CHAPTER 7
Thanksgiving was a little different this year. To start, we celebrated it on Saturday, rather than Thursday. There is so much going on at the station during a normal week, with research and construction and flights coming and going, that to interrupt it with a holiday is just impractical. The other big difference was that we spent the holiday with 200 members of our new ‘family’, rather than the dozen or so that we normally do.
It’s hard to be so far away from family and friends, especially during a holiday, so the station makes a point of really doing something special for celebrations like Thanksgiving. Everyone gets an extra day off (when you are used to just one day off a week, two seems like a godsend), and because food is so much a part of celebrating, the galley goes all out.
The dining room is too small to serve the whole station at once, so there are three dinner seatings that you can sign up for in advance. Each dinner is preceded by a half hour of appetizers, and then everyone makes their way into the galley. The normal cafeteria style atmosphere has been transformed into a formal dining room, with strings of glittering lights covering the ceiling, the windows have been blacked out to add to the ambiance, and the tables have been arranged into long rows, with fine linen tablecloths, tall white candles, and expensive bone china- ok, there was no china, we used the normal plastic plates and cheap metal silverware- but it might as well have been for all the pomp and ceremony. Everyone is dressed to the nines, and waiters circle the tables offering wine and refreshments. You still proceed through the buffet line like normal but the food selection is top- they of course lay out all the regulars: mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, cranberry sauce, and three types of turkey- roasted, smoked, and deep fried (my choice)- plus a bunch of other culinary creations that I don’t even know the names of, and that could only be prepared by this kitchen of former 5-star restaurant chefs. Then they finish the meal off with a slew of homemade desserts, pastries and pies.
Kacey had to work during the day (the kitchen staff gets their extra day off later the next week- somebody’s got to clean all of those Thanksgiving dishes!) so we decided to attend the last seating at 7pm. Though I am part of the kitchen as well, I happened to be working the night shift at the time, so was happily slumbering away in bed for most of Thanksgiving Day. And by ‘most of’, I mean the whole thing- not on purpose mind you, I don’t typically sleep 12 hours straight, but knowing that I had 12 hours I didn’t think it necessary to set an alarm. Our room has a pitch-black and cold, cave like interior, and owing to such an environment coupled with the long hours we had been working the previous week, I believe I had slipped into some sort of quasi-hibernation.
When I blearily opened my eyes and saw the clock blinking 6:55pm at me, I was understandably incredulous, but a glance at my watch confirmed I was 86’d. I jumped out of bed, threw on the first thing I grabbed from the closet (thankfully it was my shirt and tie), and ran out of our jamesway in less than three minutes. Kacey realized that I must have overslept after I stood her up for happy hour, and met me half way in my sprint to the station. Gasping for breath it was all I could do to apologize and try to give an explanation, but she just gave me a kiss, grabbed my hand and we took off back the way she had come. Up the stairs, shedding our coats, gloves and boots, while trying to stop panting for breath, we nonchalantly strolled into the galley just as everyone was taking their seats.
Dinner was great, just as I described above, and before we knew it, all the plates were cleared, our glasses were empty, and everyone was headed back out to the jamesways for the after-party. With complete indifference to the half-day coma I had just endured, the massive amounts of food and free drink conspired against me to produce the usual post-Thanksgiving dinner lethargy, so Kacey and I only stayed at the party long enough to give some toasts and watch a few people embarrass themselves on the dance floor. Our Thanksgiving at the South Pole will certainly not be one that we forget for a long time.
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