Savvy?

This may be an American station, but the language and culture are quite foreign. There are acronyms and nicknames for almost everything.

Here are a few..

Boondoggle: a day trip disguised as work though it is clearly for sight seeing or adventure seeking.

Boomerang: to start a flight but have to turn around due to bad weather. This can be quite depressing if you've already reached the halfway mark.

Crud: gross sickness that endlessly cycles around McMurdo.

Beaker: scientist.

The Ice: Antarctica.

Freshies: fresh fruits and vegetables.

Frosty Boy: frozen yogurt machine. This machine isn't an official Frosty Boy, but acquired the nickname from the previous frozen yogurt machine.

DV: Distinguished visitors. These guys get the royal treatment.

Happy Camper: I called this snow school the other day and nobody knew what I was talking about. I guess the wormherders are the only ones who refer to it as snow school. Weird.

Kiwi: New Zealander.

Skua: There are bins around town of unwanted items people don't feel like packing home, these are accurately named after the skua birds that scavenge everything. There are some great finds if you are willing to search.

Herbie: winter hurricane. 

I worry that once you are used to the quirky culture here, you become one of them...

CULTURE SHOCK WHEN I GET BACK TO NORMAL LIFE

http://whatshouldwecallgradschool.tumblr.com/

Wormherders

I am here working for the LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) Wormherders. Dr. Diana Wall (Colorado State), Dr. Byron Adams (BYU), Dr. Ross Virginia (Dartmouth), and Dr. John Barret, (Jeb, Virginia Tech) are the Principle Investigators (PI's) for the soils group in this LTER. Wormherders was a nickname given by the helo pilots.

People here love their acronyms, every building, most roads, pieces of equipment, and rooms have an acronym. One of the first days we were here we were supposed to pick up something from the BFC and I was charged with relaying this message. I just threw out random letters, I can't remember what now, and was mocked for the rest of the day. But even with my random letters, everyone knew exactly where I was talking about. So confusing. They need a pocket-size decoder that I can carry around with me!

Martijn and Matt are postdocs working for Diana, and Eric is a postoc for Jeb. These guys have the bulk of the responsibilities. Kevin and Ruth are working on the PhD's and Ashley and I are Master's students.

This is the group!

 LtoR: Ashley, Jeb, Diana, Ross, Ruth, Kevin, Matt, Me, Martijn, and Eric

There and back again

I made it back to the field! 

Due to weather delays and an overwhelming number of samples to be counted, I had a long break between my field excursions, but I made it out! We went to Lake Hoare to collect soils and water an ongoing experiment. It was a beautiful day and this site is one of the best. 

Ashley carrying back all the empty carboys

Lake Hoare

Freezing cold but still a beautiful valley

We were planning on staying the night here, there is a main hut, lab, and lots of tents, but there was a winter storm warning so we decided to come back to McMurdo. It turned out to be a good decision, if we had stayed we would have been stuck there for a few days! There are too many samples to run for that kind of nonsense.