Incredible!
I can't tell you how incredible this place is. I can't type either. My fingers are frozen from being outside on the bow of the ship for too long, taking pictures of the most beautiful icebergs floating on a perfectly still sea. In the hour and a half I as out there I saw crab eater seals, several humpbacks, storm petrels - but the ice! Just amazing. I wish I could upload a ton of images for you to see, but the internet is abysmally slow and I keep getting bumped off.
Yesterday I took a kayak around some icebergs and coasted on the ocean. I believe we were in the Weddell Sea, but I'm not sure. Its all blurred into some strange and frozen dream. The day doesn't seem to have an ending, and we got to bed out of obligation and not from exhaustion. I'm not sure how I have the energy to keep going like this - I guess I'll sleep when I'm home. Our captain, a Swedish man name Leif who is considered the best in the industry put the bow of the ship into the ice, and we were able to disembark. It was nice to be able to control the direction of the kayak and choose where I wanted to go, but its even nicer to be lead around.
When asked today by the ship's storyteller in residence, a woman who works for Doctors Without Borders and has written extensively on the Antarctic what I'm taking away from this, I found myself almost overcome with emotion. It totally surprised me. I think in my life there will before Antarctica and after. And I don't think I'll ever be the same.
Today is a day of ice. We progressed south on the west side of the Antarctic peninsula through deep valleys strew with icebergs. All of the staff naturalists - I think that there are 6 - ran from port to starboard snapping pictures. I asked Dr Connor Ryan, an Irish naturalist who has dedicated his life to whales and has also had 18 voyages to the Antarctic if it ever begins to get repetitive and lose its excitement, he put down his binoculars and said 'god no. Oh god no.' He then hurriedly pulled his camera up to his eye and snapped some pictures. Its just that beautiful, and by some serendipitous stream of events I've been allowed access to this strange and foreign world. I honestly had no idea what I was being given when National Geographic selected me to come here on this fellowship. I knew it was big, but how could I know it would be so big? So moving? Its hard to put into words what this place is like, how it makes you feel, what it does to your dreams.
Speaking of dreams - to all of my students, I never would have in a million years thought that, when I was in your shoes, this would happen to/for me. I had such a hard time figuring those years out; and without getting into the details, let me say this - if can be a National Geographic Teacher Fellow, sitting in the library of the National Geographic Explorer, looking out the window at Weddell seals and icebergs, well, then you can too. The key ingredient in any measure of success in my life is the amount of energy I put into it. Its that way for you, for all of us, too. And just because your struggling now doesn't mean you always will be. Remember that. You can do it too, but don't expect it to be easy - its not. But it does get easier, trust me, I've been there. And better. Always better. The deeper and more closely you look at yourself, for all you flaws and beauty, the more honest you are with whats inside, the more willing you are to change, and to do the work to make yourself change, the better it gets. I would never have imaged my life now when I was a lost 15 year old kid. But it can happen, and I'm the proof.
Yesterday I took a kayak around some icebergs and coasted on the ocean. I believe we were in the Weddell Sea, but I'm not sure. Its all blurred into some strange and frozen dream. The day doesn't seem to have an ending, and we got to bed out of obligation and not from exhaustion. I'm not sure how I have the energy to keep going like this - I guess I'll sleep when I'm home. Our captain, a Swedish man name Leif who is considered the best in the industry put the bow of the ship into the ice, and we were able to disembark. It was nice to be able to control the direction of the kayak and choose where I wanted to go, but its even nicer to be lead around.
When asked today by the ship's storyteller in residence, a woman who works for Doctors Without Borders and has written extensively on the Antarctic what I'm taking away from this, I found myself almost overcome with emotion. It totally surprised me. I think in my life there will before Antarctica and after. And I don't think I'll ever be the same.
Today is a day of ice. We progressed south on the west side of the Antarctic peninsula through deep valleys strew with icebergs. All of the staff naturalists - I think that there are 6 - ran from port to starboard snapping pictures. I asked Dr Connor Ryan, an Irish naturalist who has dedicated his life to whales and has also had 18 voyages to the Antarctic if it ever begins to get repetitive and lose its excitement, he put down his binoculars and said 'god no. Oh god no.' He then hurriedly pulled his camera up to his eye and snapped some pictures. Its just that beautiful, and by some serendipitous stream of events I've been allowed access to this strange and foreign world. I honestly had no idea what I was being given when National Geographic selected me to come here on this fellowship. I knew it was big, but how could I know it would be so big? So moving? Its hard to put into words what this place is like, how it makes you feel, what it does to your dreams.
Speaking of dreams - to all of my students, I never would have in a million years thought that, when I was in your shoes, this would happen to/for me. I had such a hard time figuring those years out; and without getting into the details, let me say this - if can be a National Geographic Teacher Fellow, sitting in the library of the National Geographic Explorer, looking out the window at Weddell seals and icebergs, well, then you can too. The key ingredient in any measure of success in my life is the amount of energy I put into it. Its that way for you, for all of us, too. And just because your struggling now doesn't mean you always will be. Remember that. You can do it too, but don't expect it to be easy - its not. But it does get easier, trust me, I've been there. And better. Always better. The deeper and more closely you look at yourself, for all you flaws and beauty, the more honest you are with whats inside, the more willing you are to change, and to do the work to make yourself change, the better it gets. I would never have imaged my life now when I was a lost 15 year old kid. But it can happen, and I'm the proof.
Very cool!
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