Monday, December 26th
Departure from Home
 

Dec.26th, 2005

Toronto, Ontario

11:35pm

Hello to all and Happy Holidays,

The journey begins!  It’s hard to believe we’re on our way after so many months of planning and preparation, but here we are in Toronto, the first stage of our long journey to the bottom of the world.  It’s been a good day.  The first members of our team started arriving here this afternoon.  Everyone is in high spirits!  What a great group…

Over the next two weeks, we really look forward to sharing our journey with you. Each day we’ll be updating the site with photos, journals and reports.  We know there will be students, parents, families, friends, alumni and others from around the world logging in each day!  So here we go…and stay tuned!

Tonight, we had a nice Boxing Day dinner at our airport hotel with everyone introducing themselves and sharing their stories of how they became a part of the SOI team…  Each story is so unique and interesting and its great to hear them told firsthand.  Quinn from British Columbia (who was just interviewed on CBC radio last week) has spent the last six months fundraising to make her dream come true. She told us how she started by organizing a bottle drive with friends, using bicycles pulling little trailers!  She raised her first $100 that way!  Later she received a cheque for $500 out of the blue from someone in England who had heard about her goal to go to Antarctica…obviously from some generous spirit.  Raphaelle from Quebec is the winner of an environmental essay contest hosted by L’Actualite Magazine.  She told us about how she went up to Mont Royal Park to find an inspirational place to write her essay.  It must have worked because she her essay was chosen out of 350 entrants! 

Tomorrow morning we’ll be joined by more students and staff as we board our first flight in the afternoon from Toronto to Miami.  In Miami, we will pick-up 23 more members of our team and together take an overnight flight to Santiago, Chile.  As we arrive in the morning we should catch our first glimpse of the Andes Mountains.  It will be a quick visit in Santiago before we board our next flight to Punta Arenas, Chile, and then a final short flight over the Andes to Ushuaia, Argentina.  All told about 24 hours of non-stop travel to reach the dramatic shores of the Beagle Channel…

Dreaming of penguins and icebergs…

Good karma!

Geoff Green

Director and Expedition Leader,

Students on Ice

Journal Entry:

December 26, 2005

Four students arrived this evening in Toronto. They’ve come from all different places; but they’re all here for the same thing. Soon, they’ll be in Antarctica. There are certainly still more on the way; by the time we’re in Ushuaia, Argentina there will be a total of 52 students, chaperones and educators.

The mood at dinner this evening, although a bit toned down from jet-lag, was great! I know I’m very excited about this expedition and I’m sure everyone else is too. I’m really looking forward to our flights tomorrow (Toronto-Miami, Miami-Santiago, Chile, Santiago-Ushuaia, Argentina). The flight to Toronto was a lot of fun but now that we’re traveling as a group, the plane ride will be a lot more interesting!

This was my first time in Toronto and I expected it to be very cold but when my plane landed it was zero degrees outside, certainly not as chilly as I’d thought. We don’t get to look around here but from above it looks like an amazing city.

I’m really looking forward to seeing all of the places we get to stop in during the next couple of days, even if it is just the airport! We’re going to be flying into some amazing places, and it will be fantastic.

After the time change we’re all ready for a great sleep and since we don’t have to be at the airport until noon tomorrow I’m sure everyone will get a good sleep tonight because it’s a long haul after this!

 By Quinn Runkle

Monday, December 26, 2005

There’s a certain thrill that surges through you when you pick up you’re backpack for the first time. Months of excitement and anticipation culminating in one fluid movement. The beautiful realization that the journey isn’t some elusive, dreamlike entity but a living creature poised to lead you out the door and into a world of adventure.

My parents and brother saw me off at the Fallowfield train station in Ottawa this morning.  Pondering penguins and glaciers, I watched the Ontario countryside roll by through a thin haze of snow kicked up by the wheels on the track.

The excitement at dinner was intoxicating.  Giddiness shone in the eyes and surrounded the voices of everyone at the table. It’s a skeleton crew at the hotel but if it’s any representation of the rest of the team, I’ve no doubt that we will have an amazing trip.

Tomorrow we take the plunge under the equator.

Dave

Raphaelle Descoteaux    

December 26, 2005

Penguins, whales, icebergs… all so beautiful, all so wonderful, all so…

“Miss, miss, can I get you anything to drink?”

I wake up in the train to Toronto, realizing this dream is about to come true. Yes, I waited for this moment for a long time now, and today, the great adventure is really beginning, for some of us anyways.

That’s at the train station that I met my first SOI smiley face: Geoff, holding his big “Students on Ice” sign and wearing the entire “Students on Ice” outfit: there’s no way I could have missed him! From then on I was to meet a ton of other smiley faces, like Diz, Jen, and Fran. Every little bit of worries or apprehension seemed to have vanished instantly as we met with our expedition leaders and other team members. As for the students, each of us had a truly fascinating and inspiring story to tell about how we came to make this dream a reality.

We’re only a very small portion of the team here in Toronto but everyone seems to get along very well and we can’t wait to meet everyone else tomorrow.

I must say we are treated like kings and queens here… with our huge beds and awesome dinner. Talking about huge beds… off I am to sleep because, tomorrow, it is going to be a good 24 hours flying then waiting, then flying, then waiting, then…

So sweat dreams everyone,

I know my dreams will be sweat, dreaming of:

…penguins, whales, icebergs…all so beautiful, all so wonderful, all so…