from before we left, I'm hoping some of my Australian friends will become readers. This has given me some renewed enthusiasm.  I plan to try to write about my life in Alaska in a way that will interest my committed readers, but also be interesting to people who know nothing about living here.

I still miss Australia, in particular my friends, but I forgot how much I missed some of my friends here, too. It's good to be back and reconnect. I feel lucky to have such awesome people in my life.