Life & English: Anchorage

Anchorage is the largest city and the most populous city in Alaska. Alaska’s area is larger than 1.7 million km2, but the winters are very hard, so the population of Alaska is just over 700 thousand. About 400 thousand people are living in Anchorage and the surrounding areas. It means more than half of Alaska residents are living within the Anchorage metropolitan area. The Anchorage metropolitan area is an area consisting of the Municipality of Anchorage and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in the south central region of Alaska.

Although Anchorage is the largest city of Alaska, this city looks like a provincial town with simple houses. Alaskan people love nature life. An Alaska taxi driver said that he came from Cambodia and was living 24 years in the US; he was married with a native woman in Alaska and they had 3 children. Their kids preferred natural living and they could hunt very well. Another taxi driver who came from India complained about the high prices of the cost living in Anchorage. That was right. When I visited a grocery store nearby a gas station in Anchorage, I saw the prices in that store were twice as expensive as the prices in the same grocery store in Chicago. Transportation costs were the big reasons. The journey from Chicago to Anchorage was almost 7 hours flying. A special point of Anchorage was a cemetery in downtown. It was a historical part of the city. Sheraton hotel was located on the opposite side of this cemetery. Anchorage city was founded in 1914. More than a hundred years ago, it was a small village. Today, the cemetery was decorated as a park to preserve history of the city in development. The Anchorage Museum, a building with very modern architecture was located near this cemetery.

Anchorage downtown

I visited the Anchorage Museum in a summer morning. In front of the museum were a large yard and a flower garden. Many small pianos were placed in front of the museum, everyone were visiting the museum could play music on the pianos. Although in mid-July, the weather was still a bit cold. At the beginning of the morning, the museum opened but it was very little visitors. I walked slowly and looked at the ancient Alaska costumes hung in glass cabinets of the museum. A lot of costumes reminded me about the costumes of the northern tribes in the series of the movie “Game of Throne”. Perhaps directors and costume designers of “Game of Throne” visited this museum and inspired the design from these ancient costumes. At noon, the number of visitors coming to the museum increased. When I finished my tour and left the museum, I saw a lot of children coming to practice piano outside the museum door. The air seemed more cheerful than the early morning.

Anchorage Museum

Walking around the downtown, I saw many glass and steel bridges connecting buildings. The bridges were talking visitors that here winters were very cold and many snows, snow covered roads. People could walk and move between buildings in these bridges without snow, without worry about cold. Although it was very cold in winters, this cold has given Alaska a plentiful source of income from salmon and fresh seafood. Anchorage airport has a special an order counter to transfer seafood. Many passengers also brought large plastic containers of seafood on their flights. So the baggage handling procedure was quite compared to regular flights in other cities. Anchorage airport also has a large space to introduce visitors to places to visit and relax. Seafood and tourism are the major sources of income for Alaska today. It seems that the rich natural resources in Alaska underground are still sleeping as the property that the Alaska people have for posterity in future.

Quy Minh