Letters: One week in

Backdated post with excerpts from a letter to a friend back home.

Antarctica is good. It’s a lot of people, some of who have a huge amount of experience, coming from all different places. There’s a handful of medics, so it’s not just me (which is nice); our captain that runs our shift is super-pro-training, so while we can’t really pull lines or flow water much, we do a lot and we’ve been given responsibility off the bat (my first full shift me and my also-new partner on the ambo were told, “She’s driving, you guys go check hydrant 2” so we had to look up the location (still learning), head over, clean it out, and give report on the issues with it when we got back). Today is our first Con 2 day since I got here, and that basically means sideways wind with blowing snow, but the funny part is it isn’t really cold – so I have on sunglasses and a sweatshirt. It’s 23°F out, with the windchill taking it down to 6°F. And really…it’s pretty darn comfortable.

Things are good here. Nabbing lots of stickers and stuff to send you, I haven’t been to Scott Base (Kiwi base, 10min drive or 30min walk in good weather) since it’s only open to Americans on Thursday*. I saw seals yesterday, but we won’t see penguins for another month or so. Got my wildlife handler’s training in. Apparently one year they had a bunch of penguins run up the ramp of a cargo plane so it’s totally possible we may end up with some weird situation.

I have already requested to stay for winter, I got driver training on tracked vehicles, and I was the first candidate for the DO (driver operator — getting clearance to drive the engines/etc) which had me pretty damn tickled, especially since I still have the spacial awareness of a damp sponge**.

Hope you are well – keep me posted on everything. Miss you, and please tell the guys there I miss them too.

*The Scott Base store is open on Sundays as well.
**A gross exaggeration. The sponge is probably at least wrung-out.