By Becky Routh

Recently in Barrow, the Barrow High School and the King Career Center, located in Anchorage, held an exchange program to help bridge the gap between urban and rural Alaska.  Becky Routh, Nellie Nayakik, AliceAnne Fournier, Edward Ipalook, and George Toovak were the five Barrow High School freshmen chosen to participate in the Rose Urban Sister School Exchange in Anchorage for five days. Mike Woods, Blake Frerking, and Al Strack were the three teachers involved in this program. The five Anchorage students who hosted Barrow students visited Barrow the following month.

The Rose Urban Rural Exchange is a cross-cultural exchange program that is trying to build understanding between urban and rural Alaska.  While in Anchorage, we learned and experienced many things that Barrow doesn't offer and the Anchorage students learned a lot about in Barrow.  While here, they had a chance to go snow machining to the Point, dog sledding, trying muktuk for the first time, baleen etching and learning about Umiak construction.  They learned many things about the Inupiat culture like how sharing is a major value in the Inupiat culture.

Everything in Anchorage was different from Barrow. On one of the days we got to go with our host partner and follow them to their high school. Instead of having security cameras around the school, they had security guards. It wasn't really a bad thing because they were very cool and welcoming.  The school in Anchorage is really big compared to Barrow High School. There are about 2,000 students in Eagle River High School and about 300 students in Barrow High School. Eagle River High School was one of the smallest schools so try and imagine how many students would be in the big schools!  We also went to the King Career Center and did many activities outside of the school. Like going shopping, swimming at an indoor water park ( H2 O' asis), and going on tours to important buildings around Anchorage.

Having this program is a great idea because students have fun and learn at the same time and also build relationships with these students. It also gave us a chance to see how different and similar urban and rural Alaska can be. We all want to thank those who helped out in any way. We appreciate this opportunity to be involved in this exchange program and we hope that future students will feel the same. Thank you!