It's Flippin Cold!

This will probably be the longest blog the whole time I'm here!

So I am officially in Antarctica. The Highest, Driest, Coldest, Windiest place on the planet. And to tell you the truth it's not all that bad. You may think that I am crazy but I'm really not. So far it has been absolutely amazing. I've been here for about 36 hours now and I'm having a blast.

But before I get really deep into life on Antarctica I'm going to finish out the rest of my time in Christchurch. Thursday morning we all got up early and had to be at the CDC. While we were there they told us that we weren't going to leave until Saturday and I thought to myself how great another day in New Zealand! After a quick little orientation everyone went into the dressing rooms and tried on all of the gear that was set aside for them. It somewhat reminded me of Christmas morning with all of the clothes that I got and had to try on. I ended up getting a lot of brand new stuff which was nice, and it is all really warm. So warm in fact that when I'm outside in sub zero temperatures I'm actually sweating!

After we tried everything on and decided what we were going to keep we left and went back to Christchurch. I kind of just enjoyed my time around the city and had a blast. I had a Greek kabob wrap for lunch which was absolutely delicious! At around 3 PM I met up with a couple of other people and we went to the art museum, the museum was a lot of fun there were some pretty cool exhibits. The only downside to the museum was the fact that I found out that we were no longer leaving on Saturday instead we had to leave the next day! :(

After the museum I went and bought some last minute items that I knew I had to have down here on the ice, CHOCOLATE! I went and bought some cadbury chocolate (don't worry it was cleared from having any of that tainted Chinese milk). Then I went back to the hotel and took a quick nap before meeting up with a big group of people and we went and had some Tai food. Which was really tasty!

After the Tai food the evening really kicked into high gear. We left there and went to Bailee's but we weren't really feeling it all too much so we quickly left and went to the bog. That bar was a lot of fun! They had a two man band, one played the fiddle and the other played guitar it was a really interesting mix but sounded pretty good. They played "What do you do with a drunken sailor" for like 20 minutes strait and all of us being drunk had a blast. After about an hour and a half we left to go to Micky Finn's bar. It's surprising how many Irish Pub's there are in New Zealand.

I will say that the band that was playing at Micky Finn's was probably the best cover band I've ever heard. They played what seemed to be a playlist taken strait off of my iPod. I love how much influence the U.S has on New Zealand. All of their television has some relation to it. My favorite part was watching the news and they were doing a special on San Francisco and said how they still have live sex shows in the city. Something I wasn't even aware of!

Anyways back to the trip, so after a long night of drinking we went back to the hotel and were supposed to be ready to go by 11:20 AM. That wasn't a problem, still a little screwed up with the time change I was wide awake at 8AM. Once I arrived at the CDC it was time to get changed into some ECW and get loaded on the flight. I kept thinking to myself that now this is really getting real! It took about 3 hours for everyone to change and watch some videos about the flight and get loaded onto the plane. We were supposed to take off around 3PM but the plane had some mechanical issues that had to be dealt with.

There was a really unnerving sound when I'm sitting in my seat with myiPod up loud and I hear one of the engines fall off of the plane and smash to the ground, I kept thinking "Oh dear god cancel our flight!" Well they didn't, they actually fixed the engine and we took off, I slept for nearly 3 hours of the 5 hour flight. And can I say that our military has done a great job of training our air force! My god it was probably the smoothest flight I've ever been on. Not the most comfortable considering it was on a huge military cargo plane and I was in a jumper seat! But it was cool.

So we finally landed in Antarctica and my god is it beautiful here. It's cold, but it's a breathtaking sight to see. I will figure out a way to upload a bunch of photos on a website and send the link so that everyone can see how great it is.

After landing we went strait to another orientation (I swear if I wasn't oriented by now there would definitely be something wrong!). By the time the orientation was over with it was time to grab our luggage and bedding and go to sleep, because at 8AM it was time to take a dirt tour around the base. And immediately after that I went to my first day of work!

The dirt tour was kind of pointless because there was about 100 people and it was tough to hear what the tour guide was saying. I then went to meet with my boss, I will be working in the supply warehouse for the VMF department which is the heavy machine shop. It seems like it will be a fast moving job and should be a lot of fun. I'll get to drive all over base picking up and bringing back supplies! My immediate supervisor is really cool and she let me off early considering I had just flown in the night before.

The food down here is actually really good. It's just about brunch time so I'm going to wrap this us pretty soon. After I got off of work I went and showered and got ready for dinner. I had a burrito in Antarctica! Not as good as the ones in SD but that pretty much goes for everywhere. After dinner I took a little nap and then went out for a night of dancing with Anthony and a bunch of other people that I've met down here. The bars are really funny down here, it's great because nobody is really a good dancer at all yet everyone still dances. There doesn't seem to be that shyness that you experience as bars back home. The music isn't the greatest but I am in Antarctica!

It is really dry down here though and my eyes have been feeling the pain! I hit a wall at about 11:30 and went to sleep and I slept strait through until about 9 AM. I went down to the galley and grabbed some hot chocolate and here I have been writing this blog. So far this has been an amazing experience.

Much love to everyone I miss you all!

~Danny