Antarctica 2018!!

HOLY MACKEREL!  Ten days!  What seemed forever away is now a mere 10 days hence.  I've been busy.  It takes a lot of planning to be out for this many days.  The show must go on, even if i'm not here, and so for the last few weeks my brain has been a swirling haze of ideas and concepts that either need to be taught because they're part of the curriculum, or should be taught because hey, your teacher only goes to Antarctica once and he better teach you something about it. To be totally honest, prior to being selected as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow I knew very little about the place.  Sure, I had the basics down - it has as lot of penguin action going on, its wicked cold there, storms are insane, people who go there sometimes die, etc.  In fact, when I saw it on the list of places to go, I checked it off in a 'man, i'll never actually go there myself, that would be pretty wild if they sent me there' sort of way.  When National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions i

MAN!  I can't believe how fast this is approaching.  You know, for a long time this was one of those things on the horizon, sort of a 'yeah, thats happening, but its so far away.'  When things are that far off, you don't (or at least I don't) let yourself think about it.  I was so caught up in the minutia of day to day living - 'what do I need to get done today,' 'what papers need to be graded,' 'whose picking up my daughter,' etc.  I may have been putting it off because this may be the grand adventure of my lifetime, and my subconscious wasn't sure what to do with it.  That's the way things go sometimes.  Well, I can say definitely that those days are done and its right around the corner.  Now, i'm thinking about it all the time.  I'm checking the packing list to be sure I have what I need for the trip.  I'm reading about the Great White Continent - a lot.  I'm watching movie after movie about the place.  And what'