Okay, so first off, what is midwinter and why do we celebrate it? And no computer geeks, sorry, this is not the first-person action role-playing strategy game we are talking about.
Lets start at the beginning..
The Earth orbits around the Sun every 365 days, in a plane called the ecliptic plane. Whilst orbiting the Sun, every 24 hours the Earth also rotates around a central axis. The catch is that the rotation axis of the Earth is not perpendicular to the ecliptic plane - the Earth’s axis of rotation is slightly tilted. Consequently, either the Northern or the Southern hemisphere will be tilted slightly towards the Sun, whilst the opposite hemisphere is tilted slightly away. Therefore, the hemisphere that is tilted towards the Sun experiences summer, and the other winter. During spring and autumn, the Earth’s rotational axis is almost perpendicular to a line drawn between itself and the Sun. This means that day and night will be the same length, and both hemispheres receive an equal amount of sunlight.
Since the Earth is tilted, one of the Poles is directed towards the sun (during its respective hemisphere’s summer), and the other Pole is tilted away from the Sun. The sunward facing side of Earth has day, and the side that faces away from the Sun is cast in shadow, and experiences night. Because of the Earth's tilt, one of the poles will constantly be exposed to the Sun, even though the Earth is rotating through it’s day and night cycle. This pole will experience constant daylight. Naturally, the opposite pole will be cast in shadow during this entire time, and will experience prolonged night. As the Earth moves to the opposite side of the sun, the Earth’s shadow falls in such a way that the opposite pole is now shrouded in darkness, and the scenario is reversed.
The further away one gets from the equator, the more pronounced the seasons get, especially with regards to day length. This can been seen even more so in the polar regions, where summer heralds 24-hour days and winter brings 24-hour nights. At SANAE IV, located at 71°S, this means approximately 3 months of full sunshine in summer and 3 months with no sunrise in winter.
Midwinter is also known as the winter solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere this is the Northern Solstice - the time at which the sun is at its northernmost point in the sky. A hemisphere's winter solstice occurs on the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the sun's daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest. This usually hapens on 20 - 21 June each year, depending on whether it is a leap year or not. Since this day announces the turn of the season, the prospect of the sun's return, and also the middle of the year, it is of no surprise then that the solstices have been much more celebrated at the high latitudes.
Midwinter celebrations are a long-standing Antarctic tradition, and at SANAE we are all for traditions. Some of the highlights include the Midwinter greetings exchanged by the different bases on Antarctica and accompanying islands, and then offcourse the Midwinter dinner. This generally consists of a ten-course meal prepared by the team members. Everyone gets dressed up in their fanciest outfit and joins the rest in the bar where we had the tables set up - with tablecloths and candles and everything.
So some awesome scenery, champagne, lots of food and a Monster or two later, it turned out to be quite the memorable evening..
"Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
We have reached the official 6months away from the motherland mark, and to be honest, I do feel a bit homesick today. Maybe not so much that I actually want to go back, but its the little things we don't have that makes it the worst. Like jumping into bed with the parentals on a lazy Sunday morning, or the smell of my dad's aftershave in the morning before work, Friday nights in with pizza and a stack of DVDs, and having to fight off a silly puppy that wants to lick your eyeball the moment you wake up. Small, maybe insignificant things that make you sad, but it also makes you smile when you think about them.
Its strange how our perception of life has changed the past few months. Fine we are in a harsh unforgiving environment, but I can take a walk outside at 2:00am and not be afraid of anything. Locks have become obsolete, and the rules of society unimportant. Its hard to imagine driving at speeds of 120km/h or being stuck in traffic. The thought of noisy, overcrowded malls tends to put a damper on the desire for new clothes.
This simple life fascinates me, but it does get lonely at times.
I guess its the people we love that keep us sane, how else do we survive in that crazy world..
Love you guys, I'm very lucky to have you!
.. and ice cream!
We have been vanilla ice-creamless since maybe March, and my mini coffee milkshake addiction has not made it easy. A few weeks back one of my teammates had this brilliant idea of making our own ice-cream, but the idea was pretty much where it ended.
So, step 2, call the mother to get a recipe or two, figure out we don't have half the stuff for recipe one, and recipe two needs cold ingredients, so chuck them in the fridge and leave it for another day. Then Sunday, maybe like a week after the recipe hunt, I rediscovered the now-seriously-cold cans in the fridge, and since I as bored and most of the guys were still asleep, I decided to try my hand at this whole ice cream making thing. (To be completely honest, before this I seriously didn't know you could make ice cream at home, you just get it at the shop! I always had this random idea that people used kelp or something for ice-cream. Who knows why, must be one of those childhood stories that just kinda stuck, weird!)
20 minutes, half a recipe, and a bunch of winging it later, and a bowl of what I am sure is going to be a flop gets put in the freezer. Apparently you have to keep breaking down the crystals, so it has to get stirred like every hour, else it doesn't work right. A few hours later, the stuff actually started looking like ice cream. By some freakish phenomena the volume decreased quite a bit from when I put it in the first time to when it was done - and no, everyone's tasting it every time it got stirred had nothing to do with it (thats my story and I'm sticking to it)!
After dinner I brought it out, and it turned out to be quite the little occasion! A bunch scurried off to find the perfect addition to their bowl of creamy goodness. Braam had his as a Cream Soda float, Jon and Johan had theirs with smarties, Jako and Vince had theirs plain, and offcourse mine was turned into a cup of yummy coffee milkshake.
Rule #32 - enjoy the little things!
