A Month Already

Views from the plane were good this year.

Welcome to McMurdo. I still find it incredible that such a big plane can land on ice.

We’ve been in McMurdo for almost a month now. The time goes incredibly fast here and before we know it, it will be time to make plans for after the ice. For now, though, we are working 6 days a week, 10.5 to 11 hours per day. I am playing drums in two bands, one original reggae music, the other a funk cover band in which my stage name is Peaches Delite. Both bands will surely play on the New Year’s Day outdoor music festival, IceStock. I am also volunteering as a medical recorder for any Mass Casualty Incidents. We’ll have a drill some time soon and my job is to stay with one patient and write down vital signs, symptoms, treatments, etc. Michiel is volunteering as a stretcher bearer.

Sheri, quarantined in her room, watching tv.

When he isn’t working, Michiel is again training for the marathon and is working a small side job as a pin-setter for our manual bowling alley. More on that in another post. This past week, he had the very unenviable job of bringing me my meals in the room as I have been quarantined with the flu. This year, there is a near epidemic of both kinds of flu despite the massive effort put into getting all of us vaccinated. It is very tricky to figure out how to appropriately vaccinate all of us since the flus and flu seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres are different and almost all of us travel through both hemispheres to get here.