Arriving in Juneau, AK/Day 1 - Orientation

I got into Juneau late last night. I gave up my aisle seat on the flight from Anchorage to Juneau to a man so he could sit next to his wife (and I did this despite the fact he was wearing a Cubs jersey!). I ended up sitting next to a man who is the superintendent of the Kake, AK school district. He is originally from Detroit, MI but retired from his school there to move to Alaska with his wife. His school district has 85 kids, K-12 (7 in the class of 2010!). We discussed the issues of truency and overprotecting parents and tribal leaders and how this can lead to complacency amongst some of the smaller villages in Alaska.

I got to the University of Alaska - Southeast (Go Spikes!) around 11:30 PM. I am going to be living in a four person apartment. The lower level has a living room with couches, chairs, and a kitchen table, as well as a fully equipped kitchen. The upper level has four, single bedrooms and a bathroom. Lucky for me - I am the only one currently living in this huge apartment!

As promised, I took the 8:22 AM bus from DeHart's to SEARHC. After months of email correspondence and phone tag I finally met Dr. Kim Hort. She gave me a quick tour of the clinic before we headed over to human resources to start my orientation. I completed orientation with two other women. Both women were in their fifties and were in Alaska to take a break from the grind of city life to offer their medical services to SEARHC. There women were so much fun to be around - we laughed and joked all day.

One, Rosalind, works for a company called Comforce. She is a medical coder (issues pertaining to patient billing) and she gets sent to small clinics all over the Northwest United States to train employees on newer, advanced billing systems. The other, Patricia, is retired Navy. She decided she wanted to become a nurse following her tour of duty - and here she is today. I really enjoyed meeting these women and am glad we will all be in the same building.

The three of us suffered through a HIPAA video (well, technically, they suffered through the video while I read Peter King's MMQB) before we actually got to meet some of SEARHC's employees. We discussed the mission, values, and ideas of SEARHC and learned about proper medical safety. It was a very basic orientation, but I did learn a few interesting things. One of the coolest things is that I have access to SEARHC's physical training facility and locker rooms = I can lift weights and use the stationary bikes and treadmills before or after work each day.

At the end I got my badge and swipe card and returned to speak with Dr. Hort. We set up a meeting for tomorrow morning and I headed to Wal-Mart to do some grocery shopping. I bought lunch meat, frozen dinners, and a bunch of snacks. One thing that I will never take for granted again is using my car to transport groceries. This morning I had a nice, 10 minute walk down a trail to the bus stop. Well... the afternoon walk was uphill while holding six bags of groceries.

I decided to get out and explore Auke Bay (the picture at the top of the blog is a a view I get to see every single day). I used my Garmin watch and began to run. I found a nice trail along the bay and eventually made my way to the other side of the University of Alaska campus. Vanderbilt may have finally manicured lawns and imposing Magnolia trees, but nothing can compare to the two large totem poles right in front of the dining hall here. Pretty neat.

It was an eventful day. I am now officially unpacked, settled in, oriented, and ready for the fun to begin! I'm sitting in bed typing (9:15 PM) and as I look out of my window the sky is still blue and bright. What a cool place!