I had to buy all the groceries and supplies I would need for the 13 weeks I'll be in Alaska.
Step 1: Buy Rubbermaid totes that all things will be packed in, which will then be shipped to the village.
Step 2: Go to Costco and get a ton of things (e.g. 45 boxes of mac and cheese, 48 packages of Ramen, 5 pounds of Minute rice, one pound of pasta, 3 jars of sauce, 90 mini-boxes of cereal, 6 loaves of bread, 12 boxes of box milk, a pretty hefty serving of ground beef and chicken breasts, Four packages of Kraft Singles, 3 pounds of cream cheese, 48 cans of soup ect...)
Step 3: Go to Fred Myer (like fancy Wal-Mart) and get everything that you're not buying in bulk
I don't have a picture of all of that, but I have a receipt and here's a tally of what was bought at Freddies
- 4 bags of bagels, 6 in a bag
- 2 boxes of granola bars
- Jelly
- Tupperware
- 2 bags microwave popcorn
- a pitcher
- 409 cleaner
- Febreeze spray
- 10 yogurts
- Toilet Paper
- Paper Towels
- Ziploc Bags
- Tissues
- Aluminum Foil
- Milano cookies
- Vegetable Oil
- Lysol Cleaning Wipes
- Hot chocolate mix
- Reeses cups, Swedish Fish, M & M's, hershey's chocolate bars, Snickers
- Paper Plates
- Refillable Water Bottle
- Shredded Cheese
- Bath Towel (I couldn't remember packing one, and I didn't want to take chances)
- Muffin Mix and Muffin tins
- Goldfish crackers
- Bailey's non-alcoholic coffee creamer
- bag of Dorito's
- Instant Mashed Potatoes
- Coffee
- Pretzel's
- Beef Jerkey
- Souvenir Alaska Coffee Mug
- White Cheddar Cheez Its
- Hand Soap (3)
- Dawn Dish Soap
- Sponges
- Sugar
- Snapple Iced tea
- Starbucks Frappuccinos
- A pillow
I realize that sounds like a lot, but I have to plan for anything I might be craving for the next 3 months.
Total Costs:
5 Totes: $10 ea. = $50
Costco = $289. 32
Fred Myer = $191. 80
= $531.12
I realize this seems like a lot, but imagine if you had to buy EVERYTHING you needed from the grocery store in 3 month chunks, I imagine it would equal at least $500.
Moving on to the next phase...
Step 4: Packing everything you just bought. This was by far the worst step. It might be the most stressful thing I have ever done in my life. Here's how it breaks down.
I can take 3 bags on the plane, plus my backpack and personal item. Everything here has to weigh less than 50 pounds.
Anything else I have to mail. Each tote has to weigh less than 70 pounds.
Let me just give you a clue about everything that I had to mail.
Now, I have five totes. One tote is designated for my frozen/refrigerated foods and that comes with me on the plane because I only had two suitcases. That was hard because then that tote has to weigh less than 50 pounds and I have huge things of frozen veggies, fruits, chicken breasts, and ground beef. Also in that tote, any foods that I have to have with me immediately. Since I will be mailing the other totes, they get to my house when they get there and I really have no say about any of that. So in my freeze tote, I had anything that needed to be frozen, and a couple packages of mac and cheese, some ramen, and some soup. Basically, just essential things I can survive on until the other totes come.
Here's a look as I started to pack them
The reason there are so few cans in this one is that the big yellow thing is my laundry detergent, and I want to make sure the weight was spread evenly between the totes.
I was doing so good, until I hit a wall. I just could not fit any more stuff in the totes, and I still had about 60 boxes of cereal and 20 boxes of mac and cheese and essentially all of my paper products, all my bread...it was just a nightmare. I even did little tricks like taking the granola bars out of the boxes and just shoving them in the cracks. I took maybe half the mac and cheese out of the boxes and put them in individual ziploc bags. I even took my box of sugar and put that in a ziploc bag.
Thanks to the amazing teachers at the school district, they helped me re-arrange some things, and that helped. I also ended up needing to send out a separate cardboard box, mostly full of paper products. And the package of box milk just got sent as-is, it didn't go in a tote.
I also ending up stuffing my suitcases with toilet paper, I unrolled paper towels and flattened them out and stuffed them in all corners of my suitcase. I took the little boxes of cereal out of the boxes and shoved them in every crevice of my suitcase (in my shoes...everywhere). My bailey's coffee creamer ended up coming in my backpack with me. And potentially the most hilarious part of this adventure. Even after I had packed everything, I couldn't fit the 4 packages of Kraft singles and two bags of macaroni and cheese in anything. So what ended up happening is that I stuffed it all in my coat pockets. That's right, I was walking around with what was at least one pound of cheese in my pockets. It was the only solution, trust me. All this packaging and arranging is what made me call this post Tetris Queen. This is what real-life tetris feels like.
Like I said, I ended up having to ship all via the USPS. Here's the cost breakdown of each tote (and package).
27 lbs.- $14.84
57 lbs. - $20.81
64 lbs.- $21.70
57 lbs.- $20. 61
29 lbs.- $15.44
8 lbs.- $9.01
TOTAL = $102.41
This was Saturday. Cut to today.
We show up at the 'airport.' I use this term loosely. A more appropriate description would be a waiting room that has planes in the back of it. There's no security to go through, there's no food to buy, it's very low key.
TAH-DAH!
It was a lovely building, but I don't know that I would use the word airport to describe it. They had hides of coyote, bear, moose antlers, and wolverine.
So all the tutors and all the teachers that were helping us departed today. The first group, the group going south, left at about 10. The next group, the group going north, left at about 11. Where does this leave me you ask? I was on a flight at 2 which had about 5 other people going to Kokhanok, so they put us all on one flight going together. So everyone had departed on their planes and I'm just hanging out at the 'airport.' The woman working at the counter comes up to me at about noon and tells me that there will not be a flight to Kokhanok today. It has been raining like crazy for the past two days and since the runway in Kokhanok is dirt, not gravel, it would be unsafe to fly the plane in today. Cue me panicking just a little bit. I call Mr. Rick Luthi who is in charge of HR and has been an incredible resource through this whole process. He has me ask the woman a couple questions, none of which turned out any leads. So what Rick decides to do is put me up in a hotel for the night and I'll catch a flight out tomorrow. I was so glad he had a plan. He was in the 'Valley' which is about 50 miles outside of Anchorage and he drove back to the 'airport' to get me and bring me to a hotel. By the time he came and got me, it was about two. I was so unbelievably hungry while I was waiting that I started eating the uncooked macaroni and cheese noodles that I had in my pocket. Listen, I was desperate.
So right now I'm at the Holiday Inn Express in Anchorage and I'll take a shuttle tomorrow morning to the 'airport' to hopefully take my plane in Kokhanok. If, for some reason that I pray doesn't happen, my flight is delayed or cancelled again tomorrow, I can come back to the hotel and wait again. I'm told this is the reality of bush living, and since I have no control of this, I'm choosing not to stress.
Right now, I'm just trying to sit back and enjoy the adventure :)
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