We Made It!

Sorry it's been so long for an update...we have had NO access to internet at all.

OK...Day 1
I had the "bad" idea of having a sleep over the night before we were supposed to leave for the trip.  Sheila ended up coming over too!  It was a combination of playing wii dancing games, Glee Karokee, movies, hair braiding and nail painting...a very typical sleep over....with A LOT of people.  Sheila didn't go home until 3 am and the rest of us didn't go to bed until around 4:30 am.....GAH.  I was woken up starting at 8 am.....so the moral of the story is that there was very little sleep :S  Sheila called at 10:45 saying the planes were coming early....EARLY!  So I woke everyone up and it was a mad dash to get to the planes with all the luggage.  Sheila went in on the morning flight so she was there to meet the first group, I went in with the second plane and Oscar went with the third.  It all worked out, no one was left behind and all the luggage made it....wheew!

When we all got into Bethel we had different places to go.  Sheila took her group to go get ID's so they could fly.  I took my group directly to the airport and started to hand stuff out.  We got bright green ducked tape to put on all the luggage so we would know whose luggage was a part of our groups (works great!)  We also got each student a blue, draw string back pack so that they will have something light to carry their smaller stuff while we're touring.  Inside the backpack they got a small notebook, to keep a journal of the trip, and a pen and pencil.  So I handed all that out, with a marker for them to put their names on their bags.  Then they filled out ID tags for their luggage....we were a well oiled machine my friends.  Then Oscar's group showed up and we repeated the process.  By the time Sheila's group showed up we had it down AND we could check in our bags!! Mind you it's about 2 pm at this point and our plane doesn't leave until 8:30 pm....we have awhile.  Checking in went very smoothly and we were off to Brother's Pizza for lunch. 

Smiling...waiting for pizza

Chaperones

 




After lunch it was sit around and wait time.  We had roughly 4 hours and let me tell you....they were not impressed!  There was a lot of whining and pacing going on BUT eventually we made in on the plane to Anchorage, AK.  One of our students had NEVER been on a plane before so she was VERY nervous....there was a lot of squealing going on.

We landed in Anchorage and everything went very smoothly going to the hotel.  We got our baggage...thanks to the green duct tape :D  and our shuttle for the hotel arrived right when we walked out of the airport!  We checked in and got everyone in their rooms.  We passed out t shirts that we got for the students.  Some of the students had parents or other family in town so we had visitors for awhile.  Needless to say it was another night with very little sleep. 

ANCHORAGE!

That's day one!  I'll blog separately for each day so they are not so long.