Orientation

First day of orientation-I had to be up and ready to catch the shuttle to the Raytheon headquarters first thing this morning, 7:30 to be exact. Upon arriving I checked in, was issued my travel funds, told that I needed to complete the internet training(they want to make sure everyone doesn't go crazy with the internet, sending confidential, or otherwise important, information to anyone off the ice) and then sent me in to get my flu shot, which upon receiving they bestowed a scooby-doo band aid upon my arm. :-) My arm actually hurt a lot more from this one than the flu shot I un-necessarily got earlier this spring, its still a little sore this evening.
Most of orientation was pretty boring, the president of the company giving us the run down about the company and singing its praises. The rest of the time was spent talking about what to expect once on the ice, all the travel arrangments and so forth. One of the nice things about our long flight tommorow that is different from what they have done in the past, is when we take our luggage to the airport in Denver tommorow, we won't see it again until we get to Christchurch. Normally before, one would have to collect the bags in LA, then again in Sydney, and then again in Christchurch. Taking them through customs each time! What a hassel. Anyway, this year, for our group anyway, all our luggage will be loaded into a container at the Denver airport, which will then be sealed, "bonded" I believe is the official term, and won't be opened until we get to NZ. So nice not to have to go through all those customs.
Anyhow, we were done with all that around one and then the rest of the day was free for us to do whatever we wanted. Carol had rented a car so that mad tooling around the city much easier. First, we went and scoped out this bagel place where we are going to stock up on stuff tommorow so we don't have to eat the nasty, overpriced airport food. Then, we went to get lunch at this great Indian grill place, which I guess is similar to a Chipotle. It was so yummy, great flavors. I wish we had one of those in Oly. Then we went to run some errends, Target and Costco, just to pick up a few last minute things like some new sunglasses for me!
This evening we went to Carol's good friends', Rachelle and Brian, house for dinner. The live about an hour and a half outside of Denver. Dinner was great and they have three really cute little boys who are very well behaved most of the time. The littlest one, Chase, was a doll. He had the cutest face and the way he talked to you was very mature for his three years of age. I was telling him about the shot that I had to get earlier this morning, showing him my band aid and all, and he went over to Carol and asked where the gun was that shot us! Too cute!
The running joke when Carol goes to there house, is that she always bring bad and crazy weather with her. Well not to disapoint, some of the heaviest fog I have ever seen rolled in right after we arrived. I was not really a problem until we went to leave. Carol was pretty tired, and I had had some coffee so I drove us back to Denver. Getting out of the neighborhood, or rather, spread out development, was pretty tricky. I had a really hard time seeing the road at all, and then when we got out onto the main road, unfortunately it was not much better, although at least at that point I had the lines on the road that I could follow. It was amazing that once we got to the freeway, poof-all the fog was gone, just like that. Driving through it, I felt like I was in Beauty and the Beast at the beginning of the movie with all the eiry fog in the woods, at any moment I was expecting something to come off the side of the road in front of me. Thankfully, the rest of the movie did not play out during my drive, although thinking about it makes me want to watch that movie again. It has been a long time.
Well, tommorow begins our extremely long travel day to Christchurch(otherwise known as cheech or CHC). All in all, we will be flying for about 24 hours total, with layovers and airport time adding another half a day. Ugh. We have a few more hours of orientation in the morning and the we head to the airport mid-day.
We have been hearing that the weather in Antarctica has been pretty bad this week, which means that the have only been able to get one plane of the summer-over staff down there so far. This is good news for us, because if the weather stays like it is, it means that when we get to CHC we would be stuck there...with our hotel payed for...and money for food...ah, it would be rough, but somehow we would manage. :-)
Well, time to go to bed because I doubt that I will be getting a whole lot of sleep in the next two days,
Next posting---NZ!