Packages

After almost 2 weeks of no flights or mail, the first flight with our packages finally made it down here. Mind you, they were just a small part of the payload of the plane that made the journey down here but some of us finally got packages. I still have god knows how many boxes waiting for me back in Christchurch but I at least got 3 of the boxes. I received, a few books, some extra clothes, my hiking boots which I've been waiting for for a while, and my new camera which I am soo thankful for getting. This week I had my Kelly day. I haven't done much. I'm still pretty sick so I've been waking up around 1200 everyday. The weather has for the most part stabilized. There's been a constant 10 knot wind in town but other than that, it's been pretty nice outside. Now that my hiking boots are here, it's time to start hitting the trails. My climbing shoes also made it down here so I'll be spending a lot of time in the bouldering cave in the weight room building. My options of things to do are definitely opening up for me.

The firehouse as been pretty busy. Yesterday (my Kelly day) they ran the season's first wildlife herding for an Adelie penguin that was hanging out on the ice runway. No one had managed to tell us that they were pretty feisty. Apparently there are pictures and videos of a few firefighters getting chased around by this thing as it hissed at them. Man, I wish I was there to see it. Today the opposite shift had a car fire way off on the ice shelf and everyone was running around like crazy. Myself and another firefighter were at Scott Base when it first got dispached. When we got back to our dorm, we checked our pager to find that they had called back all off-duty person ell (for a car fire no less). By the time we got to the firehouse (20 minutes later) we were told to go home since there wasn't anything for us to do. Thank God. So here I sit, another glorious McMurdo night waiting for our dodge ball tournament. Life is good down here...