Chevak

Chevak is an awesome village. The people in that region speak a distinct dialect of Yupik, called Cupik. They also make a distinctive style of qaspeq. Qaspeqs are a style of shirt most commonly worn by women, but men wear them too sometimes. This picture of a qaspeq-clad woman is from the internet. It's not Chevak style. I don't have a picture of Chevak style for you. In fact, I can't even distinguish the difference myself. But when Judge Finn donned her qaspeq, the women in our office informed her, "That qaspeq is SO Chevak."

What I didn’t know before going out there was that Chevak has hills and mountains nearby. It’s very lovely. And just 20 minutes downriver from the Bering Sea. The town had 10 foot snow drifts all over the place. Here are some summer time pictures of Chevak. Amazing difference! The next picture is of the landing strip.

Life in the villages is rough when it comes to produce selection. No stores had anything beyond oranges, brown bananas, potatoes
and onions. But I'm sure all of you potential future tourists will be happy to know that Rotten Ronnie's is an option for you. That's right, one of the local stores has a big box of frozen McDonald's double cheeseburgers for sale. Just $3.50 each.

We heard some grisly legends. Apparently there is a haunted former townsite where an entire village killed themselves off in a bloodfeud. Apparently one man put another’s eye out with a dart. The father avenged this by poking out both of the other guy’s eyes. The rest was history. And in an exciting addition to the legend, there are rumored to be 6 golden chalices buried amongst the ruins.

The big adventure to Chevak was good fun. It was a day of funny signs. First, we were informed at the airport that passengers are not allowed to fly without paying for their tickets in advance. You may have heard of this radical new policy.

In the Chevak court, there were signs stating "COURT IN SESSION. PLEASE BE QUIET. PARENTS CONTROL YOUR KIDS." And "No Hanging Around." One look at the size of the Chevak court room explains the signs... it's a room slightly larger than a walk-in closet.

And this last one, a policy that might cause riots elsewhere. Fortunately for any energy deprived kids, this was the policy at only one store. And it was going out of business. Coincidence?

And here we are, in the airport terminal waiting for our plane to arrive and take us back to bustling Bethel. Not the building behind us. Just that portion of the runway we are standing on.