My First Christmas Away From Home

Christmas here at McMurdo was nothing short of bizarre. For me anyway.

My Christmas usually goes something like this:

last minute Christmas Eve gift buying spree (demanded by long tradition instilled by my father), big turkey dinner, mad wrapping rush, hang up stockings, go to sleep with sugar plums dancing in my head. Secretly wake up and open the stockings with my brothers in the dead of night, wake up again Christmas morning at the crack of dawn to see what else Santa brought, festive breakfast followed by a day of relaxing and a night time drive to see the lights for the last time.

Christmas this year went a little like this:

Worked all day Christmas Eve to get ready for the big party that night and even bigger meal the next day. Went to the party (with almost the whole 1000 people who live here) and danced the night away. Woke up Christmas Day, went into work to have "family meal" (special meal for kitchen folk) and immediately after stuffing our faces had to work a 10 hour shift to feed everyone else. (I think this is worth noting: we stuffed out faces with lobster and duck, and a hundred other delightful little side dishes. Much better fare than I ever expected here). It is probably also worth noting that the delightful fare did not agree with me and I was sent home sick. No tree (there is no vegetation here whatsoever) but I made one out of construction paper, complete with ornaments, and hung it on my door. My roommmate made a fire with stockings hanging on it (also out of construction paper) and put it on the fridge. All very festive.

I ended up celebrating my own little Christmas a day later than real Christmas because a) I had the day off and b) we are a day ahead, so the day after Christmas here was Christmas back home. I got a little tradition filled package from home (that I opened secretly, in the dead of night on Christmas Eve, just to keep things real) and was able to call home, so I didn't feel too far away.

I think if things had been more "normal" here I would have felt much more homesick, but as it was it just felt like another adventure here on the Ice. And really, my first Christmas away from home was in Antarctica. How good is that?