Feeling Better Than Ok In The AK...

So I cannot say how much I have loved Alaska because I just can't seem to find the perfect words to describe what I feel here. There is just a connection that I have felt here that I seem to have been lacking in my life previously.

Something that has changed for me on a personal level is my reliance on my Heavenly Father and my attitude and outlook on life. I love the person I have become here and I am going to do everything that I can to hold on to that when I go home.

So to update you on the goings on up here... On Sunday I went to Church which was great because I love going to Church up here. There is only a small branch and the members are wonderfully welcoming and loving. We were invited over to a members home in the evening to play games. It was great fun. Since coming up here Catherine and Brinlee have taught me the game of Scum. I am sad to say that I am not very good at this game but I do enjoy the social aspect of the game. Well Scum is what we played at the Howard's (the family who invited us over). I was scum or in the bottom three for the whole time we were there except for the very last game where I moved from scum to 3rd place on a table of 8 people it was great. I was so excited. Catherine seemed to be excited that Stephen who for our time there was always King got kicked down to the position of scum for the last game.

All in all I may not make a ton of money here this summer but I know that I will have done something even better. I have made great new friends, had totally new experiences, learned to rely on myself and the Lord more, and been able to move past my negative bitter attitude.

Fun With The Crew

So I am one of the older ones on my crew. Most of the members are 18 or 19, so I feel just a little old. :) But we all have a lot of fun together, like yesterday we went on a great little trip to the Valdez Glacier, a fish hatchery, Bridal Vail Falls, and Horsetail Falls.

We had a great time and I just thought I would put a few pictures on here so you can see the crew.

This is Jacob and Caleb

This is Ashton and Colton.

This is Garth and Birnlee. Brinlee is trying to be all ganster.

This is the Valdez Glacier (I thought that there should be more ice).

This is Catherine and Stephen Blakeslee. Aren't they a cute couple? Just kidding they are brother and sister.

This is some of the crew: Mark, Shelby, Me, Eric, Ashton, Brinlee, Garth, George, Catherine, Stephen, Camille, and Lily is kneeling in front.

Valdez Alaska

So I am have been in Alaska for a few weeks and I just have to say that I don't know that I have ever been anywhere this beautiful! Lets start at the beginning...

The flights here were awesome I met some great people and the flight from Anchorage to Valdez was the most beautiful flight that I have ever been on! Then I got to Peter Pan Sea Roods I had a little of a breakdown because I was the only white person around. Now I do not say that to be racist because I am not, but when I got my room key and grabbed my bags I had to walk down the street and on every side there were people smoking and staring at me. It was very stressful. I called home and stressed out and cried a lot but by the next morning I was doing better. After I went for a walk around the harbor I was doing SO much better. I was just so so amazed at how much better I felt.

This is Peter Pan Sea Foods where I work.

This is my dorm. The top floor anyway.

I started training at work a couple of days later and I was way excited to just be doing something. This is how work goes...

There are cans that come off the canlines and we "rake" the cans into these metal carts called bussies. Now bussies are about 4 feet tall and when they are totally full of cans they weigh around 1600 pounds. There are 8 layers in a bussy of "tall" cans (tall cans are 14.75 ounces) and there are 17 layers of "half pound" cans in a bussy (half pound cans are 7 ounces). So anyway we rake the cans into these bussies and then the bussies are wheeled in to the the retorts. Retorts are large tubes that cook the cans with steam. Ten bussies can fit in a retort and we have 7 retorts, well number 7 only holds 8 bussies, so we can be cooking 68 bussies of cans at a time. Go ahead do the math I dare you!!

After the cans are cooked you have to remove them from the retorts and take them to the cooling room. So you go into the hot retorts and then go into the cooling room where it is open to the outside and has more than a dozen fans blasting cool air 24/7. Most of the time this is a relief but I think that is how I got my cold.

Next the cans are taken from the cooling room to the pallet area. They are put on a conveyor belt and then a magnet comes down picks them up and takes them

to a pallet. In the pallet area there are several jobs, they are: strap; you pull a strap to take the cans from the bussy to the conveyor belt, strap assistant; you are on the other side of the strap making sure cans don't fall, quality assurance; you watch for wet, dented, or dirty cans, two void positions; you make sure there are no voids before the magnet picks up the section of cans, magnet; you put the pallet down and make sure that all the cans are on the pallet and you also place a layer of cardboard between each layer of cans (there are are 8 layers or cans on a pallet with 169 cans per layer), controls; you control the magnet and you help with banding, banding; you use plastic strips to hold the layers on the pallet, and finally Saran wrap where you control the machine that wraps the pallet and put on the labels for the pallet. The pallet is then taken away on a fork lift and placed in a metal containers for transport.

Yes I know I just described in way too much detail all that I can possibly do here but well I actually have the time right now so why not.

This is the small boat harbor down the street and around the corner from my dorm.

This is a view from around Valdez. I just think that it is so beautiful here.

This is the bear that I saw a few days after I got here. Isn't he (or she) the cutest! I wasn't more that 7 or 8 feet away from him (or her).