Woo I made it!

We arrived in Antarctica yesterday and have been busy ever since setting up the lab, gathering supplies and getting settled. We flew out yesterday on a C-17 and when we landed it was -26 degrees F... yes, it was that cold. But it is amazing here, beautiful, cold and amazing! When we arrived there were a bunch of people to greet us, they haven't seen new people in 6 months and they were so excited.... for freshies or fresh fruit and veggies... I think they were happy to see us too ;) We had our arrival briefing and then right away, our group was off to start training and setting stuff up. Later, we were able to get our luggage and have a meal. The food is pretty good here, I have no complaints. Leslie and I then went to our room and pretty much went to bed.

Both of us were up early and headed to the office to start getting things ready. The whole day has been busy setting up. There were some amazing polar stratospheric clouds out today, which by the way is what my thesis is about so it was fun to see them in person since they only hang out in arctic regions during winter and you can only see them in the spring when there is sunlight in the atmosphere. Which we don't have much of. I believe the day we arrived, yesterday was the first day the sun was actually completely above the horizon for a bit. We had about 7 hours of light yesterday but I'm not sure on that so I will check and get back to you. We are gaining light really fast though and but never really see the sun. Its below the horizon most of the time. Pretty soon though, Leslie told me we will have 24 hours of daylight which will be new for me.

Antarctic is awesome, really awesome... and yes its cold, take your breath away cold but the gear we have is great. I will have some pictures soon, we finally got our computers checked and can log onto the internet now so I wanted to put a brief up date here. I'm freezing though so I'm going to go to the dorms now and climb into my warm bed. More to come later!!