Karen and I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving (albeit a few days late). Our Thanksgiving actually turned out to be surprisingly a bit like home (Mom, I said 'a bit'. You know it will never be exactly the same).

Because we work 6 days a week, it is easier for us to have a much coveted 2 day weekend for the holidays instead of taking Thursday off, so we celebrated the big day of thanks on Saturday. The typical Thanksgiving in McMurdo Station starts with the cooks preparing:
- 1200 lbs. of Turkey
- 750 lbs. of Prime Rib
- 350 lbs. of Shrimp cocktail
- 600 lbs. of baby seal steaks marinated in a rare penguin oil (I'm kidding, so stop calling Greenpeace and put the phone down)
Not including all the other side dishes, this averages out to 2 1/2 lbs. of meat for every person on station. And believe me, I did my best not to bring down the average.

My thanksgiving day started at 8am with Liz and I volunteering to cut up about 150 pumpkin/pecan pies in order to take some of the workload off the cooks. At 10am and with Karen cheering me on, I ran in the annual McMurdo Station Turkey Trot. This is a pretty fun 5k race that starts in town and then takes us out on the McMurdo Sound about half way to the ice runway. Luckily we had a gorgeous day with temps in the 30's and no wind. Upon successfully running the entire race in good time, I decided to severely sprain my ankle on a stone at the finish line. See, here at McMurdo, the roads are less than ideal for running on. Take a gravel/dirt road and then randomly sprinkle golf ball to tennis ball size stones everywhere, and you have an idea of the road surface that we walk around on here. Hey, it's a harsh continent. Luckily nothing is broken and it is only a sprain. The good news is I look very sophisticated walking around with my new cane. The cane even has a little crampon for traction on the ice patches (Mom, read: I’m fine). After a bit of R.I.C.E. for the swelling (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation – learned that in my 10th grade Phys Ed class), it was time to get ready for the big meal.

Recently, Karen and I have been hanging out with a pretty cool group of people that have been coming to the Ice for several years now and know the Antarctic thanksgiving drill all too well. One of them decided that it would be nice to invite a few folks over to a building where some of them worked in order to have a little bit more intimate setting to enjoy our turkey feast. So, we pulled together some tables and chairs, decorated the room, threw on some music, and had a slide show running in the background with pictures from past years (Karen and I were not exactly in many of them - something about not ever being here before). We cruised down to the Galley at the 5pm dinner shift, loaded up our cafeteria trays with impressive mountains of food (remember: 2 1/2 lbs. of meat/person) and headed back to the building. We sat down to our perfectly decorated table, and after a quick, warm toast by our friend Joe, we began to fill our empty legs with an exceptionally well prepared turkey dinner (not as good as yours, Mom). At one point Karen and I glanced around the table at everyone and although we haven't known a lot of these people for long, felt very satisfied that this was the closest we could have come to enjoying thanksgiving with family. The rest of the evening was filled with good conversation, games, wine, coffee, and even our friend Jaegermeister made an appearance for anyone needing a little German cough medicine.

Know what the hardest part was about this Thanksgiving? No leftovers at my beckon call, which equates to: no midnight turkey binges, no turkey wrapped turkey balls, no mashed potato and gravy sandwiches with turkey instead of bread, no frozen turksicles (okay, that one made me a little sick), no big tall glass of warm turkey fat, no turkey pancakes, no...well, you get the idea.

Anyways, HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE AND WE MISS YOU!

Love,
Mark and Karen