Fun Days in Antarctica

My days off this week have been spent with my neighbors and firehouse coworkers Dave and Joe and boy have those days been lazy. We're still pretty relentless with my new neighbor but for the most part, he's having fun. At the firehouse, everything is starting to fall into place. Fore the most part, with the exception of a couple other people, our staffing is almost at full-capacity. I'm a released engineer in the company and most of my time (with the exception of yesterday being on the ambulance for some reason) is spent driving and I love it. We're still getting new people in a few times a week so just when you think you've gotten use to the faces around base, a couple hundred more people show up. It's actually not a bad thing. More opportunities to meet new people. One of the opportunities that I had been thinking about since I left our fire department training in Salt Lake City has arisen. The JASAR Team (Joint Antarctic Search and Rescue Team) posted applications for "try-outs" to get onto the team. I have no idea what the try-outs entail but I was told that it was a lot of practicing mountaineering skills, rope rescue, and crevasse rescue which I'm absolutely stoked about. I finished my application today and to my surprise I was the first person to hand in an application. Hopefully not many people do and I get a chance of landing a coveted spot on a small team. I've been looking for NASAR (National Association of Search and Rescue) classes for the past 7 months but I could never find one that agreed with my schedule. So far, I've been making a list of classes, both SAR and non-SAR related, I want to take and that list is growing quite large. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my time after the ice. I've been thinking about a Pacific island after a week or so in New Zealand but I can't make up my mind. Hopefully I can do something climbing related. I guess I still have time...