Big Red Love

Wow, I was so excited on Saturday, the day I flew to Antarctica, I was just smiling and telling everyone around me how excited I was whether they wanted to hear it or not! Even trying to sleep on the C-17 I was smiling. Now I’m just trying to take it all in, learn people’s names, where things are, what they’re called – all that stuff. It’s overwhelming at first, but I’m sure it’ll come together pretty quickly.

Everything went very smoothly, 2 days in Denver for orientation, 2 days in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then we came down to the Ice on October 6th. We had a lot of cargo on our flight so there were only 2 rows of regular airplane seats and the rest were seats on the sides. Luckily not cargo mesh seats but sort of canvas fold down seats. It was actually fairly comfortable.





We landed in -29 degree temperatures with a fair bit of wind and clouds. Ben was waiting for me at the main building where they took us for, yet another, orientation. It was a wonderful thing to see him again.







Yesterday I took a tour of the Crary Lab, the main research facility, played some ping pong in the carp shop and attended a lecture by Paul Ponganis on the penguin ranch research. Today was my first day of work and it was pretty fun. I drove a van and the airporter. It cleared up today so I’m seeing some of the mountains around here. No photos yet since I’m still training, and also the wind has yet to let up so it’s still about -30.

I will fill you all in on the details you’ve been asking about soon. Also, as soon as we’re done fixing up our room I will post a photo. We started remodeling pretty much right after I got here on Saturday. Ben did a lot of work on it, but we want to build some shelves to round it out. We have a nice view so even though the room is small, it’ll be fine.





It’s all pretty overwhelming right now, but pretty darn neat!

Much love to you all.
Gretchen