Ask and receive; believe and it will be yours (again)

Here’s documented evidence that no prayer is too small. It’s also circumstantial evidence that God has a sense of humor, but we pretty much confirmed that with so many funny-looking people walking around.

While in Key West, I decided to buy something chicken. This is, of course, because there are feral chickens everywhere. They’re ubiquitous to KW and, even for sober people like me, it never gets old seeing them strutting around.

Last year, I bought a Mile Marker Zero magnet with a chicken, so I had a little something but, when I popped into a Life is Good store and found the perfect pair of socks, I plunked down however much they wanted and walked out. I’ve started buying a lot of fun socks lately – they pack easier than rugs, I’ve discovered – and these were black/gray, so they’d match my wardrobe. They have a chicken wearing sunglasses; he’s in a crosswalk and the words “Don’t Ask” are emblazoned across the top. They’re perfect.

They sat in my drawer for a couple weeks before I finally wore them, and I showed them off for a couple days before deeming them ready for the laundry. My weekends are busy, so most of the time I dump the laundry on the bed early and sort it later; I do it on Saturday mornings – our Sunday – and that’s the day I pick up the church guests in the morning.

Point being that I didn’t go through it quickly, and that morning, I also had a command performance breakfast meeting, so it took awhile for me to get back to it. But before I did, I remember loaning a swimsuit to a visiting colleague in the hopes she’d join me for water aerobics on Saturday night. We’d both had to attend the breakfast thing, lucky us. (I did take home a lot of bacon. So much better than the regular cafeteria!)

When I got around to folding, I couldn’t find one of the socks. Anywhere. We have a communal laundry room and I made the walk down there, figuring whoever used the dryer next would have left it out; most people are pretty good that way.  No dice. I looked under, beside and behind both the washer and the dryer. I even checked the lint-catching thingie, although I knew that was impossible.

At that point, I was convinced, even though I really hadn’t had that much laundry, that I’d accidentally thrown it in with the rest of the socks, the underwear or something else. I went through everything, including the sheets, even though I hadn’t washed them.

All the time, I didn’t panic. It was annoying that of all the socks I own, one of the brand-new (and really cute) pair had gone missing. But I knew it had to be somewhere because it couldn’t have just disappeared. We have some new people on our floor, but I couldn’t imagine anyone finding and throwing away anything, let alone the cutest sock from all Key West.

I put a note on the dryer I’d used: “Did you find a sock with a chicken on this dryer? Don’t ask.” I figured whoever had found it just hadn’t folded up his/her laundry and would laugh when they made the connection between the note and the sock itself and fully expected to see the sock the next time I checked.

But I didn’t. And I didn’t the next time, either. Or the time after that. I stopped checking the laundry room every time I walked by, but my faith didn’t flag. I scrounged through my room again – seriously, it’s a one-room apartment, how many places could there be? I looked under the bed, the dresser and in the little area where I keep the laundry basket.

The following Saturday marked a week, and my hope still overflowed; it seemed likely that the person who had used the dryer after me maybe didn’t empty everything and would run across it the next laundry day. But alas, no sock appeared.

Over the Fourth, I washed my own sheets. It was off-cycle but also a free day, so why not take advantage. But as much as I wished the chicken sock to materialize, it didn’t.

And as trivial as it seems, I prayed about it. I mean, I totally confessed to God that it was stupid (like He didn’t know, right?), but I also said that I trusted the sock would turn up and asked Him to reveal it to me. And like Mark 11:24 says, I believed that I would receive the sock back to me. As silly as it was.

This week, my counterpart over at the airport facility called and said she was swinging by to return my swimsuit. She wound up standing me up for the water aerobics class and then got up super early to get back to work on Sunday, so she hadn’t had a chance to return it. She’d taken it with her, then dispatched it back with someone else, who forgot to give it to me. (Good thing I didn’t need the swimsuit!)

She brought it back, unused. I ran it home at lunch along with some laundry soap that a departing person left me. It was fried chicken Wednesday, so I basically just dropped the bags and ate. But after work, I started putting stuff up and when I dumped out the swimsuit bag, my sock fell out!

It’s just so silly, but it brought me joy. I really did have faith that it would find its way home and it did. I sure don’t know how I managed to toss it in there, but it fell right out. I did not doubt that it would turn up, but I didn’t expect it to turn up there.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Waffle Wednesdays and soft serve

Now that I’m back from my second R&R, it’s almost down to the wire. I still have another – looking at Iceland in August – but for now, it’s just the regular routine. And routine it is. With rare exception, such as today – Juneteenth – it’s the same old thing.

Nowhere is that more evident than the cafeteria. Bless those who work there; they bust their butts and I really do appreciate them, but the menu doesn’t exactly vary. Even though today’s a holiday, the snack bar closest to my office still has Reuben sandwiches. There’s no special snack bar menu for the holiday.

Sometimes, though, there is a special menu for holidays – Thanksgiving and Christmas are awesome. We also occasionally have a cake for one reason or another. This past week, there was an Army birthday cake as well as a Father’s Day cake. So while it changes it up a little bit, that’s mostly for the dessert. And the two snack bar menus are pretty much stagnant.

Tuesday nights for me are pretty brutal. We do the whole Taco Tuesday, which begins at my close snack bar with quesadillas and then the taco thing at the main cafeteria. The larger snack bar always has a chicken tortilla soup and then the non-soup option is a Buffalo drumstick. Not TexMex, but still not my favorite. (Wings would be different, but Wing Night is another time.) Essentially, I don’t look forward to Tuesday meals.

Except.

Alongside the drumsticks, there are raw carrot and celery sticks. While we have a salad bar with shaved options, this, at least so far as I know, is the only time to get straight-up carrot and celery sticks, and I love them. It’s really the only time I can get a veggie that’s not steamed to death. It probably doesn’t sound like much of a meal, but honestly, it works, especially when I also get a cornbread, which is something we always have.

And, since it’s healthy, I allow myself to get a soft-serve ice cream. Our larger snack bar has a machine, which is quite popular. On Tuesdays, since I do a light dinner, I allow myself soft serve. And, since I am trying to cut out sweet treats (of which there are so, so many always available), I look forward to it.

This week, tragedy struck when the machine broke. I have no idea what happened, but I’m clearly not the only one to miss it, because they’ve had to put a sign up outside the snack bar, announcing it’s out of service. It heads people off at the pass, because there are so many who only come in for their cold treat. It’s been dejecting. Hopefully it won’t be long, but man, I really wanted some soft serve after my carrot and celery sticks the other day.

The only redeeming factor after that dejecting Tuesday evening was the comfort of knowing Waffle Wednesday followed. This is an extracurricular day, when, outside of the cafeteria, one of the offices in my building makes waffles for whoever wants them. I have no idea when or how it started, but one day a week I can take the stairs down a floor and be overwhelmed with the smell of waffles at around 9 a.m.

At first, I thought this was an inter-office thing but eventually I realized that it’s open to anyone hungry who passes by. And these are not just plain waffles, or they don’t have to be. The waffle team prides itself on stuffed waffles, and they stuff those things with things it never occurred to me went with waffles. (Note: I don’t even think chicken goes with waffles, though that’s not an option since it’s breakfast. But, for the record, Chicken and Waffle Night is every other Saturday.) These guys – and they are all guys who serve them up – have all kinds of stuff available. It’s just too much and grosses me out. I can handle a chocolate chip, but oh man, they have everything from gummy bears to Twinkies and M&Ms. The guys take orders and make them up special.

It's really a morale boost for those who partake, I normally don’t, but the other day, one of the guys from church was the one cooking them in honor of his departure and I caved. I went light and only got a chocolate chip one but was absolutely astounded at the possibilities. Oreo-stuffed pancakes, really?   

Now, Oreos crushed up in soft serve, that I could handle.

I am nothing but a common thief. Or maybe a caloric one. Definitely a cinnamon one.

A couple months ago – time is flying! – Baghdad opened a Cinnabon store. At the time, I was temporarily working in a different office and, as a result that’s too complicated to explain, wound up at a little, private cinnamon roll party here in The Sandbox. They are as fabulous as I remember them, and now they come in different flavors, like caramel. We had some little ones, not the big giant ones, and it was a lovely treat.

For me, that’s pretty much the end of it, since it’s not like I can pop in a car and head to the mall and visit Cinnabon. Not, I guess, that I know it’s in a mall – it’s just somewhere in Baghdad. Our cafeteria does cinnamon rolls here and they’re incredibly tasty, though I try not to get them because … well, because they’re so tasty. And big. Huge. Like cinnabons.

However, last week or so, I noticed a Cinnabon bag crammed in the fridge on the office floor. Our building is configured to where there are multiple offices on a floor and there are 1-2 kitchens on each floor. Lots of people use the fridge, and, just like any other business on the face of the earth, people cram stuff randomly in office fridges. Some stuff just sits there, some gets eaten and some turn into science projects.

Ours has a bunch of milks and juice, like way too much considering there’s a little “grab and go” right downstairs if you really want something. Most stuff originated from there or the cafeteria, so I have, from time to time, helped myself to an OJ or chocolate milk and just brought one in a bit later. Once in a while, something sits there for months and months and you realize it’s likely homeless. I adopted a water bottle for myself and re-homed an unopened bottle of some kind of wine that had been sitting around for over a year.

When a bag from Cinnabon appeared, my heart leapt, but I figured it would be gone by the next afternoon. Really, unless I snooped, I couldn’t even be sure what was in the bag. Every morning it was there when I put my tea in the fridge, though. And every afternoon it was there, too, tucked behind a liter of Sprite.

After a solid week, I considered it abandoned calories. It’s bread, after all. How good could bread be after a week in the fridge? Was it even full of cinnabons at all, or was someone just camouflaging their lunch in a bag with convenient handles and a tantalizing logo? I decided to go for it, so I peeked in the bag and discovered a box built for four cinnabons and containing three of them – the big ones, too! Instead of going for broke, I liberated one. I figured I’d give the rightful owner another chance to reclaim the other two, hoping that if it happened, s/he wouldn’t remember if there had been two or three left.

When I got home, I discovered how good a week-old flavored bread could be – utterly fantastic, at least after being heated up in a microwave. So good that, when the box was still there over the weekend, I took home a second one. I ate that one super slowly, to savor it, assuming that there’d be no way the third roll would go unclaimed or, in the event that it was, still be edible.

And lo, no one removed it from the fridge or even left a nasty note. The box was still there the following work week. At this point, I figured time was running out and went for it. Yesterday, I had half a cinnabon for lunch and half for dinner. Although I could definitely tell they had been in the fridge too long, I have no regrets. And, as of the morning, there have been no “who stole my cinnabon?!” notes on the fridge. I hope whoever abandoned them comes to terms with the fact if you put

The bottle of Sprite is still sitting there, no longer providing cover for the tasty treats. Gosh, they were good.

I cannot recall the last time I ate a Cinnabon in America. My assumption is there’s still one in the Governor’s Square Mall, but I have no idea. We had one in Minsk, but I don’t recall ever splurging on one. In my travels, though, I ran across one in Yerevan and I do remember enjoying a giant gooey treat there. Maybe that’s why I liked Yerevan so much.

This is 40?

Ramadan just wrapped up here, and it’s been a busy one. I’ve been temporarily relocated to the executive office here in The Sandbox, and No. 1 has been attending or hosting the “break fast” events regularly. (For those who don’t know. Muslims break the sunup-to-sundown fast by eating a couple of dates and sipping a yogurt concoction, then have a real meal shortly thereafter.

Number 1 has been hosting groups a couple times a week, and on one of the final days of Ramadan, I attended. This one was for English students – about 40 of them averaging 15-16 years old. It was so much fun. My table had six giggling girls, all of whom spoke very good English. There were a couple of extreme extroverts who just chatted and chatted and some quieter ones who had to be drawn out a little.  We talked about movies, music, hobbies, families and so on. It very much reminded me of my Peace Corps days. When they’re yours, they’re probably very draining, but when you’re thrown in with a bunch of enthusiastic kids, it’s energizing.

After dinner, we shifted tables around and I sat with another group of mostly girls, and we, somehow, discussed bad habits. We added “procrastination” to their vocabulary, and I did one of my Peace Corps things that goes well with kids of all ages. You stand in a circle or a line, and count to 8, pumping your right fist and then your left before doing the same as you kick your right foot and then you left. Then you repeat, only to 4, then 2 and then 1. By the time you get to 1 it’s pretty enthusiastic. We did it once in English and the in Arabic, and then alternated Arabic and English – they left pretty wound up.

A lovely evening, but the best part was them asking if I was 20 years old. I can’t imagine what my face looked like, because she revised it to 25 and then to 30. I said no and one of them said, “40?” And you know what, I thought, why not?

So this is what “40” looks like for me right now. It’s from an event last weekend called Holi, which is a Hindu festival of colors. The actual event was in March, but we didn’t get the color in time, so we did it last weekend. If you think I’m colorful, you should have seen the basketball court. The food was fantastic and my T-shirt washed to a lovely shade of pale-blue tie-dye. I hope it stays that way; I’d like to make a quilt with all my T-shirts from here. The Holi event was my second Holi; several years ago, I went to Bangladesh and somehow got wrapped up into a celebration. Saw an alley with a lot of people having fun so I jumped in and came out multi-colored.  Fortunately, I had water aerobics that evening and the little bit that didn’t come out in the long shower likely melted away in the pool.

Last weekend was also a jam-packed one. It seems very feast-or-famine. I hit the gym at 5:45, grabbed a breakfast wrap, crashed for about 40 minutes, then set off running (very slowly) a 5k and then immediately regretted the breakfast wrap. Eventually, and without tossing my cookies, I made it over the finish line and almost immediately headed to pickleball. It’s popular here in The Sandbox; we even had some off-compound folks come in this time, the Canadian Sandbox’s No. 1 and a colleague. It’s always someone’s first time coming and they are immediately welcomed. It’s so much fun, but I’m not all that great. (Hoping Dede can give me some pointers during R&R.)

At one point, I was paired with a first-timer against two military-type people. A ball came at us and, somehow, I got smacked in the face. I don’t even know if it was his paddle or the ball, but it hit the bridge of my sunglasses and for a split second, I thought my nose broke. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any breakage, even if, three days later, it still hurts if I touch it in the wrong place. When it happened, the three military-types ran over to see if I was OK, but I was laughing. It must have looked so silly.

This was on top of somehow managing to cut my arm without realizing it. I’d noticed something on my arm when I went to get water and tried to rub it off. A bit later, someone mentioned blood. I said I wasn’t bleeding, but she turned my arm and, sure enough, not only did I have a line of blood from some random cut near my elbow all the way down to my wrist, but my shirt had multiple blood splatters all over it.

And those aren’t the weirdest injuries I’ve had in the past week or so. Today, I hurt my finger. It’s not too bad, but it’s completely stupid. I burned it.

On a Pop Tart.

A Good Day: Any Day I Drive a Golf Cart

Traditionally, embassies’ biggest party of the year (for guests, not for staff) is a Fourth of July celebration. At these, we invite a bunch of local contacts and fellow diplomats to come over and partake in some red, white and blue fun. There’s always food and alcohol involved and the event is the more important “representational” event of the year. Since it’s ridiculously hot in The Sandbox in July, though, we do our event early. Like March early.

They require a bunch of planning, and when I was in Istanbul, I was THE planner. Before that, I coordinated all the volunteers. Even here The Sandbox before, I wound up doing something or another. Blessedly, we didn’t do one in Minsk because of COVID, but even last year – which we ultimately canceled due to a COVID resurgence – I was on the “food committee.”

Somehow, this year, I escaped. I knew nothing about the planning, which is usually done over months. I had it on my calendar but forgot about it until I got an email asking for game-night volunteers. Figuring what the heck, I threw my hat in. When the sign-up list came around for specific jobs, I saw “golf cart driver” on there and couldn’t reply fast enough.

OF COURSE I would drive a golf cart. Any day you can drive a golf cart, it’s a great day.

My office has one. It’s a four-seater and I use it to go pick up guests at the far gate, which we call “Disney.” (Remember, The Sandbox is about the size of the Vatican.) I tend to ask them if they’ve been to the compound before and if not, I usually offer to show them around a little – just to extend the drive.

Lumped in there with “other duties as assigned,” driving the golf cart is so much fun. The normal prelude is a stop by the car wash, where I get to power-wash (and suds) the thing, always risking shorting it out. Since I hose out the inside as well as the outside (“Sand”box, remember), I’m never sure if somehow I leak water into the dash or something and won’t be able to start it, but so far I’ve been lucky.

Speed bumps are tricky – especially when I wind up getting an 8-seater and have it loaded down – and the blinkers don’t seem to work but it’s totally my jam. On that lovely Independence Day Party night, I fantasized that driving a golf cart could be my retirement job. I love it.

Way back when in Detroit, I remember working the McCarty Cancer Foundation golf tournament. I was Beer Girl. Who doesn’t welcome free beer out of a golf cart? Still the best volunteer gig ever.

Independence Day night was a blast. I drove people back and forth for 4-5 hours. Fortunately, there was only one speed bump for people leaving and none for people on their way in. The way out was more fun because I got to ask all the guests their favorite part of the evening.

Mine was the band. Granted, I did not set foot in the venue, but it was outdoors and I was right outside so I could hear everything. We had an Air Force band and holy cow, they were incredible. They’d played another social event a few nights before so I knew they were good, but hello. The lead singer was awesome (and a heck of a pickleball player) and shifted seamlessly from Adele to Metallica to Charlie Daniels to Journey. Hanging around outside, I think I scared a local staff colleague by knowing ALL the words to “Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

All in all, the evening was fabulous. We had good music and great weather. I mean, I have no idea what happened inside the walls, but everyone seemed happy.

This week, too, I got to drive another of the 8-seaters for a smaller event. This one was for guests of my section, and they’re a little more laid back and were a little less dressed up. As I was driving from the gate to the venue, one remarked, “Now I know why you call it the Disney gate.”

Yep, I might have to stick in my application in a few years. It would make every day at work a great one.

Causing confusion on the way to the Seventh Continent

I’m no cheater. I play fair, even in silly marshmallow games.

By Day Five of my cruise, the natives were restless and, had we been any ordinary sea folk, probably would have mutinied. But bad weather is bad weather and, recognizing we couldn’t do squat to fix it, we went along with anything the crew offered, which included elementary school-type competitions.

I’m happy to report that my team won the paper airplane competition and tied for first in the overall competition. And that I am not a cheater – and there’s video to prove it.

My second polar circle crossing.

Yes, we had a competition involving marshmallows. This is when you take a miniature spoon and, relay style, dip into a cup of mini-marshmallows, put as many as you can on the little spoon and run down the lounge area of a boat that’s tossing and turning (I mean, we were doing this because the weather was too bad to get off the boat, after all) and dump it into your designated cup before passing the tiny spoon off to the next person on your team to lather, rinse and repeat.

Our team did crappy, in part because our first player dumped his in the wrong cup. Probably, had we cheated, we would have fared better. But we didn’t. I learned there was proof of this the evening after the games, just before the nightly wrap-up presentation.

 As people file into the little auditorium, the expedition team plays a short video file – maybe a minute. As I sat down, I realized it was the start of the silly marshmallow game. Mortified, I saw myself on the screen, hair braided and wearing an Iraq sweatshirt, in a progression that includes me:

• Running across the table with the cups, because I realized I needed to be in place to grab the spoon from the first guy and our cup was on the opposite end of the room.
• Frantically waving at the first guy to signal him to the right cup, which he didn’t notice. (It was loud; he was concentrating. Fortunately there was no sound on the video. I was yelling and waving all around.)
• Disappearing offscreen as I ran down a different aisle the bar to grab the marshmallows. I managed four.
• Running up to the cup as I hold a spoon containing a single marshmallow. You can also see three marshmallows in my hand; they’d jumped ship as I maneuvered people and a rocking ship.

Protocol dictates kissing a fish following a 
successful circle crossing. I don't know why.

Mortified, I saw this over and over because the video was on a loop. People were laughing at it because the whole thing was ridiculous; we had maybe five teams and everyone was an adult, so we looked pretty silly. (Being at sea for five days does this to you.) Gradually, though, I realized that most people’s laughter was directed to a different person on the video, my roommate.

Roommate was a fun one and we got along great, but boy, she cheated! While my on-screen likeness shows me taking great pains not to cheat, hers – over and over – displayed her also holding fallen baby marshmallows in her hand, and as soon as she arrived at the table, she dumped them in her cup. Because of the camera angle, you can’t see who pointed out that wasn’t allowed, but you seen her arguing and pleading her case – over and over. It was kind of an interesting character study.

We had a lot of characters on the cruise. There were about 120 guests and 80 or so crew. So far as I could tell, everyone got along. We had a decent amount of backpackers who had booked the trip late and just as many who had been waiting for 2-3 years to take the cruise. It was fun getting to chat with them.

Kurdagonia, not Patagonia
at the LeMaire Crossing

On of my unintended icebreakers was my Iraqi sweatshirt. It’s a pun on the brand Patagonia, but I didn’t bring it because I left from Patagonia; I brought it because I only have three sweatshirts with me now. But since we were so close to Patagonia, I had so many people ask what it meant. It says “Kurdagonia” and came from Erbil. I probably explained it to 10 people during the course of the cruise. One person even pretty much figured it out, saying he’d heard of both Kurdistan and Patagonia, but not Kurdagonia. I was like, yes, that’s it.

Now I am re-acclimating to Iraq; different desert in a different part of the world. Travel back was shorter but just as exhausting as it was on the way there. I left for the airport at 8 p.m. on Tuesday night and crawled into my apartment at 2 p.m. on Thursday. I can’t prove Wednesday existed.

But it’s back to reality now and things are looking up. Based on my email, it sounds like I’m in for a windfall. Discovered in my inbox, an unfortunate soul in Ukraine died, leaving $58m big ones.

“He had no next of kin based on the fact that his nominated was also killed during the Russian air strike but he has the same First name with you hence  I am contacting you today because you can inherit this fortune through some legal  means that I will advise because you share the same last name and with the help of the deceased personal lawyer he will prepare all necessary legal binding documents that will enable this finance firm release the mentioned amount to you if you accept this offer.”

Honestly, it is unbelievable that someone would buy that. Seriously? I share the same first name, so somehow I’m an heir? Bizarre.

Bad weather, amazing adventure

There’s no such thing as a cyclone party. They’re not a lot of fun, especially on a ship. But once you make it through, boy, making it to your destination is a lot of fun.

My second try to Antarctica got me to land. My first try, back in 2020, was on a big cruise ship that was more of a drive through than anything else. From there, I’d planned a disembarkation, but it got “weathered” out. This time, despite the weather, I set foot on the continent. You’re told to take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints so I don’t have a rock, but I did leave my voice there.

But the weather … oh my. First of all, I was sick as a dog the entire first day. “The Drake Shake” – when you go through the Drake Passage with bad waves – didn’t help, but looking back, a lot of it was just fatigue. Going out, I changed one flight to cut down my Amman layover from about 15 hours to about 7, but it was still a 7-hour layover. The next flight was 2.5 hours, followed by a 4-hour layover. In Istanbul, I got on the long flight, which was to Buenos Aires, but it first stopped in Sao Paulo for almost 2 hours, and then, following a brutal 6-hour layover in the Buenos Aires check-in area (because I was leaving international and going domestic; I couldn’t hang out in the lounge and had to sit in a chair), I got on my final flight to Ushuaia. That’s when I realized my flight to Ushuaia wasn’t direct; we had a 1.5-hour stop in some other city. Seriously, I spent three mornings in airports. I left Baghdad on Thursday morning and I arrived on … gosh, I don’t even know. I think it was Saturday around lunch. I checked into the hotel, met my roommate and tried to sleep but didn’t have much luck.

So although I had a rough first morning on The Drake, I honestly think I was more tired than anything. The ship was rocking and rolling but I mostly just crashed in bed. The first night, I didn’t eat anything until the 4:30 p.m. tea; I just had zero appetite. That pretty much went for the whole cruise. The food was amazing, but I didn’t indulge, with the exception of ice cream at lunch. The scoops were tiny, though!

The weather for the first 5-6 days was awful. Horizontal rain, snow, sleet, massive (but not rogue) waves. My point-and-shoot as the photos and the cord I brought on the trip doesn’t work, so I can’t get the photos uploaded yet, but it was brutal. We had been expecting to do an excursion out on the Zodiacs on the evening of the third day and that was out of the question. The next morning, the captain tried in vain to find some reasonably sheltered place to let us off the boat, but it didn’t work. Same for the next afternoon, and the following day.

The expedition team was amazing. We had lectures – incredibly scientific – several times a day, but before the weather cleared, they were having to invent things to keep us from mutinying. Think airplane races and games with marshmallows. Everyone was still good natured about it – I mean, what can you do? – but everyone wanted us off the boat.

One night, the poor captain had a brutal time trying to find shelter. The winds were absolutely awful and, TBH, I wondered if there was a chance we might capsize. The boat, the World Explorer, was fairly new and had safety features so I really wasn’t worried but I did wonder. My roommate, however, worried. The morning after what we later learned were Cat 4-level winds rocked us, I discovered she’d slept right next to her life jacket.

With that, though, the weather kind of broke. We got out the next morning on super choppy waves. I landed in a less-crowded Zodiac and was sitting at the front, meaning I got super crushed by waves. The scenery was fantastic and I was soaked through to my underwear, despite my Minsk “waterproof” snow pants. Icebergs closer up are even more beautiful than they are from a distance, like wandering through a floating sculpture gallery. It’s never boring, but it can be cold and wet.

Seriously, it snowed. That just doesn’t happen. People built a little snowman! It was just strange weather. We had a deck covered in snow – big, fat flakes.

After the first excursion, though, the weather got better. My three layers of pants never got soaked through again, and I met penguins, whales and all kinds of seals. We visited Port Lockroy and, although I didn’t mail any postcards, I did get my passport stamped and bought a magnet. Coincidentally, I have a new tourist passport and the Port Lockroy stamp – which includes a penguin – is the first stamp in the new passport.

This was the trip I wanted to Antarctica. Although I was happy with my previous trip, the whole point had been to set foot on the continent and see critters up close, and I finally got to do that.

More later. At the moment, I am on my second trip and I am headed to see Iguazu Falls, the largest waterfall in the world.