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Been in Anchorage just over a month

The ocean is right. There. I can't smell it because of all of the exhaust and gross city smells, but I can (sometimes) see it and I can drive five minutes to it. The absence of the ocean was the biggest thing I disliked about Fairbanks. Even though I won't be sticking my feet into it here like I would in Homer (because: ew) (really), I know it's there. And that makes me incredibly happy.

Rush hour oh my God. There is traffic here in Anchorage. And I mean real traffic. Not San Francisco traffic, not even by far, but really. Rush hour? In Fairbanks? Meant it took me five extra minutes to get across town. Meant there would be a line of six-plus cars at a light. But this twenty-to-thirty-minutes-to-get-downtown thing, this waiting-through-five-cycles-of-a-light thing, is just crazy.

Four libraries. Four! And that doesn't even count the one on campus that my card gets me into. Libraries with more than one floor of books. Libraries with quiet rooms bigger and cozier than my apartment.

Thrift stores here are for poor people. What gives? Thrift stores in Fairbanks are more for college students and hippies, which means the clothing is clean and hip-ish. And I have nevere been sniffed by a quite-probably-drunk man, Native or otherwise, while browsing in any Fairbanks thrift store.