all photos
[12/26(Mo) Viper telescope]
0:00 Woke up and called Nacchan to make sure she's ready to leave for Nihon. Then went to the lab. Called Nihon.
6am Talked to Nacchan while she waited at LAX.
8am Took a nap hoping to get some sleep, but woke up in 1 hour when Jamie arrived.
2-4pm After the lunch meeting, I helped Bill take off a device from his ACBAR instrument on Viper telescope that he's decommissioning. It was fun to climb around this big telescope.
4-7pm Back at our BICEP telescope, I put on a foam cover to prevent snow from accumulating in the telescope. I'll see if snow piles on this cover.
8pm Sleep
[12/27(Tu) Cloudy Days]
9am Woke up way past the 6:30 teleconference time! I must've needed sleep, even though I didn't feel tired yesterday. There were patches of snow on the foam window cover. Today was mostly cloudy, but cleared up in late afternoon, so I tried to find a star by figuring out its position from the Sun and the time of the day. I looked around, but couldn't find it :( Saw lots of pretty ice crystals high up in the sky though.
8-9pm Denis and Cynthia convinced me and Ki Won to join them to watch Wallace & Grummut, a British claymation -- the 1st story was about going to the Moon!
[12/28(We) Groundshield tests]
7am Had lots of dreams, including talking to Bill who'll interview Nacchan today. Was surprised how much I had slept... Today was cloudy again, but tried my calibrator, which produced a nice looking signal :) We also tried putting on and off my groundshield in front of the telescope to make sure it doesn't interfere w/ our observation. Sent a report on star pointing telescope.
9:30 Sleep.
[12/29(Th) sleepy]
3:00am Woke up. Went to the lab and wrote a report on the forebaffle tests. Worked on figuring out my calibrator's expected signals.
6pm Saw a reacreational safety video so that I can explore around the McMurdo Station on the way back. Fell asleep half way.
[12/30(Fr) My calibrator tests]
5am Woke up. Discussed w/ Jamie the calibrator's expected signals. Tested the forebaffle more carefully. Lots of my calibrator tests. Today I decided to switch my work/sleep schedule from starting work early and sleeping 8pm-3am to working late and sleeping 5am-12pm. More of the team mates are on this kind of schedule. So I went back to the lab after dinner to point the telescope at Cynthia's calibration source on a 10-meter tall mast using my optical pointing telescope. I also started analyzing my calibrator data. Our winterover Denis showed me his fire fighting gear. He let me try on the gas mask, breathing air from the tank.
0:00: I was finally able to talk to Nacchan in Nihon.
Q(Kathleen). What is it like to be in the South Pole?
=) Being at the South Pole helps me better look at the Earth as one, since I feel connected to everywhere by the longitudinal lines that converge here.
5:30am Got too sleepy, so left the lab and went to bed.
[12/31(Sa) Talked to My Family]
11:30 Woke up and looked at Brian's analysis of my calibrator data. It's great when professors help w/ data analysis :) After lunch and the 1am meeting, discussed the calibrator data analysis w/ Brian. Adjusted the CCD camera position in the optical telescope to improve the collimation and started testing it, but Ki Won reminded me something that convinced me to stop work and go back to the station w/ him.
7:30pm During dinner I was bery tired. I thoght to take a nap til the 9pm party, but decided to play table tennis instead w/ Ki Won. We ended up playing for 2.5 hours til 10:30pm! Then we went to check out the party in the big machine shop by the dome. Wearing normal clothes, the underground tunnel to this shop was freezing! The party was fun, but when the satellite came up I left to call Seika, who just got married in Nihon today!
11:45 Called Seika and talked to her and her new husband (only my 2nd time talking w/ him!). He sounded nice as before. He told me that when Seika prposed the South Pole for their honeymoon, he at first took it seriously :) until they found out it costs ~5,000,000 yen. I hope they keep up the spirit of adventure together. Ended up talking to them for 1.5 hour until their End of the Year soba noodle must have been all soggy. Then I called my grandparents' home and my grandmother picked up the phone saying to herself "Yuki ka na~" (Maybe it's Yuki...). I also talked to my father and his brother Teruo-san. Also talked to my mother and my sister Reina. Reina was fascinated to hear why the Sun never sets here. It was nice to talk to everyone in my family in a few hour period. It was already 4:30 and i fell asleep while writing to Nacchan.
[1/1(Su) Crashed airplane!]