Going Postal

My Alaskan certificate finally made it to me! 

When you live in rural Alaska, you have to adjust to the inconsistency in the postal system. Mail only comes to villages a few times a week and that is dependent on weather and room on the planes. It takes some getting used to it, but you just have to accept that no matter what the estimated delivery date is, your packages will most likely arrive a week or so later. Sometimes larger packages take even longer, but eventually all of your mail will get to you; unless you live in Nondalton that is. 

Over the past month or two, an odd thing has been happening and I am just baffled by it. Apparently when people attempt to mail things to my address, the postal system confuses Nondalton, Alaska for North Pole, Alaska.. My dad first encountered this issue when he tried to send a package and was told that he had the wrong address. He texted me for confirmation and then had to go as far as pulling up my school’s website to prove to the woman at the post office that he had the correct address. She adamantly told him that my package would not get to me, but he sent it anyway. Two weeks later, my mom had the exact same problem at a different post office! Similarly to my dad, she knew she was correct and sent her package to me. Seemingly without issues, I received both packages about a week after they were sent. 

Mail days are fun:)  (Thanks Rachael!)

My next run-in with this issue was when I placed an order with Target in early March. After three weeks of waiting, I got an email saying my shipment saying my items had been delivered; to an address in Indiana… I was getting ready to call customer service when I got an email saying that I would be getting a refund for my items. The end of the email stated that if I didn’t initiate the return that it meant they weren’t able to deliver my package. The confusing part about this is that I have had things shipped from Target to Nondalton a few times in the past without any issues at all. It just doesn’t make sense to me because clearly there is something going on when my address gets input into the post office database. Yet none of my packages went to North Pole, so that doesn’t make sense either. 

Another teacher at the school wasn’t quite as lucky and a package that her husband sent her, from Alaska, actually went to North Pole and back twice before finally making it to her in Nondalton! In her search to find her package and figure out why this was happening, she spoke with different people in the postal system who had no answers as to why this was occurring. Even after she explained that this had happened to packages sent from NJ and PA, they blamed faulty addresses. No amount of explaining that she knows her address could convince them otherwise. For now, the problem remains a mystery and I play an annoying game of Russian Roullete in ordering online and asking for packages to be sent from back home. Oh how the quirks of living in the bush certainly keep things interesting!