Southern Hemisphere Adventure: There was nothing "Happy" About Happy Camper

Seriously. Nothing. After being up all night at work and having every stitch of ECW gear on it was still quite cold. After having instruction in Hypothermia and frostbite (what happens, what it looks like, getting scared that I was going to somehow lose a limb out there) we headed out to the ice in our Delta. There were 16 of us. Once we got to our site we were issued sleeping bags, 2 mats and a sleeping bag liner. We then went to our camping site and began to work. We had to cut out blocks of snow to build a wall to protect out tents from the wind. Not just any wall...a 50 foot long was that was 5 feet high. We then had to put up tents. We had 2 Scott tents (they are bigger, stronger and WARMER) and then 6 regular 2 man tents. We had to dig holes to secure the lines of all the tents and for the Scott tents we had to shovel snow all along the bottom of them so it wouldn't catch any wind. 5 hours later we were just about done with that. About 6 PM total physical and mental exhaustion was setting in with me. The instructors saw that and took me aside and told me that I was a trooper but I needed to go to bed. So I went to bed before the kitchen was dug out. I immediately fell asleep. After a couple of hours one of the guys brought me some hot water bottles so I could stick them in the sleeping bag with me. Good thing cuz after a while it got COLD. Really COLD. Imagine laying on the ice...-2 degrees WITHOUT the wind chill. I think I slept about 5 hours. The next morning I had to put my boots back on. Imagine super cold boots. It was terrible! I fueled up on hot chocolate and peed...in the out house (thank goodness!) and got to work with the rest of my group tearing down camp. All of us were cold and tired. We were out on the ice until 1400 learning how to set up and use a HF radio (like the radios the military used in WWII and Viet Nam) and we called the South Pole. We also had to set up a survival bag...yep another tent! We were all done! All of us just wanted to go home, shower and sleep! NOPE! Had to finish all this stuff and got back to town at 1600! Trust me, I am happy I did it but I WILL NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT EVERY AGAIN!! Oh and no frostbite but my toes and fingers were extremely cold!!