A quick trip to Anchorage

I am back from Anchorage!

Tuesday afternoon, I left my classroom and headed for my house to get my stuff to get on the plane. I walked through the big school on my way - it's just faster. Tons of HS and Jr. High kids were giving me hugs and stuff. Mamie's advice to me was "don't get kidnapped". Some other kids were worried that I might not come back. It was kind of funny. Matthew asked if he could have my Wii if I didn't come back. He has an "I'm so tough" fifteen-year-old boy attitude, but he gave me a hug before I left. :)

I left Shishmaref around 1:15. The plane stopped in Wales first. There were five or so people going to Wales, and just me going to Nome. From Wales to Nome, I sat co-pilot. The plane was really fancy. It was the same kind of planes that they use as Medi-vacs (sp?). Basically if there is a bad illness or injury and you need to get out of the village NOW, they use the Medi-vac planes. They are designed to be an all-weather plane. They have a fancy system with a screen that shows you exactly where the runway is in real time. So if you can't see the runway through the window, you can look at the screen and see where to land.

I got to Nome around 2:30. My plane for Anchorage wasn't leaving until 8:55. So I had plenty of time to kill. My cell phone was turned on for a few days, so I called my family while I was eating at Subway, which was wonderful. Later I went to a resturant called Airport Pizza. While I was there, I ran into one of the BSSD teachers from Stebbins, Lauren. So we had dinner together and went to the store together after. It was nice.

I got to Anchorage around 10:30. I stayed at the Millenium. It was really nice. A huge king size bed, TV with cable, and a BATHTUB!!! Even though it was after 11 before I got around to it, I definitely took a bath both nights I was there. It was really nice. I never had a bathtub in college either, but I did get to shower in my own apartment, or when I was in dorms, in my own hallway. So it was a refreshing change.

I got to sleep in on Wednesday, which was nice. I got up around 10, got ready and wandered down to the gift shop. I just wanted to poke around and waste some time before I went to go take my test. My appointment was at 12:30, but I wanted to get there super early, in case there were any glitches, I could get them figured out. There were no glitches, and they weren't busy, so I started testing at 11:48. I got done fairly quickly considering it's like a 4.5 hour test with a 15 minute break. I think I was out of there in 3 hours. I am just a fast test taker. I'm a good test taker too. So it's cool.

After the test I went to Wendy's. That was very tasty. Then I went to Fred Meyer to do some shopping. I think that I spent three hours in Fred Meyer by myself. I bought lots of food. It was a lot cheaper than Shishmaref and a lot more variety. Pretty exciting. I brought an empty cooler to Anchorage and then brought all of my perishable food back in it. All the non-perishable stuff I bought I had sent to Shishmaref. The shipping costs from Fred Meyer are fairly reasonable, for non-perishable stuff at least. To ship perishable food, it costs $90, plus the cost of shipping weight. That covers up to 65 pounds of food. I spent $47 in overweight baggage to get it back to Shishmaref, and I didn't have to worry about if it would arrive before it spoiled or anything like that. I think I did it the smart way.

After Fred Meyer I met up with Angie. She was in Anchorage from Tuesday til Sunday with Student Council. There were student council members from all over the state in Anchorage for a confrence. So I met up with Angie and the three high school students and went to the movies. Freida, Angie and I saw "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" in 3D. Zander and Miizuk saw some girly romantic comedy instead. When the movies were over we played a little air hockey in the movie theater arcade. It was fun. Then we went to Wal-Mart, which was super exciting, of course! There was a McDonald's inside Wal-Mart, so I got a burger too, which was nice. I went back to their hotel for a bit and then called a cab around 11.

I couldn't sleep on Wednesday night and I didn't fall asleep til after 1am. I had to be up by 4 to get ready to go to the airport for my 6am flight, so that wasn't too fun. Less than 3 hours of sleep. Oh well.

The plane from Anchorage stopped in Kotzebue and then headed to Nome. I had a few hours in Nome, so I had breakfast at Airport Pizza, went to a gift shop, and then bought some Chinese food and Subway to take home to Shishmaref for the next couple of days.

I made it back on Thursday afternoon and life basically went back to normal.

Even though it was a pain to have to go, I kind of wish that I would've had another day. I didn't get to go to the mall or anything while I was there. I wanted to look for snow pants and boots so that I wouldn't have to order from a catalog. Oh well, I guess. It still was a successful trip.