8 April 2017 Leaving Today

In a few hours I will be starting my long haul to Greenland. I am flying from Fort Lauderdale to Stockholm for a short stop over and then onto Copenhagen where I will stay over night and then fly out the next day to Kanger Greenland and then finally Thule Air Force Base. My bag is sitting in my living room all ready to go. I am all packed but as I sit here I think the dreaded thought of every traveler ‘Did I forget something?’ I have my lists and I checked them twice; I am sure I have everything I need. Soon I will be on my way. It’s funny to think that I am not looking forward to this long set of flights, yet for the next several weeks I will be working on an airplane and I can’t wait to start flying with Project IceBridge. I just want to circumvent the traveling part of my journey and get to Greenland to start working with Operation IceBridge.

When I first applied to this program last year, I thought this day would never come. Now that it is here I feel like it came too quickly. It’s hard to put into words the anticipation and excitement I am feeling today. I am jittery and I feel like I just need to move. Part of that comes from knowing I will be spending 9 hours on an airplane later. I do have an aisle seat which will allow me to pop up when I need to stretch my legs.

I have a list of questions and a list of ideas of things I want to accomplish while I am on this trip. Having this opportunity is amazing and I want to learn all that I can so I can share my experiences and my new knowledge with my students. A new world of possibilities and exciting lessons is opening up. I want to learn more about the equipment the plane uses to take readings and how I can use the data from Operation IceBridge in my classroom and convert that into my students doing their own research. One of the things I want to do next year is to construct a weather station in my classroom. This is my first step on a journey of opening a world of educational possibilities for me and my students. Another thing I want to do is to keep making little videos of my adventures. In that regard I have one more video to post before I leave. This is what happens when you want to spend one last day in the Florida heat and are half crazy with excitement about leaving. Watch as I say one last goodbye to Florida. You can tell I’m ready to go by looking at my hat. Enjoy the fun!