Mission Control

At 6.00 pm on Friday 30 November 2007, St Andrew's Day, I formally gave authority to Commander Helen Mackie to take charge of St George's School Antarctic Expedition 2007. At Mission Control I shall be following her leadership of this amazing step for St George's School, Edinburgh and for Women! Not to mention, of course, Teddy Bears, as George is the mascot of this extraordinary expedition and is visiting his final continent. As Supreme Commander at Mission Control, St George's School, Edinburgh, I wish all the Members of the St George's Antarctic Expedition 2007 great success. I know that you will pursue your research into orcas and add to our knowledge of this important community in our world. I hope you will also have a life-transforming experience, as you see this incredible part of our planet. Rely on your Supreme Commander to follow your movements and be your home base! Rely on the Commander in the Field, Helen Mackie, who will lead your expedition as she has led so many adventurous trips in other continents. We look forward to your daily reports!

Good Luck and safe travels

Wishing you all a wonderful adventure. We will be keeping a close eye on the blog and looking forward to updates. We hope you can bring back lots of photographs of penguins!!!

Love from all the girls in Early Years

With thanks..

With only one more sleep left we would like to take this opportunity to thank all our friends, family and supporters. We have enjoyed visits and lectures by experts in a wide variety of fields. We would like to say a special thank you to our friend Erich Hoyt who has helped us formulate our science project around orcas. A memorable highlight from the recent past also includes the fascinating evening lectures given by Dr Jim Hansom (Univ of Glasgow) and Dr David Munro (Director of the RSGS). It was a genuine privilege to be in the audience to hear this particular duo. We should also mention our adventurous friends, Rob Gauntlett and James Hooper, who are currently undertaking a mammoth man-powered pole to pole expedition. It looks like we're going to beat them to Antarctica but their talks left us all inspired and indeed very impressed with these two accomplished and determined young adventurers. Good luck boys! Most recently, we have enjoyed some expert photographic tuition from Bruce Percy (http://www.thelightandtheland.com/) and an entertaining lecture by Dr Jonathan Pickup about life in the British Antarctic Survey. To all of you we owe a huge debt of thanks!

Appliance of Science!

Excitement is building toward fever pitch! Team hoodies arriving this morning nearly pushed us all towards hysteria!!

Student team members took Senior School Assembly this morning and gave the school an overview of some of the places we will be visiting as well as some of the science we will be trying. This expedition is like no other that has gone before in our school history. This is a community expedition and so for the first time staff and students will be joined by parents, grandparents, old girls and friends of St George’s. Secondly, a major focus of this trip will be to collect data for the global scientific community. We will be taking photographs throughout our trip of any orcas we meet along the way. Dorsal fins are unique identifiers and photographic identification will help scientists to track pods and their movements globally. Using a hydrophone we also plan to record orca sounds; each pod is thought to speak a different dialect. This information will be added to a database which will be accessible to scientists from around the world and will hopefully aid them in their quest to understand the changing patterns of orca behaviour.

Seasons Greetings!

Send Christmas and New Year Greetings via the Antarctic Expedition Team and have this special card posted to your friends and relatives from Antarctica!! This special commemorative card is available from the school office and can be specially signed by George the Early Years Bear for younger recipients. You can also write your own special message inside.
The card is to commemorate the school expedition to Antarctica, to celebrate International Polar Year and to honour Kathleen Bruce, Old Girl of St George's, and wife of Robert Falcon Scott of Antarctica.

Did you know...

On Saturday we leave for Antarctica to undertake a mammoth journey and formally begin our great adventure. But did you know that here in Edinburgh we are actually closer to the North Pole than we will be to the South Pole when we visit Shackleton's grave on South Georgia. Look at Britain on the map!

Mission Control

I am heading up Mission Control back at St George's School in Edinburgh! We shall be following the expedition here, in the Junior, Lower and Upper Schools. We are looking forward to being inspired by your sightings of orcas and penguins and to admiring your toughness as you face the high seas and clambering over the ice! I hope your ice-breaker has plenty of IT equipment as well as sufficient comfort to keep you happy on the way. It is a marvellous adventure of a life-time. Don't forget we shall be following you all the way, every day, and we are here for you!

George

George, the Early Years Bear is preparing for the trip of a lifetime when he will conquer his last continent with the students of St George's.

Is this the most travelled bear in Scotland? Possibly. He is leaving this week for Antarctica. His travels to date have seen him visit Asia, Africa, North and South America, and Australasia, with students from the school, and to visit partner schools all over the world. He has climbed Mount Elgon and built a classroom in Uganda with senior students on expedition, has walked on the Great Wall of China and attended classes in mandarin at our partner school of 9,000 students in Kunming, met Katy Koala at one of our partner schools in Australia and is developing a lifelong relationship, has shivered beneath the Villaricca volcano while atending the South Oxford School in Chile, has been to Niagara Falls and New York with girls on exchange in Canada and the USA, and has become a complete polyglot as he has accompanied music tours and gone on exchange to numerous cities in Europe, from Paris to St Petersburg.
The time has come to conquer the last continent!This week as he sets off on a month long expedition to Antarctica, he does admit to feeling some trepidation after last week’s events. However, he is a bold and courageous bear and always ready for an adventure. George and his companions set off from Edinburgh on Saturday 1st, flying to Buenos Aires then on to Ushuaia to board their ship which will take them first to South Georgia and on to the Antarctic peninsula.

Akademik Shokalski

This is our ship, the Akademik Shokalski. It is a 49 passenger vessel, which is an ex Russian ice breaker. We will be sharing the ship with the Royal Geographical Society.

Only 5 sleeps to go...

Hello Fellow Adventurers & Friends of St George's!

Only 5 sleeps to go before we set off south on our great adventure! We feel privileged to be the first British school to visit Antarctica, particularly during this auspicious International Polar Year. More to follow later on how we hope to make a small contribution to the scientific community. Currently we are trying to master the technology so that we can send back podcasts and footage of our trip as we go along. Be assured - we will do our very best to keep you posted!