I survived my first 24 hour shift!

Hey Southerners!

Well I survived my first 24 hour shift on the job. I woke up at 6am on Saturday and was up until 9am on Sunday. I spent the first half of the day doing customer service stuff (selling fish, dealing with FedEx, and shipping), cooking for all the guys, and then started my first stint as a fish processor around 8pm at night. I was at the processing facility until about 9am (13hours!). While at the processing facility I spent most of the night vacuum packing Sockeye Salmon fillets and another part of the night scraping the rib cages of the salmon in order to collect enough meat to make salmon patties. It was super tiring, but interesting work.  I've never been a part of processing any type of food before and it was a whole new experience to see it on such a large scale.

It was cool to see the process that goes into preparing all of this fish for shipment. There is a very precise way that everything must be done in order for it to run quickly and efficiently. I learned how to fillet as well (although my skills are far from good enough to package for any of the customers haha). I don't think I have ever been so tired and sore before! I slept for about four hours after my shift and then it was back to work. I managed to get a bit of sleep last night too before waking up at 2am today to start calling our East Coast customers. This schedule is pretty grueling, but I like it so far...it is definitely a crazy experience!

Also, weird coincidence...a kid from SIU (my college) came up here to work, which is coincidence by itself.  Then, I found out that he is the roommate/BFF of a kid I went to high school with and was friends with during my childhood. I can't believe I ran into someone with a mutual hometwon friend in such a remote place.  It's a small word!

Well, I hope you are all doing well. Things are pretty good here and a good temperature (50's) which I hear is the opposite of home. So good luck with the heat wave!

Love from Alaska :)