blog.eliduke.com

it’s now been 4 days since i arrived on the dark continent: things have started to settle in, i think. i worked saturday and sunday and then got sick with strep throat (more on that in a bit). nonetheless, i feel that those 2 days of work were pretty exemplary in the long run. i’ll lay it down for you.

my official title here is Dining Attendant (DA for short). we do everything in the kitchen aside from cook the food: we clean, we sweep, we mop. etc. currently, my work hours (along with mere, morgen, and cedar) are from 11am to 9pm. breakfast is served from 5:30am to 7:30am, so if we want to eat breakfast with everyone else we have to get up pretty early. it’s nice to get up and get going and have some free time before work, but i can also sleep in if i want to and still be able to eat oatmeal, cereal, or toast (with peanut butter) which is always available (they do have soy milk sometimes). i’m hoping to get onto some sort of workout schedule where i get up around 7am, eat breakfast, and then workout for an hour or so before work. we’ll see what happens.

anyhoo, i start work at 11am. first thing, i come in and write down my schedule for that day in a little green notebook that was provided. during the day we reference that schedule to know what to do next. here was my sunday schedule:

• 11:00 – 11:30 – Dishes
• 11:30 – 12:30 – Baker Helper
• 12:30 – 1:30 – Pots
• 1:30 – 1:45 – Stretch
• 1:45 – 2:15 – Break
• 2:15 – 3:00 – C2
• 3:00 – 4:00 – Pots
• 4:00 – 4:15 – Stretch
• 4:15 – 4:30 – Allocation
• 4:30 – 5:00 – Break
• 5:00 – 6:15 – Floor
• 6:15 – 7:30 – Dishes
• 7:30 – 8:00 – C1
• 8:00 – 8:15 – Break
• 8:15 – 9:00 – C3

as you can see, they day is broken up into “tasks” no more than about an hour long. included in that is 2 half-hour breaks, 1 fifteen-minute break, and 2 stretch breaks. i LOVE this system. it’s somewhat of an event when it’s time to switch tasks and it’s always exciting to see who’s on what task next. i settle into my current task very quickly and then before i know it it’s time to switch tasks again. because of this, the day goes by pretty quickly.

there are a few items in that list that i think need a bit more explaining:

dishes and pots seem pretty self-explanatory; stretch is a big group activity where all the DAs go into a back room of the dining area and stretch for 15 minutes; allocation is where we log our hours and stuff into the computer; C1, C2, and C3 are groups of predefined tasks that are described in the back of the little green book i mentioned earlier.

the C groups are as follows:

• C1 – wipe down all kitchen surfaces and restock, etc
• C2 – trash, sweep, mop, clean bathrooms, laundry
• C3 – clean tables, restock salt & pepper, vacuum

you get the idea. i haven’t been completely trained yet, so as time goes by more and more tasks will be added to the list of possibilities.

overall, the kitchen staff is very cool. it is a HUGE operation (feeding 1000+ people 4 times a day) and everything seems to be very under control. all my bosses are very nice, understanding people, and truly do care about my well being. there is a big emphasis on safety and ergonomics. my fellow DAs are also really great and fun to work with, and the food is good too. so far there has been a vegetarian/vegan option at every meal and almost everything on the buffet is labeled so you know if there’s dairy or onions or sugar or whatever in it.

but, i got sick sunday night. during work that day i started to feel a slight agitation in my throat, and by monday morning things were not feeling good. i went over to medical and they said i had the early stages of strep throat. bummer. they gave me some meds and told me to take 48 hours off from work. yesterday i stayed in bed all day eating and sleeping and watching TV (we get the same channels as the military). i feel better overall today, but my throat still hurts when i swallow. i really hope i’m better tomorrow, because i’d much rather be at work than be sick.

for those of you who don’t already know, i’ve finally made it to christchurch, new zealand. i’ve been here for about 3 days now, and should be departing for McMurdo tomorrow morning.

yesterday (wednesday) during our extreme cold weather gear fitting session, we were told that our scheduled ice flight the following morning (thursday) had been rescheduled to friday at 7:15am. they told us that we could come by the next morning between 9 and 10am to pick up more travel funds. by the time we all got back to our hotel rooms, however, that schedule had been canceled and we were back to our original schedule: thursday at 7:15am. just before going to bed that night we were notified that it had been moved up 2 hours to 9:15am. we all woke up the next morning (thursday) to find out that the flight had been canceled (again) and we were re-scheduled for friday morning. it’s all a bit ridiculous if you ask me.

so, we organized ourselves and took the bus over to the travel offices to pick up more travel funds for the extra day in christchurch. i was quite surprised to find out that we were getting an extra $230 Kiwi (about $200 US) for just 1 extra day, but i certainly wasn’t complaining. a few of the other guys and i grabbed our money and headed over to the airport to rent a van. one of the other guys had already rented one van, so with one more added, that gave us a carrying capacity of about 16 people. we managed to find 15 people that wanted to go, so we loaded up 2 the vans and headed north to Hanmer Springs (about 125 km from christchurch). i was really excited to drive a right handed car on the left side of the road, so about half way there we switched and i started driving.

i really enjoyed driving in this new system, but i just couldn’t get the hang of the right handed turn signal and the left handed windshield wipers. i kept shutting off the wipers when i wanted to turn right. our caravan stayed pretty tight the whole way there, but near the end of the drive there was a white truck in the middle of the 2 vans.

about 25 km from the hot springs we came up over a hill and all of a sudden there was a small red car in the left lane headed straight toward us. the red car was trying to pass a large bus and just was not pulling it off in time. i slammed on the breaks and swerved toward the shoulder to the left. the red car swerved to it’s left just in time to slip back into the right lane where it was supposed to be. just as we were breathing a sigh of relief, the white truck that was between the 2 vans slammed into the back of the van i was driving and pushed us off the road into the ditch. shit! that was crazy!

everyone in the car was fine, just a little bit of whip-lash. we got out of the car and talked with the driver of the white truck. he called the police. a few minutes later a young couple who was in the pack of cars going the other direction pulled up and said that they witnessed the whole thing and had actually caught the license plate number of the little red car. the driver of the bus that was being passed also stopped to be a witness as well. we all hung out on the side of the road for about 90 minutes waiting for the police before we decided to just exchange info and deal with it later.

we continued on to Hanmer Springs and arrived around 3pm. the springs were really cool. it was $10 Kiwi for general admission, and matt and i paid the additional $5 for the water slides. we hung out in the pools, ranging from 29 to 42 degrees celcius, and also went down the water slides. it was very relaxing and bunches of fun.

we just arrived back at the YMCA in christchurch an hour ago (10pm) to find out that we have to check in at the airport tomorrow at 6am. the rental car offices don’t open until 6am, so we are going to have to finagle something so we can get that all straightened out before leaving for antarctica for 5 months.

i’ll write again from the ice.

meredith and i woke up this morning at 6am to get ready for our 2pm flight this afternoon. we finalized our packing, cleaned up the mess we’ve been making at my aunt and uncle’s house, ran a few last minute errands, and then (about 30 minutes before we were supposed to leave for the airport) we found out that our flight had been rescheduled for 7:50pm tonight.

hmm… so… now we’re waiting an extra 5 hours.

we should arrive in denver tonight at about 11pm and probably just go straight to the hotel and sleep. all day saturday we’ll be busy doing administrative stuff: filling out papers, getting uniforms, meeting fellow workers, etc. we will stay one more night in denver, followed by a half day in the morning doing more paperwork and stuff.

our flight to new zealand departs denver at about 5pm on sunday and arrives in christchurch at 10am on tuesday. we’ll stay at the YMCA hostel in christchurch for a few days, pick up our ECW (extreme weather gear), and head to “the ice” on friday or so.

i’ll be twittering like crazy until i get on that plane to new zealand, and i’ll post again here from the seventh continent. until then.