Christchurch

On Friday 11/11/11 at 11:11:11 we were shopping at the mall down the road. We picked up an AC adapter to charge our laptops while in NZ (McMurdo uses US format electricity/plugs), and some other supplies like jeans, diary, walkie talkies. The mall was mostly like any other mall in the US, but I thought there was a larger amount of everyday-type stores and persons shopping -- back in CA some folks shop at malls and they do so for particular things that you find there like clothes & jewelry, but here it looked a bit more popular and for more everyday shopping. Across from the mall we found a comic book store and Jordan felt quite at home as we considered what games might be good to bring. I should also say that he'd played rugby and that they are holding the rugby world cup in Christchurch soon -- there are flags everywhere advertising it. (Here's Jordan under the rugby street sign on a typical street corner). BTW, they drive on the left side here.

Before the mall we went to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) for Antarctic Deployment and tried on all the clothes they are giving us for the trip. Lots of layers and serious rubber boots. We met some of the other researchers heading down with us tomorrow...a cute NZ geologist going to an area between McMurdo and the pole as well an astronomer from Chicago going to film a telescope at the pole. (Here's the CDC outside and inside).

On the walk back from the mall we stopped by a pet store, and I visited with the angelfish and three interesting little tan birds with orange streaks on their cheeks that liked to hop back and forth trading places on their perch.

Joulien is enthusiastic about visiting the corner pub this evening (a couple hours from now), where we may have dinner. Beer here is $7.50 NZ ($5.80 US) for a true pint. generally things seem a little more expensive here (Jeans $100 NZ -> $75 US). We arrive at the deployment center at 6:30am and the flight leaves at 9:00am. We'll be flying on a C17 jet which is considerably faster than the propeller powered C130 they often use (flight time is 5hrs rather than 8hrs). They say the record for number of boomerang flights is 7, so we will be lucky if our first flight gets through.