Getting ready

I was notified on February 6 that I had been selected as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow, and on that morning, I learned that I'd be traveling in mid-May. Back in February, it seemed far off and very much surreal. After attending the pre-expedition workshop in DC at the end of March, it was starting to feel more real. I wasn't ready to get ready, though. I was kind of getting ready to start getting ready to get ready.

Over these past couple of weeks I have made the concrete transition to preparing for this expedition.. Here are a few ways I've been getting ready. 

1. Shopping. For better and worse, there's been quite a bit of shopping. Waterproof parka. Camera-gear backpack. Dry bag. Extra camera memory cards. External hard drive. Waterproof pants*. A couple of notebooks. I decided to rent a 100-400mm zoom lens instead of purchasing one, and I'm excited about it arriving next week!
   
2. Learning. I've been reading and watching videos and looking at photography of the history, geography, geology and wildlife of Svalbard. It's such a fascinating place! Here are a couple resources I've particularly loved so far:
   1. Digital maps for Svalbard and Jan Mayen
   2. Sunrise, Sunset, Day Length - Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway
   3. In Search of Svalbard Sea Monsters
3. Creating. I've been creating lessons to share with our kiddos. And I made a flag! I'd been trying to come up with a way to represent our school and our students on my expedition and came up with the idea of making and taking a flag that our students and staff could sign, and, essentially, go with me to Svalbard. My plan is to take pics with the flag in different places on my expedition.
   
4. Sharing. I've been doing lessons with all of our 7th and 8th grade students! It's been such fun!

Trying on my new parka

A final word about sharing - I have set up an Instagram account that students can follow. I have made it abundantly clear that I will not follow them back - not because I don't love them. Because I have no desire to see what young adolescents post and so that I can sleep at night. They nodded their heads in recognition - truth.

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5. Packing. I'm planning to travel carry-on only for this expedition. One main motivator is that I will be on three flights on two airlines to get from here to Oslo. And then there's another flight to Longyearbyen before we board the ship. If I lose my suitcase in transit, I might not see it until 8 days later when we return to Oslo from Svalbard. I scheduled a trial pack for this past weekend. After about 4 hours of sorting, purging, folding, and organizing, I've got 95% of my stuff packed (minus toiletries and the zoom lens.) And 95% of what I packed I don't need to unpack, so, for the most part, I ended up packing!

So, I'm ready to be ready and I'm almost ready to go. Now that it's May, it's super fun to say that I'm going to Svalbard this month. Between now and the 16th, there's alot going on, which, I have a feeling, will make this time fly by. Namely, tomorrow we start to prepare our 8th graders for the Passage Portfolio presentations they deliver right before their promotion ceremony on May 15. I love these 8th graders. We have had such a joyful, vibrant year together, and I'm going to miss them. Their last day of school is the 15th and I leave on the 16th. Perfect timing, yes? Yes. In the world of school, in the realm of 8th grade, and for teachers, May is a time of transition. It can be raw and exhausting. I'm curious about how this May will feel different with this beautiful expedition on deck. I think change is on the horizon.

*Waterproof pants - this was purely a vanity purchase. We're able to rent boots and waterproof pants that come in generic sizes and do not come in petite/ short sizes. So a very thin 6'2" foot person could be wearing the same size pants as me. The pants are long - maybe not for the average person, but for me, they will be long. They have a velcro cuff on the bottom to close off over my boots, but those excess inches (and I'm envisioning multiple inches of excess) will kind of balloon over the lower half of my body. I will resemble a blimp and if the right gust of wind catches my pants.....well, my imagination runs wild. Mostly, though, I think this - there will be awesome photographs of me and I don't want to look like a blimp in these pictures (and I don't want those awesome photos to capture my flight through the air like the Goodyear Blimp.) So I bought a petite-sized pair of waterproof pants.  See? Vanity. Truth.