Exciting day!

Hello!

Yesterday I finally gave in to my lack of sleep and slept for most of the day. That's why I didn't post anything, but I'll make it up with a LOT of photos today :)

Ohh here are the results of the cups I sent to the bottom of the ocean, they shrink due to the pressure of the water:

We've been doing more work lately, we are sending the CTD down, it takes water samples at 8 different depths, and when it comes back we need to sample the water for salinity and O18. Here is Karel doing some sampling, and me trying to tie the box with bottles down.

Angelika and I were on a mission today... We want to make the same kind of photo page with all the members of crew. We see so many faces and we have no idea who they are of what they do... So we walked around with a camera and a notebook and bothered everyone. It was so much fun!! Most of the crew is really friendly once you show some interest, and have lots of interesting stories to tell. And we found out the advantage of making friends with the crew immediately...

Doug (the deck engineer) took us to the "fo'c'sle", this word comes from forecastle and means the front deck of the ship. It was all iced up, and really amazing!! We took so many pictures. Everything was covered in a very thick layer of ice, I've never seen anything like it. Here's some of the pictures we took. Sorry it's a lot of photos, but I couldn't choose, I liked them all! :)

We spent some time looking at the first test of the micro structure. This is some complicated instrument, to be honest I don't really know what it does, but it measures things on a smaller scale to study turbulence in the ocean. It's supposed to go down by itself and come up by itself as well. They are scared it will get lost though, as there are still some problems. So they're doing lots of tests.

This is me with Doug, and a photo I took of an albatross. Though Adrian told me it's a petrol, but I think it looks like an albatross so I call it albatross :P

Then Doug took us to the engine room, where Tom gave us a tour. That was really cool! It was great to see all the engines, the water system, the sewage system, the heating etc.

Finally, here's Pat and me in the bar for crew members :) And a picture of the typical view today. The sea has really calmed down since yesterday night and is nearly flat. We are surrounded by small icebergs with amazing shapes! We also saw seals and a whale today, what a day!!

I'm really enjoying it... now that I find my way around the ship without getting lost, know the names of most crew members... I start to feel at home on the ship :)

We only have about 2 days of science left! If everything goes to plan, we will be done with all the measurements by Tuesday afternoon. After that, we will be processing the data but we don't have to work in watches anymore. That'll be nice! My watch is really nice, but some people are on more difficult watches. Pat works from 16:00-20:00 and from 04:00-08:00, which means I rarely see her! She's either working or sleeping.

So from Tuesday we will be on our way "home", well to Montevideo, which is about 1600 miles from here!

Alright, I have to get ready for dinner now...