Although I didn't get to spend Christmas at the pole (I'm now at McMurdo on my way back home), I did get to have a bit of Christmas fun before leaving. There is a Christmas tree made out of broken machinery that gets put outside the station, and we had mall Santa.
Now I'm at McMurdo, and I took the time to walk down to Discovery Hut.
It was lucky, because there were lots of seals, and one lone penguin. I
ended up sitting there for the better part of an hour, watching the
penguin jump in and out of a hole in the ice, while a seal just yawned.
There isn't a whole lot to say about the past couple weeks. We had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner and then some really stormy weather for several days. A storm at the South Pole means lots of clouds, high winds (we hit 26 knots), and really poor visibility. Normally, you can see the horizon past SPT. During the storm, there was a time when I couldn't even see SPT from the station. At the end of it, when the wind settled, the air was full of ice crystals, and we've had some magnificent sundogs. 
