Friday, August 10, 2018

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.

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