As promised I'm going to write a bit about my first Christmas away, in this case very far far away, from home. This Christmas for me will be memorable not just because of being away, but also because of the truly unique circumstances and people I got to celebrate it with. It obviously wasn't the same as being at home and I missed my family very much. On the whole however, the experience of strangers coming together to make the most of a bad thing was something I appreciated being a part of.
The hotel, and thus the DYNAMO crew, celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve by putting together a special dinner for all of the guests. They did a wonderful job of decorating the grounds with lights, trees, "Happy Christmas" balloons, and tinsel. Some of the work they did in front of us so we knew what was coming, but some of it was prepared secretly so it was a nice surprise when we all gathered together after a long day at work. We got special tablecloths, real food, and Christmas music with dinner. The food was particularly memorable because it was a change from the everyday fish and rice - we actually had turkey and real steak. Yum. Here are a few photos of the outside of the lobby, some of the group gathering together beforehand, the dining room, and some of the food. The purpose of the weird witch thingy looking over the food was a topic of lively dinner conversation, with us ultimately deciding it was either leftover from some Halloween celebration or some weird island tradition that we weren't in on.
After dinner we sat around in a circle and played a version of a white elephant gift exchange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange) organized by the radar techs. I had a lot of fun shopping around on the island for something silly to give, eventually going with a tiny robot alarm clock that played music. The gift I ended up with, which I had to steal to get, was a Maldivian version of a moonpie and RC (it's a southern thing), wrapped in a banana leaf. Pictures of my tasty gift are below. The role of Santa in the gift swap was played by NCAR scientist John Hubbard, with a specially designed Santa-Clause hat built by the techs. His "sack" was a garbage bag from which we drew gifts. The most popular gift that got stolen repeatedly was a Lilo & Stich squirt gun.
Christmas Eve was on a Saturday, which is conventionally disco night at the resort. So after dinner and exchanging gifts we partied down well into the night to the tune of mid-90's pop music. As it turns out, somewhat surprisingly, scientists can't dance. Nevertheless that did not stop many of us from trying nor prohibit me from shooting enough video to guarantee sufficient blackmail for a nice post-doc in a few years. In the end, while I missed the cheesy television specials, Christmas morning with the family, and good food it was all in all a fun, different, one-of-a-kind Christmas. I'll leave you with a final few pictures from the field.
Cheers,
Casey
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