ENTERING THE 21ST CENTURY!!!

The Alaska State Fair

Yesterday, I went to the Alaska State Fair in Wasilla/Palmer (no one seems to know which town its actually in).  It was about an hour from my apartment.  The Alaskan highways connect cities and towns that are pretty isolated otherwise, as this sign demonstrates.  1 city, then 140 miles until the next city, and another 140 to the other.  Pretty isolated, though most cities have some outlying areas that sort of count as suburbs I guess.

The nice part of this of course is there are these really excellent mountain ranges you see all the while you're driving.  In some cases the mountains seem to go above the clouds.  It's really pretty.  In any event, we get to the fair and see far off in the distance a giant slingshot.  It's huge, I'd estimate about 100 feet tall.  I have no idea how it works, because it never seemed to touch the ground, and yet I'd assume it wasn't just the same 2 people going up and down for the whole time we were there.

So we get to the fair and have to park all the way in the last parking lot.  We go through the animal shows and see huge pigs and some newborn chicks and lambs and alpacas and a whole bunch of horses.  It was pretty cool.  Then we went off to look at all the booths and such.  Lots of food you'd only see at a fair.  Elephant ears, fried dough, candy apples, stuff like that.  And donut burgers.  Yeah.

At the fair was this very funny sign.  There were a lot of very funny signs, but this one definitely was the best.  I haven't heard a lot of trashing Texas since coming here, but when I was still in MA I  heard this joke that when Alaska was a state, Texas was mad it was only the 2nd largest state, so Alaska threatened to cut itself in half and make Texas the third largest state.  If everything is bigger in Texas.... what is it in Alaska?  Also, Texan environmentalists say "Don't mess with Texas" (well, all Texans say that, but the environmentalists focus on the "mess").  Alaska has signs that says "Don't trash Alaska."

Then we played some games, the carnival usual.  Fishing for plastic frogs, dart-throwing, etc.  And then it was getting late so we started heading out.  Overall, a very cool experience.  There was also this guy selling a HUGE bucket of popcorn with the Patriot's symbol on it, and he had been selling it for $35, but because it was the last day of the carnival, he offered it to me for $25.  I bargained him down to $20, but when I opened my wallet, I only had $15.  So he just sold it to me for that.  Haggled down more than half the price - felt pretty good about that.

Oh!  And I saw something incredibly..... ridiculous.  A competition involving heavy machinery.  Yeah.  This is a video in which someone had to move 10 eggs using a spoon taped to the edge of a crane.  Yeah.  Not much else to say.  Just watch the video.

Alaska!

Alright, so I landed in Anchorage shortly after noon and got picked up by this guy Micah my parents know who lives out here - he's a professor at the university.

He gave me a ride to the school I'm working at and I got to meet everyone there.  There were about 10 teachers there, and they all seemed really cool.  I got to meet the kids I'm working with and they're all adorable.  I'm really excited to start on Tuesday!

Also, this is the view from outside the school

Then my roommate came and picked me up.  She's really cool!  We came back to the apartment and I got set up.  It's a really nice place.  Not much else to say about it except we spent 45 minutes cleaning out the fridge because her roommate had left some food in there.  There was also some food there that had long expired.  Pretty gross, but we got it all out and cleaned the fridge too.

Then we went out and got dinner at something like a steakhouse.  It was called the Cattle Company.  It was very good.  There're also a some Arby's and Red Robins in the area, which I've always seen commercials for in Gloucester and Amherst but never actually been (I'm not even sure they're in Mass)...  So looks like there's a lot of restaurant options to try!

So yeah, that was my first day in Anchorage.  I'll update this blog every week or so with fun or exciting stories, and pictures whenever I get some nice ones.

Airplanes and airports

Airplanes have changed a lot since the last time I flew, which was a few years ago to go to Scotland.  There's wireless internet, for one.  In fact, I am currently writing this on the plane.  I figure once I get to Alaska I'll be so overwhelmed with those stories, I'll forget the stories of this early morning.  So here we go!

I got to the airport and the bag I was going to check in was 6 pounds overweight, which would mean it would cost $115 to check it in unless I took some weight out.  So I took my coat and my toiletries out, and carried my coat and put my toiletries in my backpack, and that added up to 6 pounds.  Great, problem solved!  Right?

I passed through security and I got pulled to a sideroom  by one of the guards - apparently there was something suspicious in my backpack.  I had no idea what it was, so she pulled out my bag of toiletries, which had toothpaste, which you can't bring on the plane (Along with cleaning your teeth, toothpaste can also be used as an explosive!).  So she gave me the offer of "so either use it all or throw it away - you can't bring it on the plane."  I'm not sure why she thought I could use half a tube of toothpaste immediately, so we threw it away.

About an hour and a half later I get on my plane, and as it turned out no one was in either of the seats next to me, which was a nice little surprise.  But nothing interesting happened on the flight.  In any event, we landed a bit late and I had to run through the airport to find my connection flight.  The only stressful part was I couldn't find any monitors to tell me what gate I should go to, but I finally did (they were in the corner of the airport, which was weird), and then I dashed over to the gate and got on the plane I'm on now.

Nothing interesting has happened, except just a moment ago I got some spray of liquid on me suddenly.  I thought it came from the air vent, but the person sitting next to me (this time I have 2 people sitting next to me, and the plane is generally more full than this morning (but I guess more people take 9:30 flights than 6:16 flights.....)) was putting some hand sanitzer on and squeezed the bottle too hard.  Oh well.  But come to think of it, how did they get that on the plane but my toothpaste was rejected?  Oh well.

OK, so we're over Canadian air space and the wireless apparently doesn't work there (it is Canada) so...... that's it for now!