Date: 2004-12-25 14:49
Subject: Greetings from Down Under - soo far under some maps exclude the continent completely.
It's balmy with 24 hours of sunlight a day. The temps are averaging just above freezing most days. This huge land mass with nearly zero native creatures, buzzes with excitement at McMurdo. It's one of 3, two day weekends during our season. Everyone is blissed to have a couple days off! There was a town Christmas party at the Vehicle Maintenance Facility last night as well as numerous other parties. Today, we signed up for Christmas diner; a fancier than usual affair. For me, it hasn't felt like Christmas until just yesterday. I have enjoyed cutting and pasting and water coloring cards lately, but otherwise it's just been work as usual.
I wanted to send everyone out a happy holiday message (happy holidays!!) and also share my upcoming trip plans in hopes of soliciting some recommendations.
In just 8 weeks, I'll be flown back to Christchurch, New Zealand. Bryan is meeting me there. We'll spend 3 weeks sea kayaking, climbing, and touring around and then fly to Australia for a month of primarily climbing in the SE. We'll station ourselves at Arapalies and visit the Grampions National Park for some world class rock climbing. Around April 14, we'll fly to Bangkok for 6 weeks of climbing and touring in SE Asia. May 19th, we fly to Athens, Greece for 6 weeks of island hopping in the Mediterranean. We'll visit some friends that I've met here from the Mt Blanc area in Northern Italy and see some castles ( : We'll overland to Paris to fly to Denver enjoying a couple day layover in Iceland.
Exciting, eh!!! Please give me a heads up if you'll be in any of these places or have some must do's while we're passing through these places. We should be pulling into the U.S. around early July. I'm on the fence about coming back here. I'm presently leaning against returning to this work camp. It's real neat-o, but ....
It'll be interesting to see what plays out once I finish the above mentioned trip.
From now on, I'm going to post my updates on my brother Reuben's website www.logsdon.net it'll be under a heading reading something creative like "grace's travels". Also, my mother will continue to post stories with photos on her monthly e-magazine site; www.jmonthly.com so feel free to keep an eye on progress there.
My Christmas photo is of a Weddell seal poking it's head out of a fish hole in the ice. I didn't take it or see it. We have a shared drive on the computer that people post their photos so although I rarely leave the wastewater plant, I can have vicarious excursions to more exotic Antarctic locations. Lots of love to everyone out there! I hope that 2005 brings you all great unexpected adventure and cheer!
LOVE~
Gracie
See other pictures by Grace.