Dozer runs, snow baths, and skies on fire

The last few days have simply been crazy amazing. Here's a quick review:

Fri, April 20th - we were planning an overnight trip to Piggen to test the newly fixed Caboose out, but then the stormy weather kinda foiled that plan, so it seemed like we would be having another 'movies in bed' weekend. Fri night the weather cleared up and it was a really nice night outside. Since it would be my last night as a 24year-old, I decided it was time to settle all owed dozer runs. Now for all of you folkies out there that does not know what a dozer run is, here is a quick explanation [read really fast like in movies when someone explains something way too fast so that after the explanation you are still a tad confused]. Whenever you lose at any game/sport with a whitewash (aka you scored zero points), you owe the person you lost to, a dozer run, which is exactly that, run from base to dozers (I suck at estimations, but I guess it's like 50m away from the base) and back - generally done in the nude, but there
are exceptions.
Okay, so dozer run sorted, we played a few games, waited till midnight, had a mini birthday celebration, then off to bed.

Sat, April 21st - my birthday, yay! I could finally open my awesome new Kindle - thanks Mommy and Daddy. The storm had picked up again, so the traditional birthday snow bath was postponed till further notice. In the afternoon everyone met in the dining area, they sang Happy Birthday, I blew out the candle on my pink cake (yup, Braam totally made a pink cake - awesome yea?!), opened my presents - which were really adorable (boys, you gotta love them!), and then just spent the rest of the night chilling and chatting.

Sun, April 22nd - cloudy, misty and snowy. Pretty much perfect weather for being all cuddled up in your blankey in bed. Then the rude awakening, Jako announcing over the intercom that there will be a snow bath in the next 30minutes - AAAAAHHHH!! Okay, so find bikini top and shorts, realise you haven't shaven your legs in the past 4days, do that quick, try to calm down and breathe like a normal person while waiting on the bench for the proceedings to start.
So the birthday snow bath goes as follows: run out of base wearing very
little clothes, get a fright because of weird viking people standing next to giant hole in snow, jump in hole, get shovelled in, try to breathe, funnel while viking people sing birthday song, get pulled out of snow and run back in base - frozen. It was REALLY cold, but seriously awesome.

Later the afternoon me, Vince and Johan decided to take a trip down to the diesel bunkers, just to get out of the base a bit. The visibility sucked, but there was almost no wind and the temperature was around -20, so relatively warm. The fluffiness of the snow was just way too tempting, so there was a snow-wrestle match or two (or twenty). On the way back to the base, we stopped at the smelly where we were joined by Jako and Braam, so another series of wrestling matches - I don't think I've EVER had so much snow in my hair!
I seriously had a brain freeze headache after being shoved in the snow like a hundred times.

**pic maybe taken out of context a little bit, but this is pretty much what was going on - just with more fluffy snow EVERYWHERE, including inside my clothes..

Mon, April 23rd - relatively normal day with the usual data corrections and science work. At around 22:00 Braam phones to say there is Aurora outside, so expecting the normal faint aurora we kinda dragged ourselves over to the window, only to find massively bright green lights in the sky. The draggy pace soon changed to running downstairs to kit up and grab our cams and tripods. We spent the next hour in amazement as the lights danced around in the sky above our heads. It was beyond awesome!!

**more on the pics page..

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this already, but I LOVE life here!!