Saturday, December 26, 2009

Students get to know each other in Miami, Florida
Photo: Lee Narraway, Students on Ice

Update: 10:00pm

Good evening! Flight by flight, student by student, our team is growing larger and getting closer to Antarctica by the hour!

At 9:39pm, our team departed Miami for an our overnight flight, with LAN Airlines, to beautiful Santiago, Chile. The flight will touch down at 7:55am. A dozen international students who have been traveling over the past 24 hours will meet-up with our southbound group of students there - and united at last, the entire team will board an 11:00am flight to Ushuaia, Argentina - our gateway to Antarctica!

Student Sarah Savoie celebrates her upcoming departure in Miami, Florida
Photo: Lee Narraway, Students on Ice

In the meantime, please enjoy some photos sent to us by our expedition photographer Lee Narraway, and an update from our Expedition Leader and SOI Founder, Geoff Green...

Students get ready for their long flight from Miami to Santiago, Chile
Photo: Lee Narraway, Students on Ice

Expedition Update from Geoff Green,
SOI Founder, Executive Director and Expedition Leader

Hello everybody. Here we go! Our 2009 Antarctic Expedition has begun! Thank you for checking in and sharing our journey with us. We look forward to sharing the journey with you over the next two weeks. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Geoff Green and I am the founder and executive director of Students on Ice. I am also the expedition leader for this upcoming journey, which will be my 76th expedition to Antarctica. It is a place that I know and love ...and I can’t wait to share it with this group. I will write from time-to-time over the next few weeks on this expedition website, but really want to let the students do most of the sharing and writing. So stay tuned for our news! 

Sometimes it seems the hardest part of getting to Antarctica is getting from our various homes around the world to Ushuaia, Argentina. Getting 89 students and staff from around the world to the gateway city of Ushuaia at the tip of South America is never easy, but doing it during the holiday travel madness with a few snowstorms thrown in and it gets really interesting. Over the years, we could and should write a book about some of the ordeals we have been through. But it is all part of the experience and the adventure! And as we say at Students on Ice – Flexibility is the Key!!!

I am happy to report that we have landed in Miami, Florida with our group of 22 from Toronto and all is well. It was an eventful morning. Delays with security meant it took over two hours just to board the plane. But we’re not complaining and everyone is in great spirits, excited, and a bit tired. In Miami, we are meeting up with 54 other members of our expedition team, and then tonight at 9:30pm we will all board our LAN Airlines flight to Santiago, Chile. I know there have been a few other flight delays and cancellations for some travelling to Miami today, but we are doing are best to get everyone re-scheduled or re-routed ...whatever it takes to enable them to meet up with our team. 

We have another amazing group of students and staff on this year’s expedition. In many ways, the experience is all about the people who join us, the relationships they build and what they choose to do with their SOI journey. The stories of how the students have all come to be a part of the expedition are quite extraordinary and inspiring. Many of them received scholarships, won contests, raised the funding, and participated in international selection processes.

I love observing the different stages of an expedition, from the first moments when everyone is meeting each other to the end of the journey celebration and all the experiences shared in between. During this period, there will be some big transformations, revelations, moments of awe and wonder, friendships formed for life, new perspectives shaped, and much, much more. 

This journey is about many things. It is - first and foremost - about providing an inspiring, motivating and life-altering experience to the 65 high school students on the expedition! We want them to learn about the Antarctic and its role as a cornerstone of the global ecosystem. We want to give them a heartfelt connection to the natural world that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. We hope to give them a better understanding and personal connection to climate change.  And of course, we want them to all return home as stewards and ambassadors for a sustainable and healthy Planet Earth. 

The expedition is also about providing a platform to reach hundreds of thousands of people around the world and try to convey these same key messages. There has never been a more important time for all of us to make a commitment to live in greater harmony with the natural world. We are seeing first-hand the negative impacts of pollution, deforestation, over-fishing, climate change, habitat loss, and other problems created by our species. There are many great things happening out there too, but we need to accelerate the tangible steps we are taking to support positive change and action, and we need to do it now. We all need to be crew members on Spaceship Earth, rather than passengers that are just along for the ride. Maybe we can all be part of a new Generation G?! G for Green, but also for Grace, Gratitude, Generosity, Global and other core values that we need for a truly sustainable and healthy future.

Antarctica is a place that reminds us that Mother Nature is in control. It is a place of incredible beauty, power, surprise, solitude and hope, that humbles its visitors. It is the only continent that no one owns, and that has never had a war. In short, it is a symbol of peace, understanding and conservation.

Thanks to all our partners, sponsors, parents, friends and everyone else that has helped in same way to make this expedition possible. 

Let’s go to Antarctica!

In the expedition spirit,

Geoff Green
Expedition Leader
2009 Students on Ice Antarctic Expedition

Students pose for the camera outside the expedition conference room in Miami, Florida
Photo: Lee Narraway, Students on Ice

Toronto Update: 8:33am - TRAVEL DAY!

Good morning! And welcome to the second day of our updates! Yesterday and throughout the day, twenty-two students safely arrived to Toronto. Many others from around the world are en route presently for Miami, Florida. Our Toronto contingent will depart for Miami on American Airlines at 8:50am and will arrive around noon!

It's a rainy, slushy morning here in Toronto, but spirits were high and everyone very excited despite a very early breakfast this morning! A little after 6:00am the Toronto contingent boarded their shuttle for Pearson International Airport in Toronto for the 8:50am flight to Miami.

We hope to have some photos and journals on our update pages by this evening, but this all depends on ability to type between flights, and our team being able to transmit photos and journals back to us via the internet! So stand-by for more updates!

Students consider their Ecological Footprint in the SOI Miami conference room
with expedition staff member Remy Rodden, Manager of Environmental Education
& Youth Programs, Government of Yukon Territory, Canada
Photo: Lee Narraway, Students on Ice