The Goodbye Girl, and/or Good Morning Vietnam (next post)

So I realize I have been horrible about updating this blog.  The winter in McMurdo was a bit of a whirlwind and traveling so far has been nonstop.  We are finally in Vietnam and will be spending a month here so I finally had some time to go through my photos and edit them for a post.

The last week in McMurdo was bittersweet.  Michael and I were so ready to get out of there and start traveling and frankly more than a little sick of working 54 hours a week for 14 months straight.  In the last week there we were dealing with the drama of the government shutdown forcing layoffs in the Antarctic Program, a near plane crash because of a whiteout and the craziness of the station jumping in population after 7 months of 140 people.   We will always cherish our time in Antarctica forever.  Obviously I am thrilled I did it because it really was life and career changing for me, and most of all I met Michael, but we are glad to be done and moving on to bigger and better things.   So it was with extreme excitement that we got on the beast known as "The Kress" which drove us to the airfield to leave the continent of ice.

The Kress

Michael and I about to get on the C17 to leave the ice in our Big Reds one last time

We were about to embark on an adventure that would takes us on a whirlwind tour through New Zealand, Palawan (an island on the Philippines), Singapore, all through Vietnam, Kuala Lumpur and the Maldives before we got back home for Christmas to see our families.

Some of my favorite photos from the winter:

 The first sunrise after months of darkness

 A big Cat after a storm

 Ice Shelf

 Sun dogs

 Ivan the Terra Bus after a storm

 The Chalet with auroras overhead

Since we spent most of our R&R time on the northern part of the South Island of NZ, we decided to spend our week in NZ in the southern part of the South Island - mostly Queenstown.   Queenstown is by far the cutest town in NZ that I went to.  It was adorable, the whole town is walkable in an hour or so, which is nice because after a week we really felt like we had the lay of the land.    Since we were a bit exhausted from leaving the ice our only real goal in New Zealand was to see Milford Sound.    We spent our week cooking with fresh veggies and eating out and getting sushi (by far the thing we missed most while on ice was good seafood).

Me in front of "The Remarkables" a mountain range in QT

 Michael and I at Milford Sound

 In front of "The Chasm" on the way to Milford

 One of the many waterfalls at Milford

 Michael in front of "The Remarkables"

Filling op our water bottle from a stream, it was TASTY water 

The Chasm

The Sound

In my next post, I will talk about our time in Palawan (beautiful with a side of Travelers Diarrhea...woof), Puerto Princessa, El Nido, the Manila airport and all of its charming staff and Saigon!