NON-hunters in Fairbanks/North Pole! (Tanana: moving, cars, roach)

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by warptman

Has friends in both places!

Has family in both places!

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by mal_flisk

Floyd, I actually have to say those village names on more than one occasion a week. Sometimes as often as a dozen times a day in the course of talking to air taxi services and to accounting, as well as to the techs heading out there. I have one guy flying out tomorrow for 2 weeks to visit 6 villages (including "Kong"). We have a tendency to use the full names as sometimes the names are very similar and we don't want mistakes made. I mean there's Akiak, and Akhiok, Napakiak and Napaskiak. Most of my techs can actually pronounce them at least as well as I can. We don't want to insult the inhabitants by poor pronounciation.

Honest, I can pronounce them quite well. They are my customers and we serve a large portion of villages throughout the bush, with the possible exception of the villages in SE. My guys are amazing in their ingenuity in keeping some of these power systems on line. And they had better have extraordinary customer skills, because we want to maintain the relationship we have with our friends in the bush.

I have no doubt at all that you make a great effort, and that you must be fairy successful at it too! As to pronuniciation, there is of course no way I can tell from here how close you might get. But it really doesn't make any difference! The people who live there purposely Anglicise the names most of the time! (And they will happily teach the "wrong" way, and be impressed with results.) Trying to make the effort actually does impress them, but how close you get makes almost no difference. It's a bunch of really nice folks, as I'm sure you know. Kipnuk is the same. All three villages of course are the same set of families.

[Barkingowl]

Mal, Floyd & warpt... what's been you're most memorable meal in the bush?

[mal_flisk]

Pilot bread and peanut butter for 3 days. My bowels haven't got over the shock of that one yet.

[blue_eyedgirl]

Originally Posted by karfar

What's the Gorge? Have you heard the soundtrack for "Into the Wild" yet? It's all Eddie Vedder, it rocks. Hard Sun is one of my favorite tunes now.

Oh yeah, I've got that plus a ridiculous amount of bootlegs. The hubby always threatens to delete my PJ music from the computer because it takes up so much space. I have a killer 3 1/2 hour concert that they did in upstate New York about 7 years ago.

[McKinleyMac]

Originally Posted by mal_flisk

Pilot bread and peanut butter for 3 days. My bowels haven't got over the shock of that one yet.

pfft!

Maybe a nice big bucket of blueberries would help clear the... um... pipes.

To the OP: Good luck. As many have mentioned, I'm sure there are some people there who are interested in something besides hunting and/or fishing. Maybe in the course of conversation you might ask a person if they've ever tried "xyz" *insert an activity that you enjoy* and draw the talk around to something you are interested in. You seem to be savvy enough to know without being told that people are generally more than one thing. A person who hunts and fishes can also be interested in any manner of things; movies, politics, children, books, cars, hiking, photography.... really, the list is infinite. Perhaps they don't bring it up first because it doesn't occur to them that the person they're talking to might be interested in something different. Another thing you might consider trying is putting an ad on one of those free advertising sites like CL or Alaskaslist looking for couples to make friends/hang out with and offer to meet for coffee or something. Whatever you decide to do, I hope you're successful. Not having anyone to share thoughts and opinions about common interests is the pits. Again, good luck.

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Floyd_Davidson

But I'd like to hear you pronounce Kongiganak, or better yet Kwigillingok! There's a good reason they are commonly shortened to Kong and Kwig by English speakers. (Warptman can be the judge of who gets closest to the right pronunciation!)

Ya forgot Unalakleet!!

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by Dusty Rhodes

Ya forgot Unalakleet!!

Sheesh, that one's easy! (Just like it looks!)

The fun one is to mix the phonetics for "tanana" and "nenana", and watch peoples faces when you say it.

[karfar]

Originally Posted by aurorawatcher

Vedder covered that song. It's from 1989 from a band called Indio

Seriously? I had no idea...I'll have to check out the original. But I do love Eddie's version.

[karfar]

Originally Posted by blue_eyedgirl

Oh yeah, I've got that plus a ridiculous amount of bootlegs. The hubby always threatens to delete my PJ music from the computer because it takes up so much space. I have a killer 3 1/2 hour concert that they did in upstate New York about 7 years ago.

I think Eddie looks his foxiest (haha) in the video for Evenflow, the live video. Mmmmm