McMurdo

The best way I can find to descirbe McMurdo is a combination of a college campus with a military operation. There are lots of code words, people always seem to be getting trained in something or other, there is heavy equipment machinery scattered everywhere, and "NSF" is stamped on everything (even the decades old waffle makers we use for Sunday brunch). Then on the other hand, there are lots of pretty nerdy people, there are plenty of free classes/ events like yoga and trivia night, and people work hard during the day and often party pretty hard on their one night off. I live and work in the main building...it is the biggest building, bright blue and right in the middle of the station. On days like today when the snow was blowing horizontally, I am glad that I don't have to leave the building to do laundry or eat or use the computers. But at the same time it does make me a little crazy that I can go a whole day (even multiple days) without going outside. My schedule consists of getting up at 5:10 am, starting work at 5:30 am (usually tidying up or putting out new food as people come through for breakfast) until 8:00 am. Then we get a half hour break during which we usually eat and socialize. Then we do our "C" chores until 10:00 am, which consist of restocking food items, cleaning tables, mopping the floor, taking out trash, etc. At 10:00 we have a mandatory stretch break then we have to allocate (check off everything we did during the day down to every 15 min). Then we have our "family meal" for lunch at 10:30 (all the people in the galley have to work during the meals so everyone gets together to eat half an hour before each meal time). Then from 11:00 to 1:30 is lunch and usually I am doing dishes (either the dish line which is great because you get to talk to people bringing their dishes to the window and a huge machine called "Big Bertha" does most of the hard work for us or the pot room where we have to scrub all the gross pots in a cramped, muggy back room).

Then at 1:30 we have our second mandatory stretch break and then another half hour break. Then we come back and deep clean some section of the service area or kitchen, which means taking things apart or emptying things to really clean it out. My day ends at 4:30 pm but usually I join the family meal for dinner that the PM folks have since I ate lunch so early (I am on an AM schedule...the PM schedule goes from 10:00 am to 8:30 pm, but you miss out on a lot of the community events as a result). I also have been given the opportunity to work the runway. There is a small galley out at the ice runway where the fligths come in where a small contingent of people work. When I work the runway, I get to drive a big truck on the ice out to the building to provide a meal service for them. This is a treat for the DAs because it is always nice to be able to get off base and they have recently been seeing a bunch of emperor penguins out at the runway (I haven't seen any yet though). I am also hoping to be one of the DAs chosen to go to a field camp to work for two weeks. We would get to do the Happy Camper survival training and go to a remote part of the continent for a little while to work with a research team. That would really be a highlight if I got the opportunity to do it. I don't really have a routine for after work yet, but this past week I have been going to the various exercise classes like yoga and boot camp, napping, showering and attending the weekly events like science lectures on Wednesdays and Sundays, trivia on Wednesdays, kareoke on Fridays, Scott base night on Thursdays (Scott base is the New Zealand base just over the hill from us...on Thursdays they have "America night" where shuttles run between the two bases and the Kiwis open their store and bar for Americans to hang out in.

I have worked a couple hikes in after work, but conditions have not always been favorable. A close walk is Scott Hut which is where the British team started their trip to the South Pole. It is an outcropping with an old building and a lot of Weddell seals hang out there because a pressure ridge in the sea ice has created a lot of holes for them to come out from. There is also an observation tube I have gone to a couple times which is a big metal tube they plunged 40 feet or so into the ice with viewing windows at

the bottom so you can see all the critters living under the ice.

It is a small space to climb into (in fact someone got stuck going down), but it is really cool seeing the underside of the ice and all the fish and jellies and if you are lucky you will see a seal swim by (I have not seen one swimming, but it is cool to hear all the strange sounds they make under water...you should youtube Weddell seal sounds to get an idea of what I mean...really alien sounds).
Other activities people do are volunteer for other departments like in the

library, craft room, bartending at one of the three bars (Southern Exposure, Gallager's, and a coffee/ wine bar) working with the waste team or helping the traverse team pack up (the traverse team takes an over land route to take heavy materials and equi

pment to the South Pole station).

I am still figuring out my options for that. Well that is all I have for now...more updates to come (especially if I see a penguin). Also, I think I will be in a bit of a routine soon so I might not have anything exciting to post necessarily...as a result it would be helpful if people posted questions on the blog so maybe I could answer them in a posting when I don't have a lot of new stuff happening in a week.

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