Happy Camper

Last week I got to go to Happy Camper School, a basic overnight cold weather survival class and it was AWESOME! Our group consisted 11 campers, most of us fingees. What a great group of people -- within about 10 minutes we had come up with nicknames for everyone. (Mine was Paradise, because I lived in the tropics.)
We did and learned so much. After about an hour of lecture time, we drove out to our campsite, an hour from McMurdo. At the instructor's hut, we learned some basic stuff like how to light a Whisperlite stove, got our gear and then walked to camp. There, we built a snow wall, set up a Scott tent (the only truly Antarctic shelter) and some regular tents, and made a Quinzhee: an igloo-like snow hut, made by shoveling lots and lots of snow onto a pile of duffel bags (our sleeping gear -- how's that for incentive to dig?), and then digging a tunnel into it to retrieve the bags, leaving a snow cave to sleep in.
Which I did! Amazingly enough, my roommate (Quinzheemate?) and I stayed relatively warm all night. Apparently the key to staying warm is to constantly eat and drink, which we did. And of course dress appropriately and exercise.
We also learned how to prevent and treat hypothermia and frostnip, operate a ham radio (we called the South Pole!), perform a search and rescue in a simulated white-out (wearing buckets on our heads), and all kinds of nifty stuff. We worked hard but had so much fun. Definitely a highlight of my time here.