Happy Midwinter!

This week we celebrated midwinter. It officially happened sometime on June 21^st, but we had our party over the weekend. At this point we are about three months from sunrise (although we will have about a month of twilight before that), four months from station open and the first flight in (scheduled for Oct 27^th, that may or may not happen depending on weather), and about four and a half months from the official end of the winter contract. Midwinter is one of the three big holidays down here over the winter, a bit like Christmas. And like at Christmas time, we’ve been getting greetings from the other Antarctic stations, and sent our own out to them.

Sorry about the blurriness. There are about 30 greetings from other
stations, along with four or five letters from various government agencies.

Here at the Pole, our celebrations kicked off on Friday night with a screening of “The Shining” in our drive-in theater, a.k.a. the gym.  I had a delivery though, so no movies for me. I also missed most of the festivities on Saturday, since I am still on nights, and will be for at least another month. I did wake up for Midwinter dinner. Beforehand, we had appetizers and drinks in the lounge.

Travis wore his Antarctic Service Medal from a few seasons ago.

Then we made our way to the dinning area, which had been set up and decorated by a number of volunteers, with a number of people donating  illegal candles to the cause.

My table, from L to R: Heather, Sven, Katie, Nate.
Not pictured: Jared, Jeremy, Tracy

Shawn made a bunch of these copper sleds as table center pieces.
They were pretty cool!

2011-2012 patches from the IT folks

For dinner we had:

Crab bisque in a bread bowl

Green beans, garlic mashed potatoes, brie-and-apple stuffed halibut, lobster tail.

It was my first time trying lobster, and I can't say I was super impressed, but the halibut and potatoes were very good.

Chocolate lava cake, with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. Yum!

After dinner there was a dance party that I caught part of before heading out to work. There were still a few people still dancing when I came back in at around 2AM.

All in all, a good weekend!