A hilarious series of errors

So if you read my last post you probably realize that by now I have arrived in Galena. I haven't made any posts on Galena itself and I will later, but I want to share a hilarious series of events that had me in stitches today.
On Wednesday we started new teacher in-service and this afternoon while I was in the meetings one of the administrators came and told me that the business office didn't have my direct deposit information which is super important because we get our first paycheck (plus our signing bonuses on the 15th). It's also super important because Galena doesn't have any banks (although remote deposit on my phone does make that a lot better than when I lived in a village prior to remote deposit and mobile banking apps). We called the business office and it was discovered that they did have my direct deposit form, but I had made a mistake on my health insurance form and needed to fix that. One of my colleagues was in fact missing her direct deposit form and so our supervisor wanted us to go to the business office to correct these issues right away. The only problem was that our school is on two campuses that are about three miles apart (for a town of less than 500 people Galena is incredibly spread out) and the business office was of course located on the opposite campus from where our training was being held. Neither my colleague nor I have had our vehicles arrive and so since we didn't have our own transportation our supervisor pointed out the window and said, "see that Toyota? Why don't you two take that and go together. The keys are in the car." Our supervisor went back into the training, we picked up some things from our seats and then headed out to the car. When we got out there we realized there were two Toyotas side by side and we each thought he had been pointing to a different car. I said, "well, he said the keys were in the car..." and proceeded to look for keys hanging from the ignition. The left car had keys in the ignition and the right one didn't. So we got into the left car. My co-worker just didn't feel it looked right and we were a bit afraid we were going to take off in the wrong car so we looked around and I found a piece of mail laying face down on the console. I picked it up, turned it over and discovered it was addressed to another district employee (at least it was one we knew). We laughed and climbed out of the car. At this point my coworker wanted me to drive (originally she had wanted to drive) and I replied, "no way, I'm not driving now." We went back to the car on the right and I discovered there was a set of keys in the cupholder. We started toward the new part of town where the other school is located, but I still felt a bit nervous. I looked through the glove compartment and breathed a sigh of relief when I discovered the insurance car which said that the car was insured by the Galena City School District.
We got to the new part of town and discovered another problem. Neither of us had done any driving and we didn't actually know how to get to the school. I thought we should turn right on the road that went past one of the local stores that I recognized, but after we turned I thought we were wrong so we went back the other way. After a while we're both going, "I've never seen this before" and decide we've gone the wrong way. We go back to the original road and in fact find the school.
We take care of our business and head back to the car. I don't know what was going through our minds, but I suspect it was my fault. In the district office we had picked up a medium sized flat rate box (not a very big box if you're not familiar with U.S. priority mail boxes) that I had shipped. The box weighs a very surprising 47 pounds 6.2 ounces and is not easy to carry. I think because I was struggling with the box I walked to the first car, put the box in the back seat and climbed in the passenger seat. My coworker followed (if this isn't how it actually transpired, I'll still accept the responsibility). We started driving back to the GILA campus and my coworker is like, "is this the right car?" Then the seat belt alarms started chiming (no one in Galena wears a seat belt) and my coworker said, "It didn't do this on the way." I look in the glove compartment and don't see the insurance card where I left it. Finally I found it, but it was buried under other documents. I was starting to worry we were in the wrong car, but after finding an insurance card registered again to the Galena City School District I reassured myself. Right after I finished reassuring myself, my coworker tells me she had to move the seat when she got in. At that point, I exclaim, "We are in the wrong car!" I remembered that we got into a car parked near the stairs leading into the school, but when we had arrived two other employees and been parked over there in a truck and I had watched them get out. The view was wrong to have been parked anywhere near where we grabbed this car from. My coworker also pointed out that the keychain was bit different. We drive back to school and I'm dying from laughter and embarrassment, park the car where we found it and walk over to the correct car. As we approach I notice the window is rolled down and remember I that I had left the window rolled down. My coworker found jacket on the seat. Laughing all the way we drove the correct car back to campus stopping at my apartment to drop off the really heavy box. We got back just after the training session wrapped up for the day.

Final countdown

Tonight at dinner my aunt asked me if I was packed [for Galena]. I just looked at her. She then said, "What am I talking about you still have..." "3 days I replied." She counted them out and determined I had three more days and four more nights before I depart. My flight is on Monday at 6:00 am.
I have actually achieved quite a lot, but it feels like a never-ending list. I have had a physical, filled out a million new-hire documents, ordered transcripts, and requested a new copy of my teacher certification (I have to give the district an original copy and my previous district kept my original district copy of my certification). Last Saturday I shipped nine Rubbermaid Roughneck totes and this week on bought a Yamaha Kodiak 450. I pretty excited about the machine. I arranged shipping through the Yamaha dealer. They have a contract with Everets Air Cargo which supposedly gives me a better rate and they will deliver the four-wheeler to Everets, fill out the Hazmat form as well as the waybill. I was pleased with the shipping rate. The total to ship (by air) was $766.79. I was figuring it would be somewhere well over a $1000 so this was a nice surprise (The total to ship my totes was about $285; a decent price in my opinion as well). I still have a number of things to do, including, but not limited to: shopping for groceries, packing said groceries and changing my cell phone provider. When I lived in the bush before (if you go to my earliest blog posts they are about living in the village of Kobuk in the Northwest Arctic Borough) I had GCI as my cell phone provider. GCI is by far the best provider for Bush Alaska (matter of fact in many villages it is the only provider), but it's an Alaskan cell phone (and cable and Internet) provider and so when I was living in Los Angeles I switched to AT&T. From what I've been told AT&T has voice service in Galena, but not data. GCI has 3G.
 For those of you who are accustomed to always having 4G or LTE this probably doesn't sound good, but it makes me quite happy. When I lived in Kobuk the service was only GPRS. I would click on a page and then go brush my teeth or do other chores before coming back to check and see if the page had loaded. Internet service in Kobuk was also really slow (and rather expensive) so I didn't bother to get Internet (I just used the school's Internet - the school was about 40 yards from my house) and my GPRS connection. When I moved to Nome the wireless and Internet service both improved, but neither was what you would consider good. When I arrived in Nome GCI wireless has Edge service. I also paid $70 a month for 1 Mbps Internet with a data cap of 10 GB per month. While I was in Nome the Internet improved. I still paid $70/month, but my speed increased to 3 Mbps. My data connection also improved. Nome upgraded to 3G (at the time AT&T still only had Edge so it was nice to be able to access the Internet better than my friends on AT&T). I'll have to see what I can get for Internet, but it seems that the possibilities are better in Galena today then they were in Nome a few years ago. Data is without a doubt better (and cheaper) so I'm not worried about that. Also, I should be able to port my number since it was originally a GCI number, if I can't things will be tough because my phone number is on so many things...
The other big thing I need to do is go grocery shopping. One of the things everyone who lives in the Bush does when they come into town is go grocery shopping (matter of fact it isn't unusual for high school students coming for sports and other reasons to shop for their families). I will stock up on meat, veggies and other perishable items which will undoubtedly be really expensive. Here is a link to my blog on prices in Kotzebue (back in 2011). I will pack the items into Rubbermaid totes because among other things they weigh only three pounds, much less than a suitcase. They are also easier to handle and tend to fit better on bush planes as well. I meant to take a picture of my totes as we took them to the airport last Saturday, but I forgot. Nonetheless, you can read about (and see pictures) of when I shipped to Kobuk. Looking back on my shipping to Kobuk post I see that 1) I packed things other than totes 2) it was raining when we went to the airport and 3) there were lots of people. I must say this year I shipped only totes (I've learned they are much, much better) and the day I shipped my totes this year was a sunny day. Also, I guess since it was still July at the time the post office wasn't crowded at all. Anchorage requires you to take shipments of boxes greater than two to the airport post office. The airport post office has a hand truck customers can use, but it can also get really busy. We went shortly after the post office opened and there was no one there. It was easy and quick to ship everything.
I'll get to Galena on Monday and start settling in. Hopefully, by the end of next week, I will be more settled and can start focusing on the start of the school year.

Isn't she beautiful?

Here are a few other pictures from this summer...

Anchorage is home to Lake Hood the world's largest seaplane base.

This picture was taken at 11:17 pm.