The adventure continues...

When I was getting information about coming down to Antarctica, I kept on being told that I should bring costumes and be ready for epic parties.  Not what you would expect when traveling to the most southern part of the earth.  Needless to say my informants did not steer me wrong. 

During the past two weeks we have had a town Christmas Party, Waste Barn Party (Christmas Variety Show), New Years Eve, Icestock (outdoor music festival), softball tournament and a marathon.  I don't want to bore you with details for all these events but I will highlight a few. 

Waste Barn Party: 

This Christmas Variety show takes place in the waste barn (where trash gets sorted and prepared to get moved off the continent).  There is seating, drinks and a great show. Anyone on station can sign up before to perform.  We had a Jano Band: one piano, one guitar, one ukulele, one violin, myself and another girl on vocals.  We rewrote 4 Christmas Songs-changing the lyrics from "A White Christmas" to "A Clean Christmas" or "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" to "SoSure the Toxic Cleaner".  In the audience were a bunch of Jano alums...they were enjoying the rewrites thoroughly.  It was over 3 hours of good ole honest entertainment.  But once all the acts were over the MCs introduced the "classified" act-a wedding.  Two lovely people from the station whose wedding got postponed due to Covid-19 surprised all of the station by getting married.  Needless to say everyone was wearing smiles and in great spirits for many days afterwards. 

 

Icestock:

Outdoor Musical Festival-McMurdo's take on Woodstock.  There are many talented musicians here so this event is another time to see them shine.  It was 6 hours of live music and dancing.  People enjoying food, libations and good company.  The weather was about 32 degrees F or 1 degree C but sunny!  Plus it is another event for people dress up, wear onesies and cut lose. 

Softball Tournament:

Different departments form teams and play each other.  I was on a team with the kitchen and janitorial staff.  This year our team was primarily girls; we had a lot of fun playing.  Furthermore, in the past this team did not do as well but this year we made it to the semi finals.  Most everyone hadn't played since middle school years but we still had a good time.  But only in Antarctica would your softball game be paused to watch penguins.  We had some come right behind the field on the sea ice to watch us play.  They are cute!

Marathon;

For those of you who don't know I never dreamed that I would be able to run a marathon.  I hurt one of my knees pretty bad my senior year at Biola playing soccer and have been on a road to recovery ever since.  Luckily down here I have made some epic friends who will put the time into training.  We were able to run a marathon on the sea ice yesterday...we were literally running on water.  The weather wasn't ideal (23 degrees F, 9 degrees with wind chill, wind was 10-20 mph and snow had drifted onto half of the road) but we did it.  I would do it again.  There were 5 of us that ran the whole thing together in less than 5 hours.  Not everyone ran it-you could run, walk, ski or bike the full, a half or just a small portion if you wanted. Furthermore there were tons of volunteers that stood out in the cold manning aid stations, taking pictures and a snowmobile carrying a trumpet player playing music such as Star Wars and Eye of the Tiger-probably everyone's highlight of the run! #onlyinantarctica 

 

I hope you are enjoying the stories from the deep south and have a great start to 2021!