Penguin Delivery

My twenty-third birthday is next Tuesday, concurrent with the presidential election. I leave two days later for New Zealand and Antarctica.

My aunt and uncle wanted to get me my present beforehand so that I could enjoy it before I left.
The theme was very fitting. The center cookie even says, "Kelly Rocks."

Thanks you guys!

Color Change

I had noticed the maples around Columbus starting to change colors in the last couple of weeks. Color change is not something that I'm particularly used to in trees since there are mostly evergreens (or no trees at all) in the areas I've lived recently.

In my true fashion, I went out to a park to see the change in all its glory. Luckily, despite being in a midwestern metropolis, there are metroparks on the outskirts. A twenty minute drive put me at Highbanks Metro Park to explore and start the break-in process of my mountaineering boots. My partner in crime, Annette, taught me about the flora and laughed at me getting used to walking in boots that don't allow ankle-movement or heel-to-toe rocking. We hiked about 8 miles on the trails before heading back to the city to work on our respective proposals.

It was nice to get out and do something for a change.

Gear quota achieved

After a month of wondering whether or not we were going to be issued airline tickets before the two-week-prior deadline, Kathy and I were contacted by Raytheon this week. We are confirmed on our flights to and from Columbus to Christchurch. Our domestic flights take us different routes to the west coast, but we have the same Pacific flight from LA to Auckland, and the same Auckland to Christchurch flight.

I finally got the last of my gear in today. The past month or so has been all about writing my NSF proposals and getting together cold weather clothing so I don't freeze to death on the ice. L.L.Bean is my budget outfitter of choice -- my 100-weight fleece pullover and pants, and 200-weight jacket are all from there for really reasonable prices. Long underwear was the real bank-breaker. Midweight Smartwool, Patagonia, and Icebreaker tops and bottoms do not come cheap, but it's worth it because it's so comfortable. And comfort counts in those conditions.

I have to take two pairs of boots for two different conditions. While both are fully waterproof, the big daddy ones on the left are insulated and crampon compatible. They will keep me stable while I'm collecting samples on the glaciers. The smaller ones on the right are my hikers for running around the valleys and on the lakes. They are lightweight and have great support for long hikes.

I leave in two weeks!

Korea

Korea was a whim. I had the choice of either staying in the Tokyo-area for five days, or take a ferry to a different country. And really? Korea is cheap compared to Tokyo. Especially since I was couchsurfing, so I didn't actually have to pay for any lodging.

The ferry itself was one of the more awkward experiences of my life. I was the only native English speaker and white person (let alone white female) on the ship -- which wasn't really all that surprising, but made for strange situations. Such as having to convince the waitstaff that I know what kimchi is, I know that its hot, and that I really, really like it. Thank you, Paul, for introducing me to the beauty of kimchi in high school.

We landed in Busan and, after clearing customs, I navigated the subway system to the apartment I was staying in for the next couple days. At least in Japan, I couldn't really understand the people. I understand the basics of Korean, so I knew what they were talking about -- specifically me. But, I was out of place, and it was fun to see their faces when they figured out that I could understand them.














The floormates of the guy who lives in the apartment I was crashing took me out around Busan. We went to one of the cleaner beaches with Korea's longest suspension bridge. At night, they light it up. Koreans have a strange obsession with colored lighting. The lights on the bridge went through a cyclical suite of colors.

There's also the bright red neon lighting on the crosses of churches. That was... something.

Both times I was on that beach, I was approached by groups of grade-school kids who wanted to practice their English on me. It was nice because they taught me some Korean and learned some English. One of their families took me out for lunch as thanks. This was not a one-time deal: I was taken out several times and had drinks and food bought for me when I talked to people in English. There was even a girl on a subway who asked me to explain a phrase she read in a newspaper, and then took me to meet her friends and out shopping. It's a completely different experience than the blank looks I was getting in Japan where they know how to speak English... they just choose not to.


















Apparently there is also a phobia of subway attacks and disasters. There were chests at every station filled with gas masks. No where near enough for the number of people that are there at peak times, but they're there nonetheless.

I caught a lamentably late train to Seoul. I was supposed to meet my host at the Sinchon subway station, but the taxi driver sent me to the train station. Of course, I didn't have the Hangul for "metro" versus "train" so I didn't know the difference. Jonathan found me, though, which was a relief and took me to his place. He set me up with guide books to the city and we had some really good conversations the four days I spent at his place.

He also introduced me to true Korean barbecue (bulgolgi), so he's doubly awesome in my book.

















The neatest cultural place I came across while in Korea was a restored village near Itaewon. The urns are actually the jars that held the kimchi while it was pickling. It kept it relatively fresh and preserved back before the days of refrigeration. The Korean style of building is also much different than the Chinese/Japanese styles prevalent over the first part of the trip. Korean architecture is more... round.













The first men's World Cup tournament that I really followed was the 2002 games in Korea and Japan. So, of course, when in Korea... I went to the World Cup Stadium. It's now used as an open-air concert platform mostly with the occassional soccer game as well. The bulk of the building has been renovated into a shopping mall. There's also an insanely nice movie theater. That's one way to recycle.

Speaking of recycle, the park (above, left) is just across a metro rail line from the stadium. It's actually a landfill that was revegetated to a park. Korea is making a beautification effort, so you find random bouts of greenery amidst the highrises. They take it very seriously.

The last two nights I was in Seoul were the nights of the major protests against the president. Unfortunately, there was also a lot of "anti-American" (which was really more like "anti-lying") sentiment at times because of the beef ban being lifted. My host and I actually went to the protest with some of his students. The people watching was great (and even better since I could understand what was going on).
The powers that be were afraid that sentiments would escalate and there would be a riot instead of a protest, so they called out all of the active armed forces in Seoul and had buses blocking the roads to the protests. Unfortunately, you could tell that most of the soldiers actually agreed with the cause that was being protested -- in Korea, all men are required to serve for a year before they are 25. That was the bulk of the age group at the protests.

The protests also showed an interesting juxtaposition of old and new. Seoul city center is at a crossroads of the largest thoroughfares in Seoul that pass right by the original city gates and the entrances to the royal palaces. So you have these ancient gateways next to highrises and people of all ages coming together to protest. Enlivening, for sure.

The thing that surprised me is how smoggy the area is. Korea isn't known for being the most conservative nation when it comes to its carbon footprint, but it's excessive even for the number of people. I did some research and found out that the winds from the continent funnel through the Korean peninsula bringing the pollution from China. It was really disgusting to see from the air.

Interesting, however, was the effective use of all land possible. They just build right up into streambeds.

---

And thus ended my Asian adventures. After the 13-hour flights from Seoul to Chicago via Narita, the plane to Orlando had a mechanical issue and we were bumped. Eight hours later than planned, I finally got to Florida and promptly slept for 1.5 days straight. Ah, crossing datelines.

Japan(again)

After Ashley left, I made my way south. Kyoto is one of the tourists' paradises. There is a combination of ancient culture and metropolis that appeals to everyone. It's also a rather cheap place to stay and take day trips on the rails to other culturally important (and tourist-ridden) areas.

My favorite part about Kyoto itself, however, was the train station. The architecture is just beautiful. I spent six hours there after I checked into my hostel just wandering around. There is a sky garden on the roof where they have a lawn, trees, and an impressive 360^o. There's two different shopping complexes: one that continues vertically for ~15 stories and one subterranean one that extends out three city blocks. This was useful because it let out about three blocks from my hostel, and it was rainy most of the time I was there. One of the other openings was near the entrance to a temple. Very useful.


Oddly enough, the station was home to a very popular Cafe du Monde of New Orleans fame. I paid tribute to my dad by having cafe au lait and beignets. Breakfast of champions, and a nice change from the rice cakes that filled my diet. Coincidentally, it is the rice cakes that I miss most now that I'm home.

Wandering around Kyoto was actually the only time that I felt particularly uncomfortable. The temperature was ~35^oC and I was walking around. Somewhere in the Geisha district I just decided I needed to take the rest of the day off.

I took day trips to Kobe/Osaka, Nara, Inari, Himeji-jo, Hiroshima and Miyajima.

I took a cable car to the peak of the mountain overlooking the harbor at Kobe and decided to walk down. The route took me through a botanical garden, which was in full bloom and gorgeous. I have no idea what a majority of the plants were, though, because it was all in Japanese. The garden let out into a Japanese-equivalent of a state park, which I promptly got lost in. It was here I got the idea to write out the kanji I saw on direction markers on my arm. This served me well later.

The big thing of interest in Osaka was the Omeda Sky Building. It's just a big office building, but the way they connected the towers is interesting. It's a point of contest for Osakans, apparently... you either love it or hate it. I, personally, loved it. There's also a zen garden around the base with a colored-light fountain.












I spent an entire day in Nara. The draw was the Big Buddha -- the largest wooden sculpture in Japan. It really was big. Students were flocking to it, too -- apparently it was another field trip day. The most interesting thing was the tame deer that roam freely through the streets. For ~$1.50 vendors would sell you a packet of biscuits to feed the deer.

I also took a hike to the high point in the area in the Kii Mountains, the whole of which is a primeval forest/pilgrimage route and UNESCO world heritage site (along with Himeji-jo, the Nikko shrines, and the monuments at Nara and Kyoto). I got lost, kind of, because the further I got in, the less English there was written on signs. Thus, I tattooed my arms again to find my way out. It worked, I'm pleased to say.

Inari was probably my favorite shrine-area itself. It's just outside of Kyoto and consists of a series of torri tunnels on a mountainside (far left). I walked the entire path on a Sunday afternoon, which is the popular day for the locals to come walk. I became very well-acquainted with the term ohayo gozaimasu, which is the polite way of saying "good morning" in Japanese. I was happy that they were talking to me at all.




I went to Miyajima, the floating shrine, twice. The torri in the harbor (above, right) is the most photographed site in Japan. The first time I went the tide was out, so I had to come back when the tide was in. I actually timed it so I could watch the tide come in and "float" the shrine and torri. It was impressive.

Deer ran freely, like in Nara, but these were not as tame. There were actually signs that warned visitors of aggressive deer. They also had peculiarly accurate signs all giving times for walking (and running a little) marking the ways.

Heading further south, I went to a very geologically-oriented attraction -- Sakurajima. Sakurajima was a volcano on an island until the early 1900s when it blew its top and ejected enough tephra to fill in the channel and become a peninsula. The volcano itself is closed off to citizens and visitors alike, but there's a nice town at its base complete with baseball fields. I took a walk around the park and was amazed by the juxtaposition of volcanic tephra with baseball fields and wild flowers.













Heading back north again, I made my last stop in Nagasaki. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two cities that the atomic bombs were dropped on, were both heartbreaking and enlightening to visit. Hiroshima is more dedicated to the memory of the bomb victims: it houses the historical documents (both governmental and personal) from the period and its victims and has a more in-depth museum. Hiroshima also had school students that inadvertently made me feel horrible to be an American ("Where are you from?" "The US" "Do you think the US should have dropped a bomb on us?" "...no."), but it was a pretty gruesome reality.

Many of the memorials are water-based because radiation victims who drank or were exposed to water would die. The two pictures above are of the peace memorial statue and the fountain in Nagasaki. The statue is pointing toward ground-zero and praying; the memorial is supposed to be shaped like an angel's wings.












On my last morning in Japan, I searched out two more local monuments in Nagasaki. The first was only a couple blocks from my hostel -- the Spectacle's bridge. One of the oldest in Nagasaki, it's named as such because the reflection in the water makes it look like a pair of glasses. The other was the Fukusai-ji temple. The building is shaped like a turtle with the goddess Kannon on its back (above, right) and houses a Foucault pendulum. To find this place, I had to make my way through a metropolitan cemetary, which was disconcerting, but neat at the same time.

I then caught a shinkansen to Shin-Shimonoseki and then a local train to Shimonoseki-proper. I ended up meeting a guy on the train from Jacksonville who was stationed in Iwakuni (a US military base and home to the mythical white snakes of Japan). It was nice to speak to someone in English, even though we garnered some pretty strange looks considering were were in a pretty rural area.

Made it to Shimonoseki, and then boarded the ferry for the 8-hour trip across the Sea of Japan to Busan, South Korea...

I'm Turning Japanese

(This is going to have to be split into three parts: two Japan, one Korea)
I hatched a plan about the time I went into undergrad that I would go abroad the summer after I graduated. As luck had it, I went abroad for other reasons every summer. I wanted this summer to be for me, though.

I've always been interested in Asia. I've watched Japanese movies and TV shows for as long as I can remember, and started listening to the music thanks to some friends in middle school. I had a knack for getting in trouble with it in high school -- always frustrating.

But we made plans. We were supposed to be there three weeks together, but life happened to me and she left without me. Luckily, I was all kinds of prescient last year: I bought trip insurance on the airline tickets and opted not to walk in graduation. So, I could be with dad in his last days and pushed back my tickets two weeks. I met up her the first week I was there, her last week.

Anyone crossing the international dateline should be warned that the flights are something like ten hours from the east coast and you will be jet-lagged when you reach your destination.

I flew out of Orlando to Narita via Chicago the day after dad's internment. My hour layover in Chicago, as per my luck, turned into a four hour layover. This ended up being a good thing, though, because I was able to talk to the travel agency and find out my options about changing dates and departure cities for my return flights.

The flight took us over the north slope of Alaska. It was interesting to see it from the air. I've never seen so many frozen lakes, and the glacial reworking was just amazing.














My first meal in Japan was a traditional bento. I still have no idea what was in it, but it was good. I ate it on the train on the way into Tokyo proper, then up to Nikko. When Japan hosted the 1998 winter Olympics, Nikko was where a lot of the downhill skiing took place. It is also home to the Fire Shrine (Rinno-ji) and is a world heritage site in Japan. It is also one of the most decorated building in Japan complete with gold leaf. Everywhere.














We headed south toward Fujiyama. We took an inadvertent side-trip to Matsumoto Castle (Matsumoto-jo), which is the second largest castle in Japan behind Himeji-jo. The entire castle is made of fit wood, but no steel holding it together. Everything is beautifully polished, but the ceilings in the lower levels are short. The average height of a samurai was 4'6", so clearance for my 5'6" self was an issue in areas.

Getting to Kawaguchiko (in the shadow of Fujiyama) was a fiasco in itself. We got bad directions from the hostel we were supposed to be staying at and had to figure it out the trains to get there. Neither of us knew enough Japanese to get really good directions, but one of the ticket planners knew enough English to get us there. Luckily, we caught the last train out to Kawaguchiko and made it to the hostel safely.




















Fuji was, as expected, amazing. You can see the mountain itself from all around. Hiking season hadn't opened yet, so we didn't get to step foot on it. That is just another reason for me to go back to Japan! We did, however, get to go into the mountain. There are a series of caves and lava tubes that dot the surrounding areas. The temperature maintained in the caves is well below freezing even on the hottest days. Ashley and I went to three different caves, all of which had icicles hanging from the ceilings and man-made ice walls in the paths, just to cool off. I think we biked over 60 km that day in ~28^oC heat.

After a couple days of exploring the countryside, we headed north again to Tokyo. Tokyo is your typical metropolitan city, but it was my first metropolis as well. We went to all of the communities we could. Luckily everything is pretty well-connected by the trains (which we could ride for "free") or the subways (which cost ~$10 for a day pass that covered all the rails).

We spent a Saturday in Harajuku at the Olympic village listening to the different bands. Harajuku is right next to a row of producers and the major TV channels, so every once in a while someone will get noticed. (It also has the strange property of making people say things like "東方神起 and 嵐 walked here" -- something I was guilty of thinking.)



















The Harajuku Girls were interesting to see. Apparently they were originally the outcasts at school who would dress up to create a different persona. Now they just dress up like anime characters, but it's neat nonetheless.
Tokyo proper had Tokyo Tower, which, in my opinion, is much more interesting than the Eiffel Tower. And it's taller. And red.

My favorite place was the TepCo Green Energy Museum and Shibuya Crossing both in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. The people watching was just amazing.

Even though we stood out because of our skin color (and me more so because of my blonde hair and blue eyes), it was pretty accomodating. We even met a cashier at a McDonalds who was on summer break from the University of Kentucky, I think, working in Shibuya to earn some cash. Which begs the question "Why are you working in the most expensive city in the world to earn some cash?"... but to each her own.

More to come -- the rest will chronicle the 2.5 weeks I spent running around Japan and Korea by myself.




And always remember, in more rural Japan, the biker is king.

Southern Ties (or Antarctica I&II)

In April and June, I was given the chance to participate in two cruises to the straits of peninsular Antarctica. We called our group SEASONS, though the acronym escapes me. At each of out 8 sampling sites (established on the first cruise, relocated on the second) we dropped a 12-core megacorer three times.

The UF part of the group processed two cores at each of the sampling sites. We were looking at the pore water chemistry. All our initial processing had to be done in an anoxic environment -- so we extruded the core by centimeters into centrifuge tubes all within a nitrogen glovebag. This process is one of the more excruciating things I have ever done. Luckily, my night shift partner preferred extruding to pipette work, so it worked out for both of us.

All the pore waters released from the sediments during centrifugation were processed, preserved, and bottled in different fashions for various analyses including DIC, δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, silica, ammonia, phosphate, and major anions/cations. All this took place 24 hours/day for five days straight. Each of our shifts were twelve hours long! But we, of course, made the best of it.


(Above left) Just past the Argentine coastline as we entered the Drake Passage. One of the last moments of real calm until we got to Palmer.
(Above right) Nacreous clouds during the first shift change on the second cruise. They're eerie.



(Above left) The night crew found the ice cream stashes and thought it would be a good idea to eat it on deck so it wouldn't melt! This is brilliant, I swear. Note the full mustang gear.
(Above right) Palmer Station ahoy!... I don't think I've ever been so excited to see land. Palmer is completely dwarfed by it's backyard glacier.


(Above left) The UF crew sans one. Floridians on a glacier can only be dangerous.
(Above right) My polar plunge. Whoever said jumping into the Southern Ocean in the middle of the night when there's ice slapping the shore... well, he's just crazy.



And a new form of multimedia! Many of you know I had a fairly bad bout of seasickness, so I thought I'd give you a taste of the calm days. The daytime one was somewhere mid-Drake. The night one is an icefield were were in. The snow actually fills in the gaps between the ice, but there are still swells. It's neat!