international
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The party began with, in stead of the usual hot chocolate that is served on the working grounds, warm wine from "Château Migraine" vintage.

Christmas was celebrated on the night of December 24th, close to the way it is feasted in Belgium. The coast team made it back to the base camp on time, after several hours of severe weather.

The second convoy reached Utsteinen on December 21st (7 30 pm), carrying part of the crane and frozen food to last through mid-March 2008. Strong winds and heavy snow falls are coming down on the Eastern region of Antarctica, announcing a white Christmas for the BELARE 2007-2008 team.

The coast team has now finished unloading all the containers and machines from the Ivan Papanin. Everything has been neatly arranged in rows up on the ice shelf. The ship is due to leave Crown Bay today, Friday December 21.

The first convoy of containers reached the base camp in Utsteinen today (December 19) at 5 pm. The most needed equipment was brought first, comprising of the remaining wood to complete the garage construction.

The Ivan Papanin cargo ship started making its way through the sea ice on Friday December 14. She was anchored to the sea ice near Breid Bay around 7 pm that night. The exact location has been named Crown Bay (70°S 23°E), because of the shape of a nearby iceberg.

The Ivan Papanin ice-class cargo ship carrying aboard the 120 containers of the Princess Elisabeth Station reached 5° East on December 11th. She is progressing smoothly towards the South and is expected to come into Breid Bay around December 14th.

Working on top of the Nunatak is not an enviable job: the wind comes in from the east and constantly blows your way. Some time ago, the thermometer on top of the rocks indicated -24 degrees Celsius, with gusts of wind reaching 50 km/hour.

Alain and Dieter have been measuring geodetic points for the National Geographic Institute of Belgium, and are happy with their results to date. Geodesy is the study of the size and shape of the Earth, its field of gravity, and such varying phenomena as the motion of the magnetic poles and the tides. Apart from having measured existing points that were left by the Japanese expedition of 1985, they have also installed new measuring points for a satellite survey.

At the end of November, the Ivan Papanin arrived in Cape Town for a last stop-over before leaving for Antarctica. The ice-class cargo ship filled up on fuel and food supplies for the crew and loaded the last containers full of frozen goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, gas for the vehicles at Utsteinen, wood and other small elements of use on the building site. The Ivan Papanin left South Africa on 1 December.