7 August, 2001

Hello to everyone who has been waiting for my first journal entry.

I am here in Hanover, New Hampshire with 11 other TEA parcticipants for a full week of orientation. We arrived Sunday evening after a flight to Boston and a 2 1/2 hour bus trip to Hanover. Our orientation is at CRREL, the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. Contrary to the name of the lab and much like the rest of the country, it is very balmy here in Hanover. the weather makes it hard to imagine just what the conditions will be like when we get to our research sites next year.

Our orientation days are spent hearing about all of the different aspects of the TEA experience. So far we have been introduced to the types of conditions we will face, the types of research currently being conducted, considerations for indigenous people that we may meet, and presentations of past experiences. One of our more enlightening sessions hapened this evening when two instructors from the Air Force survival school explained the dangers of the polar environments and simple survival techniques in those areas. Their descriptions help give us an appreciation for just how foreign our research settings will be.

We are told that tomorrow we will be taking a break to get a tour of the facility here. I'm looking forward to seeing the type of research that goes on here at CRREL.