School's out for summer! The students all graduated on May 5th and then we flew with them up to Anchorage that night so that they could go back to their villages. I went as a chaperone. There were two flights, one leaving at 11:30 pm and the other leaving at 12:30am. Of course I was on the later one. That is my life. The flight was delayed, but we only had to sit on the plane for about an hour and a half, so in my Alaska Airlines experience, not bad. Then we were underway. Normally planes don't fly directly from Sitka to Anchorage, normally we only fly to Ketchikan and Juneau, but because of the volume of students we had two chartered flights that came in. So, I wasn't really prepared for what chaperoning at the airport entailed. We got to Anchorage around 3 am, and might I just say what everyone is now thinking, eew. Yes, it was awful. I thought we were watching the kids until their flights, but really they are sort of on their own unless a disaster happens and that is what we are in the airport for. I went down to baggage claim were the other chaperones were already sitting and wished for sleep. Two of the MEHS staff chaperones ditched me and Jonathan (another AmeriCorps) at the airport to go to the hotel. Harsh, I know. So they left and then it was me (I was sick, by the way and was exhausted) and Jonathan. It was about 4am now. So, we played scrabble on his iPad, I destroyed him, of course, and wished for sleep. It seemed like time was crawling at an exponentially slow pace. The airport makes all these announcements, at the top of the hour and half after they tell you the time and what the weather is like in Anchorage. At 15 after and 45 they would warn you about how a lot of baggage looked alike and to check your tags. And finally at 10 after and 40 after they would tell you that the airport was a non-smoking facility and that you could only smoke in the outside designated areas. We decided that around 7:30 am we would go see about breakfast and get me a really large caffeinated beverage or several small caffeinated beverages depending on what they had. There aren’t a whole lot of options going on outside of security in the Anchorage airport. There was Cinnabon, Starbucks and Hudson News. I don't like coffee or cinnamon, so that severely limited my already slim options. I went with a cinnamon bun and a couple of sodas from the newsstand. However, I soon realized that I still don't like cinnamon even when I am really hungry and ate the top and outside. The soda, however, was like ambrosia sent from Heaven. Glorious caffeinated beverage, I love you. We had to take our luggage upstairs with us when we went to get our breakfast stuff because when we were callously ditched at the airport they left us with our suitcases. Rude. On the way down, we took the escalator. Now, as some of you may know, the escalator is not my favorite mode of transportation. So Jonathan got on and I was trying to maneuver it so that my suitcase went on first and then me. Well, that turned out to be harder then I thought and the suitcase got away from me to go barreling towards Jonathan (currently unaware with his back to me). I yelled down at him to look out and now he keeps telling everyone that I tried to kill him. False. Had I really been trying to injure, I would not have yelled the warning as the suitcase hurtled towards him.
So, we were back in baggage claim for a while chilling on surprisingly uncomfortable benches when everything blew up at once. The valedictorian of the class came down and told us that they wouldn't let her check in because she didn't have her ID on her. I then asked if she was over 18, because below that it is not necessary, and of course she is 18. Dang it. The ID is with her boyfriend in his checked luggage and since he is of course not a student with MEHS he is still in Sitka. Cool. He is travelling to Anchorage this morning and will hopefully get his luggage there, too. A lot of the students’ luggage didn't make it because of weight and balance and the fact that we had 200 kids all checking 3 bags. But, what person travels without their ID? Seriously. Children. Ugh. So we are preparing to deal with this and then we look over and there is a police officer with one of our students. Great. His face is all messed up and he is quite QUITE intoxicated and a little belligerent. Sweet. I love getting ditched at the airport. So, we make the kid sit and talk to the officer. She leaves and the kid passes out on the baggage claim benches. So, now we have to call one of the staff people to tell her about this delightful occurrence. She was less than thrilled. So, she has to leave another kid at the doctors and come deal with drunk kid. Jonathan used to be an EMT and so every once in a while he would go over and check on the kid. At one point we were talking and I was all angry and outraged and Jonathan said to look on the bright side, he could be throwing up everywhere. Fair point. It could have been worse. The kid lives in a remote village and when we went to rebook his flight, because he obviously couldn't fly, there was no available option out until Sunday morning. It is Friday. Cool kid. The valedictorian’s boyfriend came in and they had to pull his bags off the plane for her to get her wallet out, but at least one problem down. Some of the chaperones that came in where the coaches, so eventually after sleeping beauty woke up, one of the coaches came to get him and take him back to the hotel.
Also, as a side note, I didn't realize how much my swearing filter works overtime until this trip. It is difficult to focus on not swearing when all of your energy is going towards staying awake and alert (ish). So a few words might have slipped out several times over the course of the morning, but really I blame exhaustion and a faulty filter. Also, my best friend from grade school a little bit. She could make a sailor blush with her language. Finally, we got the go ahead to leave the airport, but we had no car. There were two rental cars, both of which were with other people. We were going to take a cab when Jonathan had to brilliant idea to call the hotel and see if they had a shuttle. I call that brilliant because we were going on 33 hours awake, and with me being sick, it felt like I hadn't slept in a week. When we got to the hotel and ditched our suitcases, we went in search of food. We were going to get pizza, but when we walked out of the hotel there was a Qdoba right there! I freaked and made Jonathan go there. It was glorious. I took a picture on my phone and sent it to several people. Fantastical! Then we went back to the hotel where I was sharing a room with another female MEHS staff member, she was talking to me and so I was answering from the bed, but as soon as she paused in her words I was like, Go, Go, Go! And promptly fell asleep until 11pm. It was amazing. I don't think I moved an inch the whole time. I spent 5 days in Anchorage, it is a cool city, but as exciting as it was to be in "the big city", all I kept thinking was that I bet Omaha is bigger than this. It definitely doesn't have the same spectacular view though. Mountains everywhere and at one point we were high enough to see the Cook Inlet. Beautiful. We were able to glimpse Denali, but didn't go. Lame I know. I wanted to, but alas it was not meant to be. I got back into Sitka around 11pm and went home where my funny roommates had waited up to see me!
