August 8, 2018

Today was the first day of our long arctic adventure. We met at Julie’s house at 4 in the morning, packed our cars, and left for the airport. Our first leg of the trip had a small complication when they wouldn’t let Mark Dhruv, the GIS expert, on the plane after he got stuck in security, but it all worked out. This was my first flight ever. I didn’t know what to expect. The airport was pretty sweet, I got smoothie king and didn’t have to wait in the line very long, but the plane ride was different. I got some pretty bad motion sickness that didn’t go well with the fact that I only had one hour of sleep. I wore my trusty sea bands (which help prevent sea sickness) so everything worked out. Our first flight took us to Minneapolis. We dashed to our second flight which was in a much much tinier plane that took us too Winnipeg. For lunch we went to this amazing falafel restaurant that had plenty of vegan options. Shortly after, we met our new friends from Kelvin. We did some “speed dating” and played team games to bond a little bit. Everyone was so nice. By the time we finished our games, it was about noon. The day was barely over. Then we practiced probing the ground and looking at macro data. Finally we had a big pizza dinner with the Kelvin kids and our hosts, Jane and Jim, and some past ISAMR members. It was a very exciting first day. We are all very eager to get some sleep after a long day. 

-Ian