If These Walls Could Talk

I finished my first week in McMurdo and managed to survive. I'm pretty tired from a long week or work and a busy day off on Sunday. I've hardly had time to sit down and chat with Andrea because we're always going opposite directions. We're having a birthday party for her tomorrow when she gets out of work.

Saturday we had an All Hands Meeting so we get off at 4:00pm instead of 5:30pm and meet in the galley to hear random people talk about random stuff, sometimes applicable and sometimes not. This occurs every other week. For the next meeting I have been volunteered by my boss to speak on our department's 'Configuration Change' process. It's two weeks away and I'm already having panic attacks. Leave it to him to give an engineer a public speaking task.

That night I helped make enchiladas for Barb's going away party last night since she's been here all through the winter.
Ana Bell and Delaney:


Dan and I:


Then it was the annual 70s Party/Dance which was really overcrowded with a lot of sweaty polyester and synthetic hair wigs, but generally a good time. Sunday I hardly slept in because I was an alternate for the trip to Cape Evans and enough people didn't show up that I got a seat on the delta. Last year they didn't offer these trips because the sea ice wasn't smooth enough to drive out there, but they have reinstated them this year. Cape Evans is 14 miles north of McMurdo on Ross Island and is were Scott launched his South Pole Expedition. There is a hut there where they organized the trip and it was also used a few years later by Shackleton's expedition:

Wandering through it I was overwhelmed by how many stories that place must hold. It was kind of eerie because the snow has drifted around it, so it is very dark inside and most things are covered in frost. It's been 'dead' for 90 years or so, but it still has a very distinct smell, probably from the seal pelts in there. It has much the same flavor of a cabin in the woods: one big room with the beds, kitchen, storage, and a few desks, except that there is a dead penguin on the desk, a box penguin eggs in the hallway and a bunch of rusty cans of 1910's food.. and it's not in the woods.





It was a gorgeously cold day out there so we got to walk around and take in the views.





A group of winterovers went 3 weeks ago and saw a bunch of penguins on their drive out there, but we kept our eyes peeled and never saw any, although I did see some penguin poop so I'm getting closer: