The South Pole

Wow. I've been busy. You can probably tell because I haven't posted much here. I went to the South Pole, all the way to the very bottom of the planet. It was so cold there, something like 25 degrees below zero with a wind chill factor of between 50 and 70 degrees below zero. When I smiled for a picture outside the water between my teeth froze! That's cold.

I took lots of pictures. I'll show more later. Here are two featuring the bear Kelsie gave me. He went to the South Pole too!

I'm 16 hours ahead of you!

I know you're just learning how to tell time. Has anyone explained time zones to you yet? Maybe not. Anyway, down here in Antarctica I'm on the other side of the world as well as on the bottom of the world. I'm 16 hours ahead of you. I used to be 17 hours ahead of you until last Sunday. (We're in the same time zone as the country of New Zealand.) Being 16 hours ahead of you, it's already tomorrow here! When you read this on Wednesday (if you do), it will already be Thursday here.    

Day Off

This seal has the day off today, just like you do. He and his friends seem to get a lot of days off!

Penguins!

Yes, they do have penguins down here. Here are some that a friend of mine named Joshua took a picture of when he was out doing his work. We are not allowed to interfere with penguins at all, so when they show up they go where they want. We try to stay out of their way. They are fun to see. They are more interesting than the seals sometimes, becuase the seals just lay around like big blobs. They barely roll over. Even though they are cute and nice, they are a little boring. The penguins, however, seem always to be busy and on the move.  

When Volcanos Burp

Volcanos burp!

And when they do it's a big deal if you're nearby. You have to avoid the temptation to run and turn around and watch what comes up and out of them so you don't get hit by it. They spit out bits of molten lava that quickly harden into light rocks. Sometimes these rocks have lots of holes in them like a sponge.

In this picture I'm in a special volcano lab holding one of these burped rocks.

Scott's Hut

Today we're looking at a really old hut used by one of the first and most famous Antarctic explorers, Robert Falcon Scott.

They've left everything in here exactly as it was 100 years ago, even pants they hung up to dry!

Here's some old, frozen socks!

 

Here's some old food.



More old food. Can you see the crackers they left out? It's so cold here that they still look like crackers, even though by now they would be dust anywhere else on earth.

Here's a package of sugar that's older than your grandparents' grandparents!

Here's some old hot chocolate. I wonder if this is still good.

The roof had ice on the inside. That's when you know it's cold!

Scott Base

I take a shuttle and go to lunch at Scott Base, New Zealand's base, every Wednesday as part of my job. This is a sign outside Scott Base that shows how far some big cities are away from it.



This is a room in a museum they have at Scott Base. It shows some old things they used before they had computers. 



This is their old stove. Now they have much newer ones.

These are some of the things they wore back then.



They used to have big dogs help them get around. Here's a sign saying how much food they used to get.




This sign shows what the dogs looked like. They don't use dogs to pull sleds anymore. They don't have any down here now, not even as pets.



This is an emergency exit which is up in the air because sometimes the snow would be so deep you couldn't open a normal door.

Fata Morgana

Fata Morgana is a funny name for a funny thing that happens a lot here in Antarctica. It is the name for a mirage. A mirage is something you see that's not really there. Light plays a trick so that what you see or what a camera takes a picture of is bent or stretched. This picture of a mountain by where I live down here looks like it has a cliff on the bottom of it, but that cliff is not really there; it's a mirage. Isn't that amazing?

Touch Tank!

Wow! I took a tour of the big science lab they have here called the Crary Lab. It has an aquarium with a touch tank filled with fish and other things that live under the very cold ocean water here in Antarctica.

 


Look at all the different things living in this tank!

This thing that looks like a big bug is called a "sea lice!"

 I was scared at first to put my hand in the touch tank!

But then I got braver! (Look at the guy in the red sweatshirt. He thinking "No way. Not me!)














I finally got enough courage to pick up the scariest thing in the tank: the sea lice!

Then I picked up a Starfish.

















Then a Sea Spider! Cool!

Really, Really Windy

Here's a picture of me in a normal Antarctic storm. I'm having a hard time standing in the wind. It was worse than this for most of the day. It was so windy that you couldn't even see outside; all you could see was white because of all the snow that was blowing around. When it's really windy, it's also really cold! I was outside just for a second to take this picture and then I had to run back inside.

Artists in Antarctica

There are many people who come to Antarctica who are creative. On top is a metal sculture of a whale or fish. It took somebody a long time to make this, but now everybody who walks by it thinks it's neat and it makes them smile. It is very big. The picture on the bottom is of a metal skier on a hill. When I first saw it I thought it was a real person skiing down the hill! 

It's Summer Down Here

I know it sounds funny, but down here in Antarctica it's summer. The seasons down here are the opposite of ours in Montgomery, NY. Summer is still pretty cold down here!

Another really funny thing is that during summer it never gets dark outside. It's light outside even during the middle of the night. Isn't that amazing? This picture shows what it looks like in the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping.  

Weddell Seals

These are Weddell Seals that I took pictures of over the last few days. They're kind of cute. We're not allowed to get too close to them, mostly because walking on the ice near them is dangerous. They came up through the ice because it was thin, so that makes it dangerous to walk on. In some of the pictures you can see where they made holes in the ice. They mostly just lay around when they're out of the water. In the water they move very fast and always look like they're having fun.

Ivan the Terra Bus

The biggest bus in Antarctica is so big that he has a name: Ivan the Terra Bus. Most people who come to Antarctica get off the plane after it lands and get on to Ivan for a long ride into McMurdo Station.

Ivan weighs 30 tons and holds at least 56 people. Some say as many as 80 people can fit in him. He has big soft tires that help him drive over the ice and snow. He moves pretty slowly. He's kind of loud, but nice and warm on the inside.

Weather Balloons

 

Balloons aren't just for parties. Some are used for science to measure the weather. A weather observer for the National Science Foundation named Mark let me help him blow up a big weather balloon that had a very special computer tied to it. I got to be the one who released it into the air. It's so big that it will almost go up into space. It will go 60,000 feet into the atmosphere. That's more than 11 miles. As it goes up it measures the temperature and other things so he can tell what's happening and what's going to happen with the weather. This is important because planes can't fly when the weather gets bad down here in Antarctica.

Mark also let me write on the balloon, so I wrote a message to Kelsie and her mom and her baby sister. It was a lot of fun.

He said I could do it again. I mentioned that you, Mrs. Van Pelt's Kindergarten class, might want a special message written on a scientific weather balloon that will be released into the sky from Antarctica. He liked that idea. So, if your class would like, let me know what special message to write on the next balloon I get to let go of and I will take a picture of it for you and put it here for you to see. Your message will go so far up in the sky that it will almost be in space!

                                                          

Thanks!