Wow, where to start… Things here in King Salmon have been very busy! It was only a few days ago that I flew into King Salmon with a hang-over, but it feels like it’s already been at least a week.
My last day plus some in Anchorage was fun filled with Olin and Amanda. While Amanda did her crazy accounting job (which is actually a decent amount of hours at the moment), Olin took me out to do last minute shopping for fishing gear… and anything else I had forgotten earlier. By the time I shipped everything to myself I truly did feel like one of those Master Card commercials:
$300 for food
$800 for gear
$200 to ship food and gear to myself
A summer at Katmai National Park…. Priceless (at least I hope so)
I can’t believe how nervous I still am, and I’m already half way there. I guess my nervousness comes from the fact that I haven’t received even half of the food I’ve sent to myself. We leave for the camp on Friday and I am allowed to only take 100lbs of food and gear with me. It has to be enough to get by for one or two weeks. I have no idea what-so-ever how I’m going to do it! Also, the lakes are still frozen. This does not help my decision to fish for supplementary food. I can’t ice fish! Long story, short, I hope that the rest of my food gets to me and that I figure out how to pack it.
I’m a bit stressed you could say. Not as stressed as I was when I was working on my masters… but stressed enough.
Training has helped keep some of that stress under wraps, because the park service keeps us very busy. So far we’ve filled out paper work, watched a bunch of videos, took a tour of the King Salmon area (not the “city”, because that takes 3 seconds… literally), and flight safety training. Tomorrow we will be doing the “water” part of Water Ditching Training. Basically what they will be doing is simulating a water plane crash using some weird pc pipe rig. We will have to show our trainers that we know how to escape a plane if it crashes into a lake. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, but we are doing it in a warm pool according to the rangers. I suppose that’s a bonus. I can’t even see me in a lake here… at least not yet.
The only other thing really that is causing frustration in my life is my uniform. It is so not fair that I have to order all of my uniform using the crappy internet here and not knowing how it’s going to fit when it gets here. There is a return policy of 30 days, but if you keep returning items it will be the end of the season before you have all of you uniform.
As far as good things go, I have a great roommate, I’ve been to a Naknek beach party, I’ve already had salmon for one dinner, and my co-workers and I went to the King Co for a Cinco de Mayo party.
My roommate is wonderful so far. :) She’s an anthropology major. She finished her masters in New Zealand. She speaks German. She plays flute. She’s creative. It seems like we’re a pretty good match. I’m excited! I think it’s amazing that our supervisor randomly put us together and we just lucked out.
I suppose it’s time for me to make dinner… with the little amount of food I have. *sadly shakes head* Dang post office.
I hope everyone is well. I miss you all immensely already. It’s weird being disconnected. I think it’s something I need to get used to though. Hopefully I will. *crosses fingers*
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