Home Away From Home

Weather delay again today.  I filled the time with coding for the Madison College AWS MRI.  Today I was able to bring a few more functions online in the prototype but I won’t bore you with the geeky details.

Here is what it is like to live here in McMurdo Station.  There a few different types of dorms here.  There are some bunk rooms (multiple sleepers), quads, triples, and doubles.  (Though we are not sure that the quads or bunk rooms are used that way anymore.)  Matthew and I share a double, our temporary home at 203A.  Our room is near the back of the building next to the Men’s bathroom.  We each have a twin bed, and an armoire.  Matthew has a nightstand next to his bed; mine has the refrigerator on top of it with a TV.  There is a desk that Matthew has graciously let me take most of the space.  I have setup pictures of home that Veronika printed for me to feel at home here.

Back to the TV, it doesn’t get many stations.  We have a station dedicated to the Intercontinental flights, which we check each evening and morning for details on our travels to AWS’s.  There is another station dedicated to helicopter flights.  There are two “All Day Movie” stations, they repeat the same movie over and over all day.  Another three stations are Armed Forces Network (AFN), think TV back home without normal commercials but armed forces messages.

Next door to our room is the bathroom.  There are two toilets, two urinals, three sinks, and two showers.  I can certainly say that the shower at home is most certainly missed.  The showers here are far from spa-like, although they serve their purpose.  I can say they are exactly the size they need to be.  Any smaller and I would have trouble using them.

We have access to a coffee house (former Officers Club), two bars (Southern Exposure and Gallagher’s), Hut Ten (former Captains House for functions), Crary (the lab), the Gerbil Gym (exercise stuff), the Gym (basketball, pickleball, dodgeball…), and Building 155 (the galley, housing, the store).

Inside of B-155 right outside the galley there is a white board that includes the days happenings.  They post the scheduled events that you can attend if you are free.  There is yoga, basketball, knitting, science lectures, and tours.  So far I have attended two science lectures, watched dodgeball, and toured the firehouse and utilities.

There are many things to pass the time here at McMurdo.