I have moved most of my stuff into my new house! I love it!!!!! The past few days I have been cleaning my room like mad. The principal said that the last time the room had been cleaned and rearranged was over 16 years ago!!!! I completely tore it apart and now it is a mess! But I am seeing progress after putting in 20 hours so far!!! Last night Nikki, Mel, and I had a crab dinner with free crab we got from Mr. Mac.The we went over to the Stacks house (our principal and her husband) and watched a movie, which was a good way to chill out after being at school.
This morning we woke up to the sun shining and a huge full rainbow!!! It was awesome! I could see parts of the island that I had never been able to see through the fog before. It was so pretty. The island is gorgeous in the sunshine. Anywho, Steve, my brother-in-law just flew in today and we are all having a big crab dinner again tonight with. So I am off.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Arrival on St. Paul
Well our plane took off. Three hours into the flight we were told that it was too foggy to land on St. Paul, so we were going to fly to the other island, St. George. We circled around for a little bit and then went in for the landing. All I could see out the windows was fog and more fog, and then water. I was freaking out at this point, thinking for sure we were landing in the Bering Sea, then out of nowhere we hit land! And it was St. Paul after all! We walked off the plane and through a garage into the airport/hotel/restaurant. There were tons of people there and they all watched us as we walked in. Nikki said a lot of them were my students and they wanted to see the new teachers. We were met by Mr. Mac, the maintenance man, and the principal and her husband. We loaded all our stuff into Mr. Mac's truck and jumped in for a tour of the island. It was a foggy day, but the ground is so green and the island is really pretty. We drove past the school, the store, the post office and Mr. Mac also pointed us who lives in what house. We drove down to the docks to see the Halibut boats and the crab pots. It made me so excited to live here. We stopped at the post office and picked up our first load of our boxes and Mac helped us bring everything back to our houses. Mel and I were super excited to see our new home. It is awesome! I love it! We will post pics as soon as everything is unpacked. While we were starting to put stuff away we could hear little kids giggling outside our door and then our doorbell rang. Mel and I went to answer. There were 4 little kids standing on our porch holding up a couple of bones. When we opened the door they said, "Hi! We found some seal bones for you," and handed them to us. Two more kids came by and joined our little group and they introduced themselves and talked to us for quite awhile. They came by about 8 more times in the next hour. Once they wanted to come in and us our bathroom, a few times they would ring the bell and run and hide and one time they came by with another seal gift. The principle's daughter, Stormy, held out a seal eyeball. I didn't believe that that is what it was, until I could smell it. It was a decaying seal eyeball from the seal harvest they just had! Nasty! But it was so cute to see all the curious kids come by and to meet us. Later we went to Nikki's for pizza and one of the other teachers, Betty came over to say hi. She invited us to her place for a glass of wine. We stayed there until I could barely keep my eyes open any longer. I crawled in bed at 11:30 p.m., while it was still light out.
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!
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!
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