Journalist's Report
11/27/2014
Anastasiya Stepanova
We woke up in such great mood. Today is the holiday at MDRS! For me and Alexandre Mangeot is the first ever Thanksgiving day. American and Canadian part of crew are quiet excited and they have been planning what to cook for a special dinner, since we have only dehydrated food. Usual the Thanksgiving feast is baked turkey with cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, different vegetables and pumpkin pie. The guys are trying so hard to make this dinner as similar as it could be and what a result! The menu for tonight is: turkey spam with cranberry sauce, mash potatoes from potato granules, rehydrated vegetables and ginger cookies.
Apart from the big celebration, we had out last EVA, since it is the last day of simulation. We didn’t look for meteorites, didn’t do soil, plants sampling, we just danced. Yes, we danced in space suits! Ian thought me the swing type dance called “Collegiate shag”, which probably came from New Orleans. We also had a dance lessons from Paul Knightly to Line dance, which can commonly be found in country bars across Kansas. I think for the first time in MDRS history the crew synchronized danced in space suits. It is harder than it looks. Our heads kept bumping in the helmet every time we jumped and also you can feel the 8 kg backpacks dragging us down. But we did it and soon you will be able to watch our Martian dancing video.
It is amazing when you can share your culture and learn new things in return. Every day we talk about different aspects of life in USA, Canada, France and Russia. A delicious smell tells me that Thanksgiving dinner is ready. Some day on Mars, we might also have a Thanksgiving celebration, at first the first explorers from England; eventually we will be the first colonizers from Earth.