Kristin's Kapers : 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.