Saturday, February 17, 2007

Last Full Day in McMurdo

The season is coming to a close for me. I have so much going on right now, my head is spinning. Yesterday was my last day of work. In the afternoon, a hundred people left town. Everyone departs from Building 140, so there was a large group of people standing outside hugging people as they got on the different deltas and Ivan the Terra Bus to drive out to the runway.

Today I'm packing up and cleaning my room. One of my co-workers from the Housing office will stop by sometime after 3pm to make sure I've cleaned the room and defrosted the refridgerator. I still have over 4 hours to get it done. At 4:30pm, I have Bag Drag. Bag Drag means I have to carry all of my things up to Building 140 and have them all weighed in. Even the carry-on I'll take on tomorrow's flight.

Tomorrow I'll have to wake up early to find out what time Transport is. That's when it's my flight's turn to gather at Building 140 and check-in for our flight out of here!! I'll be staying in Christchurch until the 22nd. I need to do a little shopping for some items that missing in my luggage (like a swimsuit for the beach).

Travel plans are all coming together. In Sydney, I might be meeting up with a very old friend of mine (we did a lot of 4-H activities together when we were younger) and her fiancé, my third cousin Marty. Yesterday, I realized that I have almost 16,000 frequent flyer miles in a Qantas account from a trip I took almost 3 years ago. Well, if you don't use them in 3 years or have any other additions to the mileage, you lose them. I decided to look and see if I could use them for a one-way ticket between Sydney and Melbourne. Luckily, there was even a special so it only cost me US$30 and 6000 air miles for that flight.

I have booked my round-trip ticket to Turkey, and Mark has booked our one-way tickets from Istanbul to Erzurum. We have to pay for letters of invitation to Azerbaijan, and I lucked out again in that the company who we're getting them from accepts PayPal payments (so I can pay online), making ten times easier for me to get them their money.

At this point, I return home on March 6th. I say "at this point" because things are always changing with this program. I could get off the Ice and find out that there are no seats available that day, and I will just have to adjust. You have to flexible and not stress out. Patience is a virtue.

Posted by Katie from the Ice @ 10:30 AM