Well here we are again! Oh my goodness. We've stayed busy here: science is in full swing, the Gould stopped by, and of course we celebrated a couple of holidays. Christmas was surprisingly homey. It's a small enough group to feel like family. We had a big meal, of course, and a gift exchange. There were some very nice handmade items under the tree and some goofy ones. Lots of food, decorations, and even stockings - most stocking items were silly but there were also a couple nice small items such as limpet magnets and scarves and things like that. Then we recovered enough by this last Friday to celebrate Hanukkah. I'm no leader of course but I'm happy to grate potatoes and I have to say the latkes came out pretty well. We have also celebrated some birthdays which people get very enthusiastic about. And of course we danced for New Year's Eve - no live band here but we did okay. All said and done I'm happy to be heading into a solid work stretch! The various Palmer traditions surrounding Christmas, birthdays, etc are all very endearing however and make the experience here different from the other stations.
In other news we talked to space! That was pretty exciting. Apparently for most ham radio folks the "WAC" (Worked All Continents) rating doesn't include Antarctica, but if an astronaut is a ham he or she is expected to talk to Antarctica on account of having the height advantage. Since we're the furthest north U.S. station we're the easiest one to raise, so we had a nice chat with our buddy Bill who's on the International Space Station right now. Our Comms Tech Chuck handled the radio traffic but we all huddled around for the brief conversation. We discussed similarities, like isolation, and differences, like not worrying about air to breathe if our cargo ship is late.
We had a very nice treat a little while ago. The Endeavour, the cruise ship for the National Geographic expeditions, was passing by here early one morning and planning to return later the same day, so they invited a group of us to be cruise ship passengers for the day. Unfortunately we couldn't all go but we drew lots and I was in the group! We visited a small field camp on Petermann Island, whom we talk to every day by radio, and went on south to the Ukrainian station Vernadsky. Vernadsky used to be the British station Faraday, where researchers discovered the ozone hole back when. It's got an interesting mix of British and Ukrainian decor now, and the 13 residents were happy to see us and chat. Language skills varied but with a mix of translating, gestures, and very simple English we got by. The Endeavour passengers got the station tour but for some reason our "special" tour (us and the expedition staff) went straight to the bar! Hmmm. We made it back on the Endeavour and back up to Palmer without incident. We got to see some great scenery, talk to some interesting people, and go some places that US staff don't usually get to. It was a great and very unusual opportunity for us.
With all this going on I really should have some new photos up but I don't yet. If you're curious about Palmer there's a lot of information on the Internet; start at www.palmerstation.com (not "official" but very good) and go from there. This is our last 2-day weekend before I leave in late March so I don't know how energetic I'll be; once I'm done with work I don't feel like facing a computer much! Maybe we'll get some nasty weather. It's really been quite nice, better than normal people tell me. Snow is mostly gone from the station area and there are some very nice rocks to sit on down by the water, glacier to hike up, islands in our boating range with penguin chicks - not much incentive for sitting inside.
Please do let me know how you all are doing! I don't like being out of touch. Form letters and mass emails are welcome, I'm not picky.
Best to all,
-Sarah