13 November, 1996

Nov 13

Well I finally arrived at McMurdo about 4PM today. I got to Christchurch, NZ about 10 Monday.

Jennifer and I toured the city for the afternoon. Christchurch is called the Garden City with good reason. Flowers are everywhere! We toured the botanical gardens, the museum and took a tour of Christchurch Cathedral in the afternoon.

We were scheduled to try on our extreme cold weather gear Tuesday at 2PM so toured more of the city in the morning. Trying on all the layers of clothes (11 pair of gloves) took 3 hours and was frustrating. Packing all the gear in two orange bags, one for baggage and one for hand carry was equally trying. I was afraid thea my hand carry bag would be too big. Actually it was, but the man took pity on me and let it pass. We were fortunate, the flight was scheduled for 9AM so we didn't

have to be at the ASA area until 6:45 AM. Sceondly, we got to McMurdo on our first time out. Weatherwas good thethe view of the Trans Antarctic mountains was spectacular. You can see the glaciers moving down the valleys and even see sites where avalanches have occurred. Awesome. Tommorow we unpack more lab equipment (50 2 liter beakers), etc.

and then have to plan our meals for the camping trip. Friday we take the snowcraft course. Suruj, the physics graduate student has to take his training at the same time so we plan to build an igloo to sleep in overnight instead of just making a pile of snow and digging in. Who knows if we can do it.