Seemingly in the blink of an eye, my whirlwind two week vacation was over and I found myself packing up my stuff for my return to Alaska. As I got my stuff together, I couldn’t help but reflect on the similarities and differences from my first trip out. While I was much more confident and sure of handling airports and getting my shopping done for the village, I found that I was just as nervous to leave home. I equate this to the fact that I was moving to a whole new place again where I would know only a handful of people, and at that we’d only interacted a limited amount of times. It was as if I was starting my Alaskan adventure all over again; the knowledge of this both scared and excited me.
Before I knew it, my dad and sister were picking me up once again to drive me out to the airport. None of my “see you laters” were any easier than the first time, but once I got in line to check in for my flight, all of my anxieties were gone. I will miss my family and friends very much, but in a way it truly felt that I was coming home. I belong in Alaska at this current point in my life, and this knowledge eased all of my worries. I met up with two other tutors from my college and we made the journey to Alaska together.
While I’ve only made this trek once, I realized that I was now the veteran and they were the rookies. I was so excited as I watched their emotions throughout our trip. Unfortunately this trip was not as smooth as my first time out; we had a mechanical delay on our first flight and were delayed for three hours in Newark. This caused us to miss our connecting flight in Seattle, but luckily we were able to get on the next flight out. We made it to Anchorage and the excitement (and exhaustion from spending 14 hours traveling) hit us all; not only was I excited for myself, but I was excited that they were both experiencing this incredible journey for the first time.
After we met up with our LPSD welcome wagon and the other tutors, we headed to the place where we would spend the next two days training. Sure I’d already been trained in all of this, but it was nice to be part of the group and to be able to help out. Also, once I knew where we were staying for training, I would not have missed it for the world! We were all lucky enough to stay at an incredibly beautiful ski resort called Alyeska. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, and this was in the dark of the night. Let me just say that it felt like a very tiny vacation and I didn’t want to leave when the time came.
While the training was for the tutors, there were plenty of other LPSD folks at Alyeska for another district sponsored event. It was great to catch up with some of my friends and co-workers that I hadn’t seen since October inservice. In our free time, we made sure to take advantage of the ski resort. The other tutors and I took the tram up to the top of the slopes and we were like little kids the entire time (luckily we had the tram up to ourselves because people would have both judged and hated our girly excitement). It was incredibly breathtaking from the top and we got some great photos and talked about how lucky we all were to have this experience.
All too quickly, our training days were over and we had to head back into Anchorage to do our “marathon” shopping. The drive from Alyeska wasn’t the most fun because it was incredibly icy and I, having an Alaskan license, had to drive one of the vehicles. Our little caravan made it through safely though and we even did some sight seeing along the way. As we were driving we couldn’t help but stop for pictures when we passed some dall sheep along the side of a cliff. Then, as we got into Anchorage, we saw two moose along the side of the highway! While it was sad that they were clearly out of place, we were excited to get a glimpse of them. Alyeska and the trip into Anchorage was definitely a great experience for all of us. However, I was just as excited for the next two days in which I would get to help the rest of the girls buy what they would need to live in the bush for the next three months!
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