Arrivals (and departures?)

While I was at last night's safety lecture, a plane from Christchurch arrived with a few more people I knew. Afterward, I discovered that all the people headed for Pole (including the new people) were scheduled to fly the next day! ("Scheduled" doesn't mean we *will* fly, but it was more than I expected after the past couple of weeks.)

For an introvert like me, McMurdo is a little grueling for long stays because there aren't many quiet, comfortable places to get away from everyone. I sleep in a dorm room with 3 other beds and the Crary library is actually a large open room with areas which act like a conference room, break room, and presentation space, so it can be pretty noisy. I can handle it for a few days, but I've been in transit for a couple of weeks and I'm starting to feel the psychic stress of being constantly surrounded by people.

It had been a long day so I decided to treat myself to a quiet night in my room, watching video. I'd previously had a single roommate in my 4-person room but two bags of bedding had shown up in our room, a sign that we'd soon have interlopers! I'd barely started an episode of Doctor Who (because I'm that kind of nerd) when Perry showed up. He's another long-time IceCube person so we chatted while he made up his bed and unpacked. Once he'd set up his area of the room, he left to get some food and I turned back to my video.

I barely made it to the 5 minute mark when the other new roommate came in. He's a scientist/computer geek from New Jersey, so we talked tech and Antarctic life while he went through the same routine as Perry. He mentioned that he hoped to use the Wifi in Crary, but I knew the authentication process has changed this year so I volunteered to go over and help him get online. It only took a few minutes to get him online so I was back in the room 15 minutes after we'd left.

A few more minutes into my video, my roommate Neil (who is also headed for Pole) came in and while he gathered his things and prepared for the next morning, we talked about the likelihood that we'd actually be flying the next day. While that was going on, Perry came back and started getting ready for bed, because he'd had a long day, it was already 10:30PM and we had to be at the Cargo building by 7:30AM the next morning.

My quiet evening turned into a pretty social one, but I'm hopeful that I'll soon be back to the comforting solitude of the South Pole :-)