We had sort of an impromptu fun day this week because Katie's friend Kevin offered to give us housing people a little presentation on life under the ice. Kevin now works for AGE (Air Ground Engineering...I think) but for 5 years he was a diver here in Antarctica and was the first person to see a certain species of Nototheniidae fish in the water (they had only seen it in the belly of other animals before that). He had some pretty amazing videos; this place is beautiful but you forget that there is a lot going on under the ice. The divers drill holes in the ice, even as much as 25 feet, and have to wear layers and layers of fleece and wet suits, and they have these 3 fingered dive gloves that make them look like they are ninja turtles. In his videos there were people sized jelly-fish, Notothenioidei fish (which look like adorable little fraggles), boots from the old explorer days, entire vehicles from a few years ago, a sea butterfly (I still can't believe those things are real), and even a nine foot long seal. On top of the ice seals are incredibley uninteresting (at least in my opinion), they just laze around, sleeping and rolling over...but under water they are pretty amazing. Kevin said that they would occasionally bite the divers' flippers and pull them around a little but that in general (though they could easily yank someone's arm off) they are pretty nice and playful...but they occasionally can block the divers' hole, using it as a little spot to get some air, which can cause some problems because, ya know, the divers need air too eventually. But the divers are trained for all that kind of stuff and that's why they pay them far better than janitors. It's crazy to me that it is someone's job to swim under the ice (or the occasional icerberg) and collect fish eggs or catch gigantic fish in bags (seriously, check out the Antarctic Cod they are as big as people).
Most of this week has been all about get
ting ready for vessel, a lot of people are switching to nights and gearing up to work 12 hour shifts. The Paul Buck (the fuel tanker) came in a few days ago and Jerry (Klaas and Alyse's neighbor) knew the chief engineer and gave him me and Adam's email addresses so that we could meet up with him here and get a tour or something. We didn't get to plan anything ahead of time because they lost their sattelite internet on the tanker and couldn't really email but we ended up bumping into him (Curtis) at a VMF BBQ. They were heading out the next day so we rounded up a few people and took the opportunity to get a tour right then. A fuel tanker is a pretty weird place, it's basically a maze of steep stairs, loud machinery, and gasoline/oil smells. At one point we realized that if our tour guide left us we might never find our way out. They showed us everything from the engines to their own rooms and everyone got excited when we went to the galley and they had fudgescicles in the freezer...I guess it's the little things.
After the tanker tour me and Adam headed to prom...yes, prom. Just w
hen you think this place isn't enough like high school with the blue trayed cafeteria food and the freshmen to senior mentality, the rec department decides to throw in a prom. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Mactown people love any excuse to put on a costume. We actually went to prom by mistake, it was being held at the bar where we were supposed to meet some people, but really I judged McMurdo prom prematurely, it was mostly just an excuse to have a good time before vessel comes in...and seeing as how this place has held every costume party known to man, you have to get creative to find something new.
In other rec events this weekend, the film festival was this Sunday. People had put together little 5 minute movies, from here and the South Pole, and they were shown in the galley. It was pretty fun to see what people had come up with. My favorite was a piece on "Man Camp", which chronicled the 2 weeks that 24 men were cooped up in the HoCal bunkhouse while they waited to go to South Pole (flights were delayed a lot). Most of the South Pole ones were pretty great, they had one about a polar bear coming to the South Pole and mauling everyone in hilarious ways and another film that was basically like the game me and Nick and Ben used to call "Purple, Monkey, Dishwasher". They went around with an opening sentence and had different people add a sentence to the story and then at the end they put it all into the movie. One of the most amazing ones from here was called "Summer Lights" and had amazing time laps footage of McMurdo from darkness, through 4 months of light, and back to darkness; it definitely captured some of the things about this place that don't come out well in photos. And there was one about a yellow flag, hilariously set to Coldpay's "Yellow" but I don't know if it would translate beyond Antarctic culture.
Speaking of beyond Antarctic culture, it is now less than 3 weeks til I am New Zealand bound...and this week I am feeling kind of sad about that (it varies). I am looking forward to real food and my own room...but beyond that I am having a hard time seeing myself leave this place...we'll see how it feels next week, it always changes.
Most of this week has been all about get
ting ready for vessel, a lot of people are switching to nights and gearing up to work 12 hour shifts. The Paul Buck (the fuel tanker) came in a few days ago and Jerry (Klaas and Alyse's neighbor) knew the chief engineer and gave him me and Adam's email addresses so that we could meet up with him here and get a tour or something. We didn't get to plan anything ahead of time because they lost their sattelite internet on the tanker and couldn't really email but we ended up bumping into him (Curtis) at a VMF BBQ. They were heading out the next day so we rounded up a few people and took the opportunity to get a tour right then. A fuel tanker is a pretty weird place, it's basically a maze of steep stairs, loud machinery, and gasoline/oil smells. At one point we realized that if our tour guide left us we might never find our way out. They showed us everything from the engines to their own rooms and everyone got excited when we went to the galley and they had fudgescicles in the freezer...I guess it's the little things.After the tanker tour me and Adam headed to prom...yes, prom. Just w
hen you think this place isn't enough like high school with the blue trayed cafeteria food and the freshmen to senior mentality, the rec department decides to throw in a prom. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Mactown people love any excuse to put on a costume. We actually went to prom by mistake, it was being held at the bar where we were supposed to meet some people, but really I judged McMurdo prom prematurely, it was mostly just an excuse to have a good time before vessel comes in...and seeing as how this place has held every costume party known to man, you have to get creative to find something new.In other rec events this weekend, the film festival was this Sunday. People had put together little 5 minute movies, from here and the South Pole, and they were shown in the galley. It was pretty fun to see what people had come up with. My favorite was a piece on "Man Camp", which chronicled the 2 weeks that 24 men were cooped up in the HoCal bunkhouse while they waited to go to South Pole (flights were delayed a lot). Most of the South Pole ones were pretty great, they had one about a polar bear coming to the South Pole and mauling everyone in hilarious ways and another film that was basically like the game me and Nick and Ben used to call "Purple, Monkey, Dishwasher". They went around with an opening sentence and had different people add a sentence to the story and then at the end they put it all into the movie. One of the most amazing ones from here was called "Summer Lights" and had amazing time laps footage of McMurdo from darkness, through 4 months of light, and back to darkness; it definitely captured some of the things about this place that don't come out well in photos. And there was one about a yellow flag, hilariously set to Coldpay's "Yellow" but I don't know if it would translate beyond Antarctic culture.
Speaking of beyond Antarctic culture, it is now less than 3 weeks til I am New Zealand bound...and this week I am feeling kind of sad about that (it varies). I am looking forward to real food and my own room...but beyond that I am having a hard time seeing myself leave this place...we'll see how it feels next week, it always changes.
No comments:
Post a Comment