The days are long, the nights are bright.

So I have been here at McMurdo Station for about two and a half days. It already feels like home, but in a weird, I barely know anyone or how to get to anything sort of way. It really doesn't make much sense, all I know is I adore Antarctica still. I look out a window here and instead of seeing house after house, cityscapes for miles, or warehouses there's vast fields of beautiful white snow, with gleaming blue and white mountains shining off into the distance. It's quite peaceful and calm, it makes me feel like I do after the first big snowfall of winter. Everything is quite and beautiful and everyone is still in awe of it. I mean, how can I not love place where there are multiple people with Antarctica tattoos?





My first day wasn't much. We hopped on a plane in Christchurch at around 2, and didn't leave until 3 or 4ish ( I think our group has been cursed with plane troubles). The plane was pretty fun, being on a military flight was crazy, and awesome. We got to get up whenever we wanted and go to the little windows situated on the doors to see how beautiful the clouds were, or catch a quick glance at an iceberg underneath. They even let us go up into the cockpit and look out the windows out there. It was a hard concept to reach when we realized that it would be night when we arrived, and yet we were still traveling in daylight. Its still a hard concept actually. We eventually arrived at the Pegasus Runway, put on all our cold weather gear, it was about -13 there when we arrived at 10p.m., and still quite bright. We hopped on the back of the shuttles and half an hour later, after a bumpy ride, reached the station. Once at the station, we got the introduction lectures, our room keys, I met my boss, and got my linens and luggage and was off to my room, hoping my roommates, whomever they were weren't asleep. It turned out both of my roommates so far came on our flight so that was no biggie, unpacked and tried to sleep.



Next day woke up at around 9:30, there was a walk around the town at 8 but I felt since I would maybe have to work the next day, sleep was more important, there's always tours going on. Got up, got dressed and headed down to the Galley. Met up with my group of D.A. friends and waited for it all to begin. We had a quick lecture/meet n greet sort of deal, then family lunch (we eat as a family before everyone else eats), and then off to tours upon tours of the kitchen. They gave us a few hour break at that point, since they needed some time to get everything figured out, there are a lot of us that all just arrived in the past few days. On the break Jeremy, John, and I went and played some pool, I'm terrible at it even in Antarctica.

Went back to work later on, more meetings then, they put us to work, even though none of us thought they were going to (we had been told it would just been meetings all day)...Needless to say we were all a bit nervous about the situation. Work went fine though, put some freshies on trays, stocked, made some ice tea, did laundry, normal stuff that wasn't too bad. Then we were off!

Party hardy in Antarcty! There was a party at one of the bars here last night, sort of like a welcome. I went down with Jeremy, his roommate, John, Kendra, her roommate, and Metro. Drank a few beers and mostly just danced my butt off. Jeremy and I were swing dancing for a while, which was a blast. It was great when we would get too hot, and would step outside your skin would literally be steaming because of the temperature difference. After a few hours of dancing, Jeremy and I decided we best get sleep, since he had to work at 7 and I badly needed a shower, stepped outside to daylight at 11:30. Crazy.

Showered. Went to sleep, and here I am, getting sort of ready for my first full day of work. 11-9 I think. wee.