I Got My Plane Tickets!!

So after much anticipation, I finally got my plane tickets and I have been PQ’d!! It was a long and expensive process, but also at times quite humorous. So there is not turning back now, it is actually going to happen. I am going to leave for Palmer Station Antarctica on April 9th at 5:45pm and land at Punta Arenas, Chile on April 10 at 5:30 pm. For a total of 7190 miles in a plane. But wait I am not done yet! I will spend a day in Chile getting my extreme cold weather gear(ECW), so I do not freeze in -7 °C weather (current temp and not winter yet.) Then on the 12th of April we will board the LMG (Laurence M. Gould Research Vessel) and travel along the drake’s passage collecting fish deadliest catch style. The drake’s passage is the roughest stretch of waters in the world, so I need to prepare for seasickness. I will be on the LMG  for 6 days and 744 miles later I will land at Palmer Station, Antarctica where I will conduct research for three months. Once a month I will still go out and help collect fish for several days. So this is my itinerary, and I can not wait for these five days to get here!

What I Want to do in Antarctica

I try and keep my blog post on Thursdays, but yesterday was so busy with the last of my doctor appointments that I put it off for a day. The good news is, everything is normal and it looks like I am going to be medically cleared to go to Antarctica! Almost done going through the last hoops and my plane tickets can be booked. So far I have talked about the history of Antarctica and clarified my research project, so now I am going to talk about the things I want to do in Antarctica. So in no particular order, here are my non-related research goals in Antarctica, well some are research related.

I am Going to Antarctica!

It has been a month and half since I was invited to participate in a research trip to Palmer Station, Antarctica from April to July 2013, and it is finally starting to feel real. My research advisor Dr. Johanne Lewis at GSU was invited to go to Antarctica by polar researchers Dr. Kristin O’Brien from University of Alaska and Dr. Lisa Crockett from Ohio University. When a spot was created,  I was invited to fill it. For the longest time I did not tell people because I was waiting to wake up from my dream or waiting to see if I would get an email telling me that the invitation was meant for someone else.  Now after a month and half I can finally accept it is going to happen, which means I need to start preparing to leave. Part of the preparation includes starting a blog to record all my preparation activities until I deploy to the icy continent, which I will of course constantly update while I am down in Antarctica. The best part is that this research trip is completely funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant through Drs. O’Brien and Crockett. XD