Great my last courses finished, they were a Reverse Osmosis course and a Water Treatment course. The Reverse Osmosis machine pictured above takes drinking water out of salt water(sea water). And the Water Treatment Plant is so that the waste water returned to the sea is clean. My departure date is still not set in stone so I am waiting to here when I'm going ,I know its around the 23rd 25th November. I said goodbye to my mum the other day and that will be the last I see of her till 2008 that made it feel more imminent

My Itinerary is as follows I fly from Heathrow on the 25 November to Montevideo,Uruguary then I will sail to the Falkland Islands on the RSS Ernest Shackleton .
From the Falklands I will then sail on the RSS James Clark Ross to my base at Rothera.

I also attended a Confined Space and Breathing Apparatus course, this to was great fun especially when the gas detector was set of by Methane, I don't know where it came from.

I've learnt to drive a Sno Cat and a JCB Loadall. The Sno Cat is used for tranporting people and equipment around. The JCB Loadall is for everything from unloaing the ship, moving supplies around the base and building works.

Following the Medical training we went to Derbyshire for some of our field training which involved using all the equipment that we will be using in Antarctica like a Pyramid tent and the cooking stove, which are still the same as Captain Scott used on his ill fated expedition to the South Pole. Every day we spent learning climbing techniques from abseiling to jumaring back up a rope, Z-pulleys which are used to rescue some one from a crevasse( see more of my photos opposite). What a great laugh we had. I can't wait till I will be climbing in crevasses like in the pic above.

After attending the conference we all had to undergo a First Aid Plus course which was taught by the British Antarctic medical unit. The training was excellent we were taught everything from plastering fractured limbs to giving injections, hypothermia to burns. I really enjoyed the course.