My Office!

My office is where I spend most of my time. Most people here work 6 days a week for a total of 54-70 hours. I work Monday -Saturday and have Sundays off. I share my office with 3 other people. Curtis-Housing Manager, Sheryl- Rooms Coordinator, Me-Housing Assistant, and Justin- Janitorial Supervisor. It gets a little crowded in here sometimes, but we all make it work.

Erin and Jason work across the hall. Jason's desk is the one right behind Erin's. (Please note the insane pictures of Robert Pattinson on Erin's desk....yes, they have been there all season. I took one special picture of the poster that is by far my favorite.

I also wanted to show everyone the bulletin board that Erin works on constantly. This is the Recreation Board. It has every event for the week on it. Often you see people standing in the middle of the hall just staring, deciding what they want to do. And to be honest, this is the least crowded that Ive seen the board, usually the events trail down to ground and start overlapping each other. Erin stays pretty busy keeping this thing accurate. I also included a picture on the Housing Board, that happens to be right next to the Rec Board. I realized early on that my board will never look as cool as hers, so I have kept it nice and simple with only interesting bits of Housing information. Hands down, Erin's Board beats mine into the ground.

Happy work week everyone!

-Autumn :)

My Room!

So now that I have been here for a  few months, I have finally settled into my living quarters. I ended up in a room with  2 other girls who work in the Dinning Room so I dont see them often but they are very respectful. Here is my little section of the room. I have set up some sheets with shower curtain rings and bamboo poles and can close my bed off to the rest of the room. I have hung Christmas light along the ceiling, and put some fabric on the walls. Its quite the cozy little nook to sleep in. I was lucky enough to end up in a room with windows, so in the beginning our room would get a little chilly. I had used my handy space heater for almost a month, but now it stays warm enough that most nights I can sleep with just a sheet.

Nice and Cozy :)

Autumn

Discovery Hut

Like I had mentioned in my last post, we are located right next to Scott's original Hut. They have named this building Discovery Hut. This building remains locked for historical purposes and is opened when Tours are given to groups of people.
I just happen to be lucky enough to know the Recreation Coordinator (Erin) and she let me follow along one day on a private tour through the building.
Just to describe a little bit about the inside of this hut, so you can get an idea of what it was like to be in there: It structurally reminds me of a barn, all wood, vaulted ceilings, not much insulation. I would guess its about 1200 square feet of open space and different areas are divided up by big tarps and blankets. There is an old, rotting smell that reminds me of horse stables, not unbearable but definitely smelly. Almost everything is frozen it time, everything has been left the way we found it and nothing has been refurbished.
Fair warning, some of the pictures you are about to see include bones, carcases, and unidentified animals hanging on walls....you have been warned.


Enjoy the pictures!

This is an amazing piece of history and I am so lucky to have been able to see this with my own eyes. There are only about 20 historical Huts in all of Antarctica and I get to see one of the most famous ones.

Autumn :)

Hut Point

Back about 100 years ago, a man by the name of Robert Falcon Scott sailed to Antarctica on a journey to be the first man to reach the South Pole. A man by the name of Amundsen beat him there by about a month, but that's not the point! Scott found himself on Ross Island and set up camp.
McMurdo Station currently resides on Ross Island about a 1/2 mile from Scott's original Hut. The Hut still stands to this day and all McMurdo residents are welcome to walk out to Hut Point and check out the views and the outside of the building. Its about a 15-20 minute walk out there and if you are lucky, sometimes the seals will have come up through the ice cracks, and this is a prime spot to look out into the ice and watch them lay there and do nothing.....really, they just lay there and breath.
I have been out to Hut Point 3-4 times so far and its always nice to get out of town for about an hour or so.

The Beautiful Views

I try and keep my camera in my coat at all times around here just in case I see something exciting, beautiful, weird, etc. Here are a couple random photos that I took as I was walking from building to building, the scenery is the same every day, but depending on where you are standing, it looks a little different and always beautiful. We are basically located on a frozen island ocean front facing the actual land that is Antarctica. We are on Ross Island, located 20 miles across the frozen water from the main land. A lot of the mountains that you see are islands between us and the main land or are actual mountains on the main land. Once the weather warms up, the ice will mostly melt  and I can take pictures of the same mountains so you can see the difference.
Enjoy!



One of the first sunsets I witnessed here on the ice.

Observation Hill

The Ice Runway in it's first week of operation

This is Mount Discovery

These are nacreous clouds. They form when the temperature drops below -80 degrees in they sky. They look like a rainbow of water colors smeared across the sky.

Birthday and a New Look

Ok Everyone, its time to play catch up. Since the start of the summer season here, things have been pretty busy and I am having trouble finding time to blog as much as I'd like. For the time being, I am going to combine 2 different events that happened to me in the last few weeks.
As everyone knows, I celebrated my 28th Birthday here on the ice this year. It was a really good day. My boss Dan had the kitchen make a cake for 2 other girls and myself who all shared the same birthday and we each got a little goodie bag of fun nick nacs.

Later in the evening I held a little get together for some friends at a place called Hut 10. Its this 3 bedroom house used for the VIP's when they come to visit, but when it is not in use, we are allowed to rent it out for the evening and throw parties.
The party went well and everyone had a good time.

On to the fun pictures!
After a month and a half on the ice, I decided it was time for my hair to go. The harsh, dry weather had turned my hair into a rats nest filled with split ends and never ending static. I asked Erin if she wanted to cut the pony tail off and agreed to do it. We cut it out by the Station sign so that I can send pictures to Locks of love when I donate my hair.

The day we cut it was really windy and pretty cold.

You can see by the completely horizontal direction  my ponytail is 

flying through the air that it was super cold and windy.

Once the hair was cut, we went back to the barber shop and Ildi trimmed it a 

little more and styled it the way that I wanted.

And the final product.........ta da!

I am really enjoying it short and could not be happier with my choice. It takes about 5 minutes with my hair dryer and when I am ready to go outside, I just put a hat on and I am done......it just became that easy.

Yeah Short Hair!!!

Autumn :)

Pressure Ridge Tour

As We started to get settled in, one of the first things we did was head out of town to the Pressure Ridges. A pressure ridge is when the the sea ice freezes and starts pushing up against the permanent ice shelf. The ice shelf runs into the land and has nowhere to go. The pressure starts to build and the ice starts to move upward having no other option. These sharp ridges are created and slowly grow over the course of a month or 2. Erin and I went about half way through the first month, and were told that there were kind of tiny right now but if we come back in a few weeks they will look completely different.

I got a little cold in the end because I didn't wear enough layers on my bottom half, but other than that I had a lot of fun. I hope to go back and visit again in a couple weeks to see the difference.

Til next time!

Autumn :)