Pretty much McMurdo living is like living in a dorm in college. Right now during the winter each person has their own room. Depending on what Dorm you are in you have a smaller, college size room all to yourself with a private bathroom, or you have a larger room where you have to share a common bathroom with others. I was lucky and got a smaller room, but I also got a bathroom to myself right there attached to my room. Would be kind of a bummer to have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and have to walk down the hall and back just for that.
Most of the Dorms are those that have their own bathroom, or actually have a shared Jack and Jill bathroom. I was places in the last dorm that they opened before the last of us showed up here in McMurdo. Other similar Dorms like mine have people that were her during the summer, and stayed, and thus have their own room, but share a bathroom with a neighbor next to them. I’m just glad I got a place where we don’t have many people in the Dorm and the bathrooms are all private.
The Dorm that has the communal bathroom is the building where our Galley, Store, and some offices are located. This Dorm during the summer is where they place 4 to 5 people to a room, since the rooms are a lot larger, and they also have the communal bathrooms. Some people like the fact that they get this huge room to themselves, but since you’re not there much and a room is a room, I’ll stick with what I have.
Here are some photos of the Dorms from the inside and out and also some photos of my room. As you’ll see it’s pretty much just like being back in college, but luckily this time you don’t have to live with a roommate.
Enjoy the photos and if you have any questions about this let me know!
The 4 tall brown buildings in the back are the single person/room dorms and the blue building is our main building with our Galley and the rooms that are large, but have a communal bathroom.
This is our lounge on the first floor of my Dorm 207. It's nice and large, but they really aren't used in the winter, but I hear in the summer when there are about 1100 people here, they are used a lot more. Probably used more then too because you have a roomie!!
Back part of the lounge. Some other lounges are bigger or smaller in other dorms and some have ping pong, an exercise bike or treadmill, large TVs, etc. We also have a smaller lounge upstairs on the second floor in my Dorm 207. The smaller one is mostly just a TV lounge.
Every Dorm has a laundry in it. This one has like 10 or so driers and only 5 washers? We are supposed to wash our clothes on certain "laundry days" assigned to us by our room. This is mainly for the summer, when there are tons of people here so during the winter it's whenever you need it. If you do have really dirty clothes or oily, nasty clothes they ask you to take those to the Main Laundry and they'll do them for you. They don't want all these smaller washers to get nasty and ruin everyone else’s regular clothes!
Each Dorm has a recycle area in it. You are supposed to separate all your trash into different categories. From here the trash is brought to the Waste Barn and it's packed up for shipment off continent in the summer. I heard we recycle or manage about 80% of our trash here. Nothing is allowed to be wasted or to get out into the Antarctic wilds!
Just a typical hallway down my floor. I'm on the second floor on the right side of this picture. I'm lucky to be on this side since it buts up against Dorm 208 and since they have wireless Internet I can suck it in from them through my window. If I was on the other side I wouldn't get reception. Pretty Lucky!!!
So here's my room! I sleep on the left side, use the right bed for laying clothes on and other stuff, have two large closet type things to the left and another in front of the bed which has a TV with a DVD player. They have about 10 channels down here, all AFN, Armed Forces Network and two of the channels run movies all day long. By the right bed there is a sink and mirror there around the corner and the bathroom is to the right. You can also see the window is open, as it usually is when I'm in the room, because they keep the temperature in the Dorm HOT, well at least for me. Can you believe it, I'm in Antarctica and have my window open all the time because it's too warm in here for me!!??
And here's the tiny bathroom. You can see the toilet and the shower in the back. You can also see the other door that leads to the room attached to the other side of me. These are the Jack and Jill rooms for this bathroom, but right now it's all my own!!!
That about does it! Now you seen McMurdo on the outside and McMurdo on the inside. People how have been here many times have tons of stuff down here and know what to bring when they come back. Some rooms are like little apartments with couches, large beds made from two singles pushed together, lots of decorations, and some even have movie projectors to show tons of movies!
Well enjoy and I'll have another blog coming up pretty soon! Cheers!!
1 comment:
Cannot believe you leave the window open - that makes me laugh. It's May and I still turn on the space heater in the bedroom occassionally!! :-)
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