Life is short....

As many of you know, Katie is the other first grade teacher that I will be working with this school year in Metlakatla.  It just so happens, she is also from Colorado and even attended University of Northern Colorado, the same college as me.  Crazy enough, we never met until we found out we were both heading to the same school in Alaska.  It has been a blessing to have another person from home throughout this adventure.  And an adventure it has been! 

Katie and I have been jumping right in and getting involved in the community any chance we get.  By our second week here, we had met several people and had a group over for dinner.  After a little while, Katie decided to quickly run down to her apartment, which is directly below mine, to grab something.  Meanwhile, our friend David was playing some tunes on the guitar and I was learning about Marvin Gay from him.  After about 25 minutes had passed, we started to wonder what had happened to Katie. So, I decide to go check on her.  I knock on her door and I hear a faint scream in the background.  Frantically, I go to turn the door knob, but it is locked.  I run to her window and everything is dark, except for some light peeking under her bathroom door.  I immediately feel my heart drop in my chest, like a motherly instict and am about to break through a window, but instead I rationally scream up to David to help me.  I dart to our landlord's house to get a key to Katie's apartment; however they are elderly and were not feeling the need to rush to my friend's rescue as I was.  Once we get in, I hear Katie screaming "the door is stuck, I can't get out".  David is a carver, currently working on a totem pole, and had a few tools in his car, which was all we had at the moment.  We end up knocking the door knob off and yet, Katie is still prisoned in her miniature bathroom.  She tried propping her self up against the door, using her body weight to push the door open, but fell into the bathtub, bruised her hip and cut her arm...only adding to her frantic stage.

After about an hour and a half of being trapped in an unlocked bathroom, and David and I making jokes to bring light to the situation, our elderly landlord is able to snip something wedged in the door handle and the door sways open.  We used all the dismantled pieces of her malfunctioning doorknob to display on a shelf hanging above the dangerous bathroom, as a reminder that "Life is short...you never know when you'll get stuck in a bathroom!"