On my way to Anchorage

Right now I’m in Bethel spending the day at the district office. There are six teachers, including myself, on our way to an RTI Conference in Anchorage. For some reason, though, I was scheduled to be on tomorrow’s jet and they are all in the air right now on their way to Anchorage. Ah well, I figured I should take this time to write this long-overdue blog post.
We were really unsure whether the pilot would land yesterday in Newtok - the sky was foggy and we couldn’t even see the island across the river. Luckily we had all of our sub plans made and had packed either last night or this morning, because right after school, I over heard Henry telling Paula “Their plane is 15 minutes out.” Typical example of lack of communication! So I turned around and met Emily, who had also just found out our plane was about to land, and we went our separate ways to gather all our luggage. I ran home, changed into my snow pants, grabbed my luggage, and started the half a mile jog up to the airstrip. As I rummaged in my pockets for my gloves, I found my phone and realized I should probably tip off Matt, who as a first year shouldn’t have to be stressed out any more than he already is to have a missed his flight to civilization. So I called him and he hadn’t heard either. When I made it to the airport, with Emily and Grant not too far behind me, I could see a figure hauling it to try and beat the plane that was now over our heads on the descent. Anyway, They landed and we took off, and it was an incredibly bumpy flight. I looked out the window and saw the Bering Sea below, which means we would shortly be landing in Tununak to drop off the cargo sitting beside me. Soon we were forming an assembly line, passing the boxes of food out the plane to the villagers. The pilot clipped in extra chairs in the newly emptied space to take a few passengers to Bethel.
When we landed, we hailed a cab, checked in to our hotel rooms, grabbed some grub from a local favorite restaurant - VIP - and excitedly discussed what we could do in Anchorage.
This morning I headed on to the D.O. What does one do in Bethel, you might ask? Good question. This is my to-do list today: 1. Get ahead on lesson plans. 2. Walk to the store. 3. Maybe buy something from the store (my stomach still cringes at the high prices) 4. Eat lunch at Subway (yay!!) 5. Return to the D.O. and find an air mattress to sleep on tonight. Yep, that’s about it. Actually, I might get lucky and stay at a friend’s house - I haven’t ran into her yet, but if so, she’ll probably house me for tonight and maybe even tote me to the airport tomorrow!