For the last two summers I have been working at a fishery in Alaska. You are probably wondering how I ended up working there. My best friend happened to be working up there for a few years and had just been promoted to be a manager. I had always wanted to go work there for the summer and he said I could probably work in his section. So, I decided to go.

I had never been on a plane before up until this point so this in itself was pretty big for me. I was very nervous. I got off the plane to the smallest airport I had ever seen. It was about the size of a classroom. The town that would be my home for the next two and a half months had a population size of about 3,000 people. My best friend picked me up from the “airport” and showed me around the town. The downtown area where the fishery was and all the stores was just one block long. I thought, “wow, this is going to be very interesting.” I was pretty excited but nervous because I had no idea what to expect.

I was going to be living with my friend at his trailer for the summer. My home was going to be a mattress on the floor that we “bought” from the Salvation Army. What I mean is, we saw a mattress close to midnight that someone had left in front of the store and we said, “we’ll take it.” My friend had told me that we would be working long hours and I was all for it. I came to make some money, and he was not kidding about the hours.

On a typical day I started work at 5am or 6am and worked until about 10pm or midnight. The work was not complicated but it was a lot. I did several different tasks there like traying fish or filling up baskets of fish from a conveyor belt of fish that would never end… I remember waking up after about one week of working and feeling like someone had beat my body all over with a baseball bat. I was hurting so bad. I asked my friend, “Is the pain going to go away?” He said, “yeah, don’t worry.” “Your body will get used to it.” After about two weeks my whole body stopped hurting and changed to just one random part of my body that would hurt each morning. I was okay with that though.

Even though I was working some crazy hours, I still wanted to hang out with my friends for a little after work and get a bite to eat or have a drink or two. My logic was: “I am going to feel like shit when I wake up anyway. So, why not?” For almost an entire month I was getting about 2-4 hours of sleep. I thought that a human being would die with that little sleep but apparently not. Eventually, I slept about six hours one night and woke up with my uvula swollen. ( You know that punching bag in the back of your mouth.) I was freaked out because it felt like I was going to swallow that thing, but once again my friend said, “don’t worry, it’ll go away.”

We worked long hours and it really made me appreciate the value of a dollar. I had a blast though. While I worked I would always be cracking jokes and made some great friends. There are some really interesting characters that worked there. There were college students from the Ukraine and Mexico as well as people in there fifties and sixties. There was a big range of people. I really enjoyed working there and am very thankful and blessed to have had such an amazing experience.