Wednesday, August 15, 2007

I am in ALASKA!!!!

Well, I'm here! Right now I am writing this from the Anchorage airport where I am waiting to catch a plane to my island. We have had 2 delays so far and are hoping to fly out of here soon. I am with my sister Nikki, and my friends Melissa and Benny.
Anchorage is gorgeous! When we flew in, the skies were clear and we had an awesome view of Mt. McKinley! Nikki, Mel and I checked into our hotel and did a bit of shopping to buy some supplies. We then picked up Benny V. from the airport and headed out to dinner. We stopped at the Sourdough Factory where we ran into "Hobo Jim" a famous Alaskan musician and we even took a picture with him. We then ate dinner, which was actually quite nasty, but made for a funny time.
Yesterday morning we did a Walmart run and then headed off to Sam's Club to buy our food supply for the next 4 months. We forgot to think about how we were going to fit our purchases into the car with the four of us. Nikki ended up driving with our huge load and Benny, Mel and I walked back to the hotel crossing the highway with our three months-worth of toilet paper in hand. We got to see downtown Anchorage that evening and did some more shopping. After all this we had a packing party back at a condo that the teachers own and shipped all our stuff off.

This morning was a whole other adventure! We went to Walmart to ship off the rest of our stuff. We pulled 3 carts of boxes into the Walmart post office where the cashier told us the scale to weigh our boxes wasn't working so we couldn't ship anything from there. We were already in a time crunch to get to the airport, so Nikki and Benny drove to another post office on the other side of town while Mel and I went back to the hotel and got all of our bags down by the lobby door and waited for Nikki to come back and get us. After sitting with our 8 suitcases and 8 carry-ons in the lobby, the lady at the desk came up to me and told me I had a phone call. It was Nikki saying she dropped Benny off at the post office to ship things off and headed to the teacher condo where she locked to keys in the rental car while it was running. So, Mel and I called a cab and planned to head to the condo to meet her there, when we realized we didn't know the address. As the cabbie loaded our mound of luggage into the car we tried calling Nikki for the street name, but her cell was also locked in the car with the keys. So, we gave the driver as much info. about the condo as we knew and he told us he knew where it was. Nikki was at the condo waiting and she called and got someone to unlock the car. We were rapidly running out of time, so we packed Mel, Nikki and I into the car with 8 suitcases and 8 carry-ons! The three of us sat in the front with two suitcases. Nikki dropped Mel and I and all our luggage off on the corner at the airport and flew back to get Benny from the post office an hour and a half after she dropped him off there. After the four of us were together again, we went up to the ticket counter to find out Mel didn't have a ticket reserved for this flight. Nikki talked called the principle of the school who then called the reservation desk and we got Mel on the flight. After making it to the gate just in the knick of time our plane has now been delayed twice. Hopefully we will be heading out the the island soon!! I'll keep you posted!

2 comments:

Katie said...

Hey, I found your blog!!

Anonymous said...

it always happens to you... :)
-Cara