8-month mission on "Mars": Dome's First Christmas

We're the first HI-SEAS crew to experience Christmas in the dome. Since previous missions were in the summertime for four months, it seems we're doubling the time and quadrupling the holidays!

For some of us, this was also our first Christmas apart from our families. We tried to carry on Christmas traditions from home, played board games, watched movies, and made delicious treats. We actually used the rest of our sugar supply on cinnamon rolls, cookies, and icing. This should make my New Year's resolution of "no cookies" quite easy until February's resupply!

From left to right in first row: Allen, Sophie, Martha, Jocelyn (Me!)

and in the back row from left to right: Zak and Neil

Christmas in the dome might be as close as it gets to living in a snow globe! Rather than cute puppies and snow-covered fir trees, the contents of our globe includes an indoor garden, six adults in space pajamas, and gadgets galore. Sadly, snow does not fall when NASA gives our world a shake or twirl ;) but magically, we did have a white Christmas with snowfall on the peak of nearby Mauna Kea, as shown in the photo below.

Snow-covered top of Mauna Kea in the background with my radio call sign "Fancy" on display, this was a Christmas gift from Neil Scheibelhut aka "Rex"

Over the holidays, instead of shopping to the tune of classic Christmas songs, we laughed along to “Hung for the Holidays” album.. true story, the Christmas music selection here is rather limited. For gifts, I wrote poems, Martha was knitting, Sophie sewed stockings, Zak baked us treats, Allen made mnemonics in Russian out of our names to describe each personality, and Neil took beautiful photos for us! Thanks and photo credits to Neil Scheibelhut!