Wanna-be Alaskan

I’m not sure if I mentioned it yet or not, but every day the rugs in the elevator say what day of the week it is. I, being the blonde I am, didn’t realize that and on Saturday I asked, “Why does it say Saturday on the floor in the elevator? Yesterday it said Friday”…duh! So every since Saturday, I’ve been taking a picture of the rug in the morning so when I look through my pictures, I can tell which were from what day. (Genius, I know).

Tuesday we were in the Russian town of Sitka! Since my great great grandparents came directly from Russia, it was really exciting for my Grandpa Bladdick and our family to see the heritage his grandparents brought to America.

The famous St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral is in the center of town and my third cousin used to be the priest there awhile ago. We got a tour of the church and had a chance to look at the Russian stores where I bought a necklace. The necklace is a pendant with the Orthodox Cross on it. Even though I am Lutheran, I really liked what the Orthodox stood for. Of course, the cross stands for Jesus dying to save our sins, but there are two horizontal bars in above and below the normal horizontal lines that a Catholic or Lutheran church would show. The three bars symbolize the Father, Son and Holy Spirit trinity, but also the scene and meaning of Jesus’ death also. The top one shows the sign that Pontious Pilot nailed above his head that says “Jesus, King of the Jews.” The top bar is slanted upwards towards the right hand side of Jesus symbolizing the thieve that asked Jesus for forgiveness before he died. The first necklace I picked up was a whopping $150, so I bought the $12 one instead.

Not only did we get to see the town of Sitka, but we saw whales! We took a catamaran out around the islands of Sitka and saw two humpback whales! We also saw sea otters and eagles. It was a great wilderness day.

Tuesday night involved a great dinner, a hilarious magician/comedian and a dessert extravaganza! Being the nice sister that I am, I let Brendan sleep in the big bed and I got the stupid pull-out. I slept horribly and woke up with a bad sore throat and stomach ache. I watched about four straight hours of ESPN, National Treasure and Along Came Polly. Like I said, I didn’t sleep.