11-10-11

Had "date" night with Cassa. We went and hung out at the ob tube for about an hour. We heard the seals with their cool calls, but didn't see any swimming around. But saw lots of cool jellies. After dinner, we hit up Southern (one of 2 bars here) and played some foosball and shuffleboard. Then we headed over to Scott Base for American night with Jeff and Stephanie (the ones from evergreen)and stayed there until the bar closed, having a good time joking about some of the funny long-term shuttle drivers here (Jeff used to also be a shuttler). After scott base we had a few more beers with Bobbick and some kiwis up in our dorm lounge.
She was asking me how I woo-ed the bighorn. I said I wasn't sure, b/c I'm not really good at that kind of thing. But Cassa made my week when she said that I am "the bright spot of her day everyday" and that I always make her smile. That made me feel really good. Cassa is really fun and we have a good time together. She reminds me a lot of a hippier Jacque Prudhomme.

11/11/11

I had the day off, so I worked on my Florida essay and did a lit review of ant-plant mutualisms as well as some laundry. I went with Tim (one of my good friends here that likes to be as active as me...he does all the hikes and pickleball, basketball, and volleyball. He's a janitor down here, from Wisconsin but after college he spent a lot of time living in central america and west africa) to the Obtube. We had an awesome experience on this visit b/c a seal swam right up to the viewing window and then swam past the little tube we were in.

I finally met Ildi!! We finally decided to just arrange a meeting, so we planned to meet at the coffee shop. It's a really cool place where they serve hot beverages, hot alcholic beverages, and wine (no beer allowed). They have an attached movie theatre and they place some good music and comfortable chairs abound. So we met for a hot cocoa. She's super sweet and nice and very funny and positive. She was so thankful for all the help I gave her with planning indonesia and was thinking I helped her more than she helped me, which is not the case. But she was so excited that I told her about the place to see orangutans in kalimantan b/c the other places she had tried they didn't see them.

After hot chocolate with Ildi, I played some cards with Tim and other Tim (his roommate).

One of my firefighter roommates, Eric, got shipped to the South Pole, but he was quickly replaced by Austin, another firefighter from Virginia.

11-12-11

Because Raytheon is obsessed with safety and b/c we had gone 30 days without an accident we had a special dinner. Fancy steaks and crab legs with our supervisors acting as waiters giving us refills and taking our trays.

The food has continued to be amazing down here. Everyone says it's so much better than previous years. It's always a treat and they keep it really diverse. We've had such things as indian dishes (complete with nan and rotis and lassis) from several regions of India, malay food, several thai dishes, chinese, mongolian, different mexican variations, korean, japanese, peruvian, tons of tasty seafood, greek, vietnamese, italian, spanish, morrocan, kenyan, and more. And b/c they say protein is key to keeping you warm, there meat is always plentiful with quite a lot of steak even. I try to avoid the deserts, but they always look extremely tasty. At breakfast they always have a waffles bar, egg bar, and full omelete bar.

I had a pretty chill saturday night. Went to the coffee shop to listen to a live fiddler and then played a bit of shuffleboard at one of the bars with Nate, Brian, and Bobbick before going to bed

11-13-11

Had a pretty busy day. Intermittently worked on my grad essays. I did the Crary Lab tour which was cool and made me want to be one of the geologists here. Played some dodgeball and then some basketball. I led a Scott's Hut tour for some people, and watched the 2nd half of the BSU game. Also went to the Sunday night Science Lecture.

I've been a little disappointed with the science aspect down here so far. I had been hoping that it would be easy to volunteer down here with some projects especially since I have 2 days off. Well b/c of rules and regs witht he NSF it's hard to sign up to volunteer on projects, especially as a first year, so you have to get to be friends with scientists and get "unofficially" invited to help them. This means that you kind of have to schmooze with the scientists, and I am not good at that. And it usually seems that when they're in my van they're quite pre-occupied with things and I haven't gotten very positive results when I've mentioned my background and my interest in volunteering. The one group that I have become good friends with are Wentao and Zhibin, the ones doing laser research in near space. They are from China but work for CU, so we connected there. They love so much that I travelled in China. However, their research is WAY over my head. The gal that gave us our lab tour today is the lab supervisor for all of Crary. Beverly is about my age and she mentioned in her speel that she has a masters in earth and environmental science and that "she likes the big picture" This is kind of similar to me and she has a job I would find interesting b/c she is dealing with a whole lot of cool projects down here. I hope that maybe I can snag her for a quick talk to just ask her some questions regarding my grad school decision.