Tonight we had our last real family dinner. Narve, Yngve and Eivind got back from their ski trip down from Ny Ålesund yesterday and today is Bjørn's last day. He leaves early in the morning so we had to say our goodbyes tonight. For dinner we had lasagne, garlic bread and salad compliments of Anders and Sylvi. For dessert Eivind made chocolate mousse while I was working on a cherry chocolate cake. After the meal we were sitting around in the kitchen like a bunch of nerds with our laptops and hard drives, exchanging pictures. There'll be a lot more of that in the coming days I think.
Now so close to the end of my stay, I don't want it to be the end. I'm convinced that I'll cry when I leave here. I almost cried tonight with having to say goodbye to Bjørn. I've gotten a chance to live, study and adventure with some really amazing people here. By no means are any of us perfect, but when you're all thrown into something like this together, what can you do but befriend one another and just live? It hasn't all been good times, we've all had our problems. Some with people here and some far away. I've lost an uncle and had a brother get married among other things. I've hated be away from my family in those times, but my new friends here have all been such great support and comfort. I'll be leaving pieces of my heart on Svalbard and with all the people I've come to know and love. I really hope that it's not too long before I see them all again.
Oof, it's going to be heard to leave, but for now I'm signing off of here. It's nearly 1 am and the sun has just come over the end of Platåfjellet to shine on my back through the window. I'd say it's a good time to go to bed. Tomorrow is my last day to study before the exam on monday, so I guess I better make good use of it. Wish me luck!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
Last week Svea's family was here visiting and I had a lot of fun being with them. I got a few free meals (always a plus) and a chance to pretend that I was part of yet another family. I've been invited to visit their home in Bavaria and have every intention of taking them up on that in the next couple of years.
Currently I have 5 people visiting me... well sort of. They know one of the other Alaskan girls in Tromsø and were coming up here for a 10 day vacation and got in contact with me for a place to stay. Of course I don't have enough room for 5 people, but storage rooms come in handy now and then, so I think they're cozy.
The only other business really going on currently is that I'm not trying nearly hard enough to study for my exam on the 9th. Hopefully I can really crack down tomorrow, but it's so easy to just keep putting things off.
I only have about 2 and a half weeks left on this island and am really looking forward to getting home. I'm also getting to the point where I can really start feeling sad to leave all of my new friends. Some have left already and some aren't with us for much longer. I've made a lot of good memories with a lot of good people and I really hope that it's not too long before I see them again. I hope I can manage to keep in touch, but time has shown that I'm not very good at that, but I guess communication is a two-way street, so I can't put it all on myself.
Now there's the matter of figuring out what to carry with me and what to box up and send home. I'll be spending ten days in Seattle (I'll actually be going to San Francisco for about 3 or 4 of those days) and I don't want to have to haul too much stuff around. I'm left with extra baggage whether I like it or not, though, as I'll be carrying my skis with me.
That's all for now. No big adventures, but just in case people are checking this, it might be nice if they have something new to read. Love you all. Can't wait to go home and fish!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
So the second part of my dream, I was in some big housing complex... I guess it was kind of like a hotel or dorms. I was visiting with Eugene and everything was good. But then for some reason or other he was gone. And I guess a bunch of people were locked up because the government was stupid or something. So then I fought really hard to get people out... I think dad was gone too. So then I won the fight and was waiting for Eugene to come visit me. And I was standing at the top of some stairs eating a meager meal of top ramen. And the first person to show up was uncle Mike. And he was mean to me. He was blaming me for what happened kind of. I think he thought I was on the government's side. And I was about to cry because I had fought so hard to get everyone out. Then he was being mean about me having nice food. And I was like... well this is just something that the university let me have because I was working alllll day. It's just top ramen. And I think that was a bit better on his conscience, but that's about the point that I woke up. And then I couldn't go back to sleep. This was at 6am, so I could have only slept for about 15 more minutes anyways.
Why could I only sleep until 6:15 you ask? I'll tell you. We had our first exam today and I wanted to get a little more studying in before I had to be at UNIS at 9:00. The test ended up not being as bad as I thought it would be, but there's still some things that I wish I would have studied harder on. The hardest part about it is that we haven't had any other assignments or exams all semester, so the whole grade hinges on this exam and we covered a very wide range of information. It'll all be ok in the end.
So on that note, that's part of the reason I haven't been writing a lot lately. There hasn't been too many exciting things happening. We've spent a lot of the past week or two cooped up in our rooms reading. The breaks from reading end up being really entertaining though. There have been instances of evil laughter out the window and a tickling war. I've run around with a marten skin on my hand and been attacked with a towel. But the best part was the story with the vicious beast, the damsel maiden and the brave knight. It makes no sense to you now, but if I can manage to get the videos and photos of some of the events it'll be a little funnier. it still won't make any sense though.
One thing that could possibly have helped me to study more was to not have lost two days of studying. This is a fun story. So sunday night Svea asked if I wanted to do this scooter job that she was going on. There were lots of other people that had wanted to do it, but couldn't manage to do it on monday. So I agreed. I didn't figure losing one day of study would hurt me too much. This scooter job was to take 12-15 hours of time and we would be taking barrels of food to a couple of outposts in Dixon Land. Our boss, a German man named Andreas, has been coming up here for 22 years and he runs a tourism businiess. The outposts are for hikers that go on trips through his business for a couple weeks hiking. So they don't have to carry all of their food with them. At least in theory. Things may be a little different this year though.
We left the barracks at 11am on monday. Then we went to pack sledges and had lunch at Kroa before we left. We didn't end up leaving Longyearbyen until 3:30. On the way, we had a little fun. We stopped at some cabins/historical sites to have a look around. We drove along Nordenskiöldbreen and took pictures of that glacier. We went over to Pyramiden to have a look around, because Svea has never been there before. When we were leaving we met one of the men that lives and works there (there are only 3). Of course he only spoke Russian so our "boss" made me talk to him because I had made the mistake of saying that I had taken some Russian. The man said something about not having any bread, so we said when we came back from the outposts we would bring some food.
So we were finally on our way to the real work at about 11:00 pm from Pyramiden. So first we were supposed to go up on Mittag-Lefflebreen and cross the moraine on the side to where we were supposed to drop the food. It was really bad visibility up on the glacier, but we made it to where were were supposed to cross the moraine. However, when we got there, we couldn't find a place to cross. Hmm... so then we couldn't bring stuff to that outpost unless we could made it from the backside when we went over to the other outpost. So we went back to Petuniabukta and started up onto Hørbyebreen. Well we got up a little ways and some of the snow was pretty deep. With heavy sledges it wasn't easy going. So then we were making our way up one slope and you didn't really realize how big it was until you were going on it. And when I was about 2/3rds of the way up my scooter really started slowing down. Then it stopped. I thought "Crap! Svea's right behind me." So I turned around to look and she was stuck about 1/3rd of the way up the hill. Crap. We had a lot of fun digging those scooters out at 2 am though. We even made a short video. So at that point our boss decided to give up on the outposts and head home. The hikers will just have to do something else this summer.
So as promised we stopped back by Pyramiden. When we got there we figured everyone was sleeping because it was 4am. So we started unloading one of the barrels of food to leave for them... and we were caught! One of the guys was awake and he went to wake up Sergei, because he spoke some English. So he got up and invited us into his little room for some coffee. We spent about an hour visiting with him and he spoke to us in a combination of English, German, Norwegian and Russian. The funny thing is that we all understood him perfectly. He offered to start the sauna for us and give us places to sleep, but we politely declined and said we had to go home. And we did have to go home.
So when we coming up off of Billefjorden, my scooter started to make a bit of a flapping noise. So I stopped and Andreas got way ahead of us. So Svea and I opened it up to look at the engine. Well it looked like the variator belt was fraying on the edges. So we were like, man, we can fix this. We learned how to change a variator belt in our scooter safety course. So by the time our boss came back for us we were ready to go again. I hadn't gone 300 meters and it started making the sound again. So we looked at it and this time Andreas just cut the frayed parts off and we kept on. Well by the time we got to Templefjorden I was having problems again. I made it most of the way across at a very slow pace. I normally would have been going at least 60-70 km/h over that ice, but this time I was at a max speed of 25 km/h because if I went any faster the scooter started shaking really bad. So we borrowed a spare belt from one of the other scooters, changed it again and continued on. At this point I was about to cry. Getting this frustrated when you're really tired doesn't help morale much. So when we started going again it was squealing a little bit. So I stopped at Fredheim and Andreas took my scooter.
That left me with the scooter with two sledges behind it. I was afraid to drive it because I knew how much trouble I had with just one sledge behind the scooter I had been driving, but surprising that scooter was easier to drive... which my back appreciated. As we were driving down Adventdalen I was starting to fall asleep for brief moments while driving. That was kind of scary. I mean, it's easy to fall asleep driving a car or boat, but how many people can say they've fallen asleep driving a scooter. Then we had one more mishap. Svea's sledge broke... but it was still towable, so we kept on. We finally made it back to Longyearbyen at almost 10 am. So we got everything unloaded and went home. Full trip from the barrack and back again, Svea and I were gone 23 hours. It was crazy... and we were going to stay awake until the night so that we wouldn't throw our sleep schedules off, but there was no way that we could do it. So after we had breakfast I took a 2 hours nap and she took a 3 hour nap a little after. It was good enough to keep us going, but not enough to throw off our sleep.
So that was how I lost 2 days of studying. There was no way that I could sit at a computer and read without falling asleep. So yesterday was my last chance for studying and it was hard to make myself do it. But I still took a break to have dinner with Magne and a few people and cake with everyone for his birthday. We're having the real celebration today though. It's going to be like the perfect storm of parties. Exam party, Magne's birthday party and everyone is back from the cruise today! And then this weekend is the 17th of May... Norwegian national day. Yay!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
But yeah... yesterday (or saturday rather) the people from the scientific cruise came back. Yay! Svea and I first saw them in the store and we were really excited and give lots of people hugs. The ones that we hang out with most are only back for 2 days though, so it's sad. They leave again in the morning. So we haven't really been doing a lot the past couple of days. Today we were out on the roof enjoying the sun (like just about every other day the past week). And Sylvi and I made pizza for a group of us for dinner tonight. I actually made the dough and put toppings together for 2 pizzas and she put the toppings together for a third... and my pizzas were the first ones eaten up, so I was very proud of myself. I've never made a whole pizza on my own from scratch, so I guess I was more skilled than I thought I would be :) It's a good feeling for people to like your food. Maybe I'll make pizza at home this summer. I remember Nathan used to get that together at least once a summer, but it hasn't happened for a while, so it would be nice.
This evening Svea, Laura and I were talking for quite a while and we eventually ended up on the subject of art. I really want to try to draw more... so I should. I'm also really excited to play with clay when I get home this summer! And maybe I'll have to try out some of the chisels I got for Christmas when I get home to them, because I've really been wanting to carve. It's hard to do without the right kind of tools.
Hmm... I guess that's all I've got to say in my monologue for now. I should really try to go to bed... but I'm still not tired. *Sigh* This is what happens when you don't have class for a while... you let your sleep schedule get all out of whack... and then you pay for it when you actually have to go to sleep at a decent hour. And I will pay...
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
On Sunday a group of us took a day trip to Barentsburg and came home in roundabout ways. It was a really nice trip and we were gone from around 12 in the afternoon until 11 at night. Barentsburg is kind of a sad, rundown place, but everyone else was busy talking about how special it is. And it is special... but I still think it looks in great need of repair. We got to see a few neat things though. And the gift shop was open so we all went in a bought a few things. I bought a flask... not so much because I need one, but because it was pretty cool and I was trying to help support local economy. Yeah, that's right, I'm not always thinking about myself ;)
We stopped at some nice places along the way home and had "lunch" at one spot with a great view. I have lots of pictures that'll probably show up on facebook soon. The trip home probably took longer than it should have though. There were a few scooter problems. First Magne needed the Frog towed, so it was down to Margrete and John Arne again. Then Ane's scooter started acting pretty funny, so we were afraid we'd have to figure out a way to tow another, but she made it home with a few stops along the way.
When we got home I made some nice green curry and rice for Margrete and I while she was still away gassing up and then taking a shower. Sometimes I'm good like that... especially when I know I'm making food that'll be too much for me :p
So on monday... I didn't do a whole lot. I stayed inside and watched movies... and complained about my back being tired from the scooter trip. It was a good day.
Then on tuesday... most of the day was lazy too. But then around 5 in the evening we took a trip to the East Coast. It was a really lovely evening. We had such a big group that we split up into 2 groups of 5 scooter each. My group was the faster group, yay! So then we were having some "lunch" over by a small cabin. People were scanning the ice with binos searching for bears. And guess what... we finally saw one! It was far away across the ice and you could only see it with binos, but it was definitely a bear. It had that bearish way of moving and it was a slightly more yellow blob walking southward across the ice. We were back to the barracks by about 10:30 and everyone was jealous of our sighting :) We're going to try to go again soon and see if we can't find one at a little bit closer range... but not too close.
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
Ok, so the rest of my day was pretty cool too. I gave my presentation on ungulates in the morning and I think I did a pretty good job. I always get nervous before presenting, but this time I think I managed my words ok. I think part of it was because I was the first to go after one of our breaks, so as everyone was coming in I was up in front goofing around with the laser pointer and showing where Gail Aspelund's house and Uncle Robert's cabin were in the background. It made it easier to speak a little more animatedly and I had also very very minimal notes on my slides, so if I forgot some words nobody knew.
So then Marianne was leaving and we went to hang out at the Radisson and wait for the bus to come. And there were three or four men standing around talking and the first thing I noticed was that one of them was wearing a Grundens sweatshirt. And they definitely weren't Norwegian. So I listened for a minute and one of them said something to the effect of "I have to go run these guys out to the plane, then I'll be back." So being shy and not having met the flight crew yet, I didn't say anything at first. I gave Margrete a look and nodded my head toward them and she understood and tried to make me say something. So I did. I said, "Yeah, I know they're the Alaska a guys." So a couple of them turned around and looked at me. I reached my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Laurinda Hill." It was funny, because then they were all pretty happy to see me. I guess they were getting pretty tired of carrying my cheese around. I hung out with them for a couple hours and I also found out that one of the other fellows used to be the neighbor of the Cockrells in Palmer, so I had met his little boy. Small world.
I got a box of goodies and was dropped off at home after a while. Then I proceeded to make a cherry-chocolate cake and everyone thought it was amazing. I think that a few of my friends would have eaten the whole cake if wasn't impolite to do so. The rest of the evening was pretty relaxing and hopefully I'll get to meet up with the Yanks again sometime today.
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
So yesterday we all slept in until at around 11 (and some slept later). It had gotten so warm in the cabin the night before that we didn't even bother starting a fire in the morning (and it wasn't all that cold outside either). So we all ate breakfast and the skiers took off. The rest of us took our sweet time and left in the early afternoon. Most of the rest of my day was spent relaxing (except for when we went back out to get the garbage from the cabin that others had forgotten). Karl's buddy Spike got in touch with me yesterday and I'm supposed to get my box of goodies from him tonight. The first thing he said to me on the phone was "Man, it's good to talk to someone else with an American accent!" I'm looking forward to meeting him and the crew. I might even get to go flying, but that's to be kept hush-hush. Don't go around blabbing to anyone, k?
But for now I have to prepare my presentation on Adaptations of Arctic Ungulates. Yeah, I sound pretty smart when I say that. Most of my fellow classmates don't know what I'm talking about when I say "ungulates." I'll use my words though and they can thank me for broadening their vocabulary :-)
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
Mm... not a whole lot else going on. Today I was making oatmeal to put in my bread and in the process decided that the kitchen was disgusting. So I started cleaning.... and just kept on going. I ended up moving all the furniture around, sweeping, mopping, cleaning the counters and cupboards. Sometimes I wish that Mom hadn't raised me so well. It seems that whenever I'm living with others I'm always the first to break and turn into Miss Wishy-Washy. I just can't deal with a dirty kitchen for long.
Other news... Karl has a friend from AK coming up to Longyearbyen within the next week. Spike has offered to bring some Alaska stuff for me. He's also asked if the flight crew can take me out to dinner. Of course I agreed to that quite readily. I can never turn down a free meal. I don't know if it's my blood or that I'm a college student. It may be a bit of both. He's also expecting me to teach them some helpful Norwegian phrases, but I've told him that most of the things aren't really useful most of the time. Like "Jeg er kongen!"
This weekend, on saturday, I'll be spending the night out at Smuthullet (the student cabin in Bjørndalen). It's going to be a joint party of the midnight sun and Margrete's birthday. I don't think anybody's expecting to sleep to much, and it's going to be a lot of fun. There'll be a couple of guitars, a set of bagpipes, and a mouth harp. It should be a wild party. Haha.
Love you all!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
So on Saturday morning a group of us took off to spend two nights in Svea. It was Magne, Tonje, Erik, Agnete and myself. We took scooter and the ride was nice and about 2 hours long, but I think it took us quite a bit longer to actually find the cabin. It has a nice coal stove that heats up pretty quickly, so we didn't spend too cold of a night. We played ate dinner that Tonje and Agnete made and played some games. One was Fantasi, which is pretty much charades. It was interesting having all the cards in Norwegian though, because every time I didn't understand something we had to stop the time and get someone from the boys' team to translate for me. It was a fun night, but we all went to bed kind of early because I guess maybe we were tired from the trip. In the morning, we decided that we would be going back to Longyearbyen. The plan had been to go to the east coast and look for bears, but it turned out that some of the scooters used a lot more gas than we thought they would. And people didn't really feel like just sitting around the cabin all day, so we went home by a different route. We had our dinner together still and then I went home.
Yesterday morning I slept in a bit because I've been getting a cold and I'm trying to get rid of it as soon as possible. I spent part of the afternoon at school doing my exercise for the 204 class, then I was busy printing pictures to decorate my room and bathroom. I haven't finished hanging the ones in my room up, but it's nice to have a little bit of home plastered around. I ended up mooching dinner off of Sylvi and Anders because I hadn't eaten yet and they had a lot leftover, so it worked out well for everyone. Svea and I were sitting in the kitchen for a while with her playing the guitar and me trying to sing with my stuffy nose. It's been a long time since we had a singing kitchen party and hope we can get one together again sometime soon. I think I spent most of the rest of my evening on the computer talking to people and goofing around. It's nice to finally have my own internet connection. And today Bjørn helped connect me to the student server so I can look at all my school stuff from home.
This morning we had three hours of lecture about the Svalbard treaty. I think it could have been pretty interesting, but I was so tired that I didn't end up paying a lot of attention. After class I started writing stuff for my yearbook entry (everyone is supposed to write some information and people can make comments about them and then it'll be compiled in a fun sort of way) and looking at what kind of classes I'm going to need to register to take for the next semester. Now I'm just sitting at home enjoying the afternoon. I don't have classes tomorrow or the next day, so I should figure out something to do, but I'll let that be for now.
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
And... a blog. Yes. The only "exciting" thing I did this week was go on an excursion with my 203 class to Tempelfjorden. I guess I put "exciting" because I've already been there twice and it ended up being a really tiring trip. Something about riding in long lines and only being able to go as fast as the scooters in front of you really takes a toll on the body. I had a pretty bad headache afterward and couldn't wait to get home and rest. The rest of the trip was ok. We got to go into the cabin at Fredheim, which doesn't really happen for a lot of people. It's one of the cultural heritage sites, so the only people that usually get to go in there are the Sysselmannen's cops. There was a trapper that wintered there (or in that area) for 38 years and is probably one of the most well-known Norwegian trappers... though his name escapes me. They always say it too fast. Then we sat outside and ate our lunch and played around a bit. We also went over near the front of Von Postbreen (Von Post glacier). We saw a lot of seals on the way laying on the fjord ice. They were cute and fat. We hung out in front of the glacier for a while and played around too. Some people snuck up pretty close to one of the seals before it decided to dive out of sight.
Other than there has been a lot of hours of lecture this week. Last night I made stroganoff for Margrete and Anders when they got back from work. Then Magne and Anders were going to wash the floor with the fire hose and I ended up getting my pants soaked... I wasn't too happy about that, but Magne helped cheer me up with a nice long talk about life and other things. Tonight is friday gathering, so I'll probably end up out on the town. We're going to try to make the trip to Svea again this weekend, but it's still uncertain for Margrete, Sylvi and I. We're not taking off until sunday morning because Margrete works all day tomorrow. The only problem is that their scooter hasn't been fixed yet, so we don't actually know if we're going to be taking off yet.
Well, that's all for now. I encourage people yet again to send me a little bit about your lives sometimes. It's all well and good that you get to read about me, but the only things I usually know is what mom tells me! (Thanks mommy) Love all you and hope everything is going well!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
- Music:It's 5 o'clock somewhere
Ok! Exciting things. Last wednesday we went to Gruve (mine) 7 and got a tour. It was pretty cool and I'm pretty sure we'll all end up with the black lung. It was funny too because for the rest of that day and the next day, most of the boys looked like they had eyeliner on. Some of them seem like they can pull the Johnny Depp look off pretty well, but some of the others just looked like little girls. Then on wednesday night we had Sysselmannen (the governor of Svalbard) and his wife to dinner at our barrack. Mostly it was just our floor, so it was a nice dinner party. We had melon with ham for an appetizer, Chicken with pesto and parmesean for the main course, and chocolate fondant for dessert. It was all super tasty and our guests were very impressed.
Sooo... what else. I don't think there was anything exciting on thursday. Oh! Except that Margrete had two guests arrive and they're pretty much awesome. In the morning we had presentations in our management class.... that wasn't so very fun and some of them were too long. And that night's dinner was opposite of the night before. Nothing fancy and very small. I made Anders cook for me (actually I just talked my way into having what he was already cooking for himself). I did help a little... I peeled the carrots. Oh, and I did the dishes after because I'm nice like that.
On friday I got to go to the stables with Margrete in the afternoon and help her feed the horses. They're cute :) And I finished my exercise for AB204. I had dinner with Margrete and the girls (when the girls got back from Barentsburg). Then we went to friday gathering. It ended up being a pretty fun night and we went to Karls-Berger Pub afterward. And then we had kebabs when we left! It was super tasty and I was still burping garlic the next morning.
Saturday I had an easy morning and afternoon. I made a birthday card for Åshild to send. I made some no-bake cookies and they were super tasty... and everyone likes to eat them so it makes me happy. I miss Damian though - nobody tries to steal my cookies while I'm baking anymore. Then I started working on my costume for the kitchen to kitchen party for that night. Basically what happens is that everyone thinks of a theme for their kitchen and everyone goes in a big mass from kitchen to kitchen and gets more and more drunk. Our theme was Irish, so we had Irish coffee and made Christopher play the bagpipes. It was really good too because everyone was pretty chaotic by the time they got to our kitchen. The good part was that our pied piper caused the chaos to be controlled chaos and then he helped to lead all of the crazy rats out of our barrack. I didn't drink that much because I was deathly afraid of the large, crazy crowd of people. I've never been good in huge groups, much less when they're drunk.
Soo... yesterday was a mostly relaxed day. After we got up we cleaned the kitchen and the hallway. Cleaning the hallway isn't our job, but I was tired of walking around in shoes and needed the floor to be clean. Then we spent many many hours watching Band of Brothers. I think I watched the first 7 hours of it. I couldn't sit anymore though, so I'll have to finish the other 3 hours at some other time.
Today, as I've already said, we have quite a few hours of class. Margrete's visitors are leaving today, which is sad because I had a lot of fun hanging out with them. And tonight I think I'm going to make a big pot of stew and fried bread for the guys that are out on excursion today. I know after I came back from the excursion to Billefjorden I was really wishing that someone would have food for me and didn't end up eating very well when it turned out that they didn't. Yep, that's all for now!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
- Music:Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
March 11th
Yesterday I had a field excursion for one of my classes. It was a three hour drive out for about four hours of field work and three hours back (on scooter). It made for a really long day, but it sure was a beautiful one. And I got to see a lot of the sun! It's getting light here so quickly. I think we're supposed to be gaining something like 23 minutes per day. Crazy.
March 14th
March 25th (being today)
Ok, so now for a recap on how my Easter break actually went. I didn't go to Bjørndalen on Saturday because I really wasn't feeling like it, so I stayed at the barrack with Bjørn and we watched movies. By the end of the weekend we were bugging each other and chasing each other around like a brother and sister might, so now I call him "brother bear." I spent a lot of time during the week hanging out with people and their guests. Most of the people on our floor were out for trips, but it wasn't any less full because of all the extra people. I got to spend a bit of time with Anders' family. That was a lot of fun for me because I was feeling a bit lonely and they always seemed happy to see me. I went souvenir shopping with them on their last day here because Anders had to work and I think he's pretty happy that it worked out that way. I don't think he's the type of person that would have the patience to wait for them to choose the best gifts.
The only trip I actually ended up going on was a day trip out to Pyramiden on Saturday. It was a really cold week and I didn't feel much like camping out in a tent during the week. The trip to Pyramiden was really fun and we (Margrete, Anders, Yngve, Bjørnar, Gunnar and myself) took lots of photos. We were running around the buildings and playing on swings and just having a good time exploring in the sun. The only problem ended up being that after about five minutes on our way back home, Anders' and Yngve's scooter started sounding like a lawnmower. It ended up being a good thing that they brought us girls along, because Margrete towed Yngve and the scooter all the way back (which is about a 3 hour trip under normal conditions) and Anders got to ride as a passenger with me. The other boys have single-seat scooters, so we felt like we saved the day.
On Sunday we had a group that was supposed to go to the cabin in Svea for 2 nights. We got all ready and waited a lot of the day because one of our group was MIA and had gotten his days mixed up. We finally took off around 3 or 4 in the afternoon (it's a two hour trip). About half an hour out, Margrete decided that the suspension on her scooter was shot, so she didn't want to drive it all the way to Svea and back. I was really cold before we even left the barracks, so I was ready to go home too. So we all turned around and had our "Svea" night in the downstairs kitchen. We ended up playing some drinking games after dinner... and lets just say that most of our group weren't feeling very good on Monday.
Yesterday Margrete and I worked on our management project. Then in the evening a bunch of us decided that it would be fun to have photo slideshows of our lives and where we're from - basically who we are. It was really fun to put all the pictures together and see what everyone else has done. We only got through about half of our people because we all had to go to bed so we can make it to class today, so tonight we'll probably see some more.
Oh! And tomorrow we have Sysselmannen (the governor of Svalbard) and his wife coming to dinner at our Barrack. Everyone will be jealous that we've had dinner with Sysselmannen. I'll try to steal photos from everyone from some of these adventures to post on this site, but there are also photos on facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Hope everyone had a safe and happy Easter! Also, if anybody wants to send me photos of your lives you can email them to me at floundergirl@gmail.com. I'd especially like to see pictures of the recent wedding if anybody has some...
Sunday there was a homemade sledge competition (ta sjansen) on the other side of the fjord. Magne let me borrow his scooter to go because he was supposed to be studying all day (really he and Bjørn ended up going to fix the other scooter). Margrete and I took off and picked up Sylvi, then we stopped to get Anders and tow him behind on skis. It was pretty funny to watch some of the sledges. The steering wasn't very good on some of them, so the track wasn't always followed closely. There was a huge line of scooters up on the hill of people that had come to watch along with some belt wagons and a bus on skis. The best part for me was just to be driving a scooter again. I think I'd really like to get one of my own. Anyone want to sponsor me? :D
Yesterday afternoon Margrete and I took off after classes with the intention of going on a short ski trip. Well I had to borrow skis from student equipment and wasn't happy with them and Margrete was having trouble with her skins. We were both getting pretty grumpy and almost didn't go, but we did eventually anyways. It's a good thing too. I think if we had stayed behind we would have just made everyone else grumpy. As it was, we had a lot of fun. It was a bit windy in some spots and the first slope up on to Larsjbreen was pretty steep. It made it more difficult too that the snow there was pretty loose. We made it though, and I've decided that I could be good at ski trips. Not so much that I'm good at skiing, but that I'm so darn stubborn. When we got to the top there was a little igloo that someone had built which we took shelter behind to put on more clothes for the trip down. The trip down... was not as fast as it could have been. I've only been downhill skiing once in my life and that was in very deep snow with short skis, so the landings were soft and the turning was easy. This was a little more difficult and I was scared that I'd end up going off some steep edge. I ended up walking or using my skis as a sled for at least half the time. I did make an effort on an easy slope to try skiing though. I still felt pretty stupid and slow.
Nothing else very eventful happened for the day. I visited and laughed at Narve while he was cleaning his room. I also stole his marten skin and strapped it on my hand to go sneak around and scare people. I didn't actually scare anyone, but (if nobody else did) I had a good laugh.
Tonight I'm supposed to go help collect money for cancer, so we'll all be walking around outside. Hopefully I'll be with a group of Norwegians so that I don't actually have to talk at any of the doors we knock on. Hopefully it's not too cold, but I think that I'll be pretty happy in my new Klattermusen jacket and mysse!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
So after class and shopping and finding out that my ski bindings can´t be fixed yet I went home. After Sylvie took Margrete down to work, we went for a scooter ride up Longyearbreen (Longyear glacier) to go into the ice cave. We had a lot of fun together. It was really cool in there. It was a little bit wet though so Sylvi´s foot got cold on the way home. We were taking lots of photos and laughing the whole way. After we got out we rode up a little higher to look at the view on the other side. The sky was very colorful and we took lots of pictures there too. I´ll make sure to post some.
We decided not to go to Friday gathering because it was already nearly 4:30 when we got back and the Friday gathering was going to be cut short because there is some event tomorrow that needs to be prepared for. Also we had kind of told Anders and Margrete that we would make dinner. So Sylvi and I hung around, watched tv, and figured out what to make for dinner. We baked some chicken breasts, made some rice, Sylvi made a sauce, and I made coleslaw. Also before we started cooking a couple of our boys got back from a trip so we made enough to feed everyone. It was a realy fun dinner. Everyone liked my coleslaw. They´ve never had it before and I´m glad they liked it, because I didn´t want to have to eat all the rest by myself. Sylvi and Margrete told their story about meeting Sysselmannen, Yngve pretended to be a carrot. It was all around good times.
After dinner we started watching Howl´s Moving Castle, but got interrupted halfway though. What happened is that Bjørn looked out the window and said something to the effect of "oh shit." Immediately everyone jumped up to look and soon after we were all running down the hall so we could get clothes on to see the aurora. They were soooo good. The wind was cold on my face, but I was lying on the snow looking up at it. It was stretched all the way across the sky and coming down from the top of the dome. They were dancing all about and the most amazing part was when, straight up, the green lights started swirling. Then they got some red in them and it looked smoke and fire that you might find swirling from the nostrils of a dragon in chinese art. When the strongest part of the display was over we went back in to finish our movie.
It was one of those perfect evenings. I had happy friends all around me, we ate a good meal, I saw the most spectacular northern lights display of my life, and we all watched one of the movies that makes me happiest. Not to mention I had a great afternoon with Sylvi. Perfect days like this don´t happen all the time, but when they come along, I think the feeling lasts.
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
Well on monday and tuesday I got to help out with the opening of the Global Seed Vault. Contrary to popular belief, it's not so much a "doomsday" vault as a protection against important crops going extinct due to natural disasters and such. At least that's how I understood it. Anyways.. so monday evening we had a rehersal. It was quite a windy evening, so the walk down to the school for pick up wasn't so very enjoyable, but at least at the end of the evening we got a ride all the way back to Nybyen. Anders, Margrete and I (along with a few others I don't really know) were responsible for serving drinks. I think they called it "toddy", but basically it was hot juice. Monday evening they had community members through so that it was a full rehersal with serving drinks and the concert and everything. It was a bit funny being there for a second time. The first time that we went with our biology class we were all a bit skeptical about having an international event centered there. Basically it's large tunnels with pipes. We didn't think that would be a very intersting focal point for a big opening.
Well for the rehersal and the actual opening they had it all fancied up. There were cool lights shining off the walls and ice sculptures. Where we were serving drinks they had made a sort of ice bar. It ended up looking really cool (at least compared to what it looks like normally). At the opening on tuesday morning (had to skip a class) there were important people there like the prime minister of Norway. We served juice to the prime minister of Norway. That's right, be jealous. And we got paid 500 kroner for our work (effective working time - probably no more than an hour, the rest of the time we were standing around enjoying the show).
That evening we were watching all the news channels to see if we would be on tv. Sylvi and I saw a short clip of us serving on one of the Norwegian news programs, so we were pretty excited about that. We're pretty much celebrities now - serving toddy on tv. Yeah.
The rest of the week has mostly been classes. Yesterday and today some of my classmates have been up to see the sun during lunch break. I have to admit I'm a bit jealous, but I don't have a scooter and anybody that does tends to be a co-owner, so most seats are taken. I'll get my chance though. The sun will be here soon! And even if I don't get to see the sun, I get to see it shining off the mountains and it makes for a gorgeous view.
I think that's it for now, I have to get off to my afternoon class. Oh, and don't be shy to email me and tell me about your lives. I know I'm not doing the best job of keeping up my blog, but you guys get to hear more about me than I do about you!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
http://uaf.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20
Also, I've started to put pictures up in my scrapbook here, but these will all be photos that I've gotten from other people. I've gotten a few complaints about there not being enough photos of me, so this is the solution!
This morning when I went to the kitchen Narve, Eivind and Yngve were there talking and having breakfast. When there was a lull in the conversation I asked if anybody had felt a little shaken last night. At first they looked at me funny and asked if the laundry had been going, but it didn’t take long for Yngve to realize that he knew what I was talking about. He had just rolled back over and gone to sleep, forgetting all about it. As other people filtered into the kitchen most of them had felt it too. We found out that it was a 6.2 just off the east coast of Spitsbergen (the island I’m on). It was about 100 km away and it was all over the news. They say if it had been closer to Longyearbyen there could have been big problems. That’s believable as most of the buildings here are on stilts!
The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. I just puttered around. Then I went to volleyball with Sylvi and Svea. There were only 9 people there, but we still had a lot of fun. Margrete didn’t go today because her mom, mom’s boyfriend, and a friend came to visit. She went to pick them up around 2:00 and I didn’t see her again until a while after volleyball. They’ll be here until Sunday, so I guess for the most part I should lay low and let her have her time with them. I think she wants me to go to dinner with them sometime while they’re here. It might be a bit of a challenge as her friend doesn’t speak or understand much English and I don’t understand much Norwegian. I’m getting better though… I’m starting to pick up on some things in conversations so that I know the general idea of about a quarter of them.
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
So today and the rest of the week look like they will be mostly relaxing (or at least in the sense that I don’t have any classes). All of the scheduled sessions for my AB203 class have been canceled due to illness of the guest lecturers that we were supposed to have, so yesterday was my only class for the week. It was only one hour.
This last weekend was very fun though. On Friday evening a group of us went out to the student cabin in Bjørndalen. Bjørn, Galina and I took a taxi out past the airport and skied the rest of the way in. I don’t really know how long it took us, but my feet were hurting by the end of it as I had just gotten my new skis and boots that morning. We didn’t know exactly where the cabin was that we were supposed to stay at, but we stopped to wait for Margrete, Sylvi and Anders coming on the scooters. Well I was dancing around in the snow to the music in my head for quite some time before we decided to go ask at a nearby cabin where we should be going. We were also concerned about how safe it was to cross the river because it had warmed up to nearly 0 degrees.
We got to the cabin about 10 minutes before the scooters showed up. Håvard had also decided to come out, so it was a nice group to start with. After we had (meaning mostly Anders) prepared the tacos, we ate dinner. Shortly after the group that had decided to ski the whole way (Yngve, Eivind, Narve, Svea and Julianne) showed up. They were happy to be fed.
We had a bit of a hard time warming the cabin up throughout the weekend. I don’t know if it was the stoves themselves that didn’t work so hot or if it was just that we’re not too used to coal fires. I think I would much rather find wood to use. Coal stinks.
The first night there I got to share a bed with Sylvi. There were enough beds otherwise, but for some reason or other she wanted to share. It was a bit of a restless night and I got up when Anders got up to go to work at 7:30. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful for me. The skiers (except for Svea) took off to go for a ski and camp in a tent for the second night of our trip. Bjørn, Håvard and Sylvi took scooters out to go play around on the hills. Margrete, Svea and Galina went out for a ski up the valley. I stayed at the cabin to hold down the fort and putter around. My feet were still not too keen to get my ski boots back on.
I shoveled off the porch and window and chopped some wood for starting the stoves. I also tidied up a bit. Then “Tur Bjørn” (his name is really TorBjørn, but I spelled it wrong in the note I left when we went out for a walk) showed up on his scooter. He asked if there were beds enough that he might spend the night with us. There was sure enough room and it was nice to have a fresh face in the group.
That night for dinner we folded up frozen pizzas, wrapped them in aluminum foil and put them in the stoves. It actually ended up being a pretty fun way to make pizza, but we were a bit skeptical at first.
That evening Anders came back to the cabin with Magne. Sylvi and Håvard took off for town in the late evening. We spent an enjoyable evening talking, drinking and singing. We even got to hear some of Magne’s own compositions as Margrete and I were drifting off to sleep (we shared the “love box” that night). I was a little better dressed for the sleeping bag the second night. Mom’s big sleeping bag isn’t the greatest for sleeping above zero in a cabin, but I do the best I can with what I’ve got.
We started out the next morning slow. Galina and TorBjørn took off kind of early because Galina had to be back for work. When the rest of us took off Magne and Anders went for a ride down toward Grumont, Bjørn and Margrete took the scooter and sledge, and Svea and I were on skis.
I didn’t really want to ski back. I was still a bit afraid of going very far in my new boots, but we considered stopping at the airport to call a taxi (actually the rest of the group assumed that’s what we’d do). It was a really beautiful day and we had a lot of good conversation. We saw a few ptarmagin and a lot of reindeer. When we got back past the seed vault we were getting over to the road and when we were putting our skis back on my binding broke. We decided to walk the rest of the way home instead of calling for a ride. I believe we were on our feet for about five hours and pretty sure my feet are still a bit angry at me for it (being that they still hurt). I think perhaps I did a decent job of starting to break my ski boots in though.
When we got back all we wanted to do was eat and shower. Sylvi and Anders were preparing dinner for us and told us to go shower, but when we went to shower, there was no hot water! We decided to wait a while and Sylvi called the Hilde. It didn’t sound like we were getting the hot water back any time soon, so I took a cold shower anyways. I can’t say that’s something that I want to do very often.
The rest of the evening I spent a lot of time on the couch and went to bed pretty early. I was super tired from being out and on my feet for so long.
So yesterday morning (Monday) I had class at 9:15. I really didn’t want to get up when my alarm went off, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Plus, this was to be my only class for the week… only two hours! Well it ended up being only one hour. It’s great when the time you spend in class is less than the time it takes to walk to school and back.
Margrete and I spent the afternoon working on our exercise that’s due on Friday. We also have a job opportunity working for the opening of the seed vault next week. I emailed Malin today to see if there was any way that I could be back in time from the excursion on Monday evening in time to work. She said that I could just switch with someone in another group. Yay! 500 kroner!
We went to spinning class last night. My butt hurts. Bike seats aren’t very friendly. I didn’t feel that I kept up very well, but I kept moving at least. I got some good songs stuck in my head and coming home to Bjørn’s cooking is always a good deal. Margrete talked him into making chicken with pesto and parmesan for us.
A bunch of us sat around in the kitchen and watched “Mr. Woodcock” after dinner. It was pretty funny. Then after a few episodes of Family Guy I decided it was time for bed as I was still very tired from Sunday.
Today I didn’t get up until 10, although I had been trying for the last hour and a half. Bjørn had some coffee ready, but with that as a distraction I forgot to eat breakfast. I looked up the recipe that Eugene and I had used for borsch with the hopes of making it tonight. I walked down to school with Bjørn around 11:30 so I could use the internet for a while. Then I went to the store to buy everything that I would need for borsch. I think I’ve decided to make a vegetarian soup with vegetable bullion instead of with meat. Partly because I can’t find the meat I want and partly because Svea doesn’t eat meat.
When I got home I put together some bread to rise, then Margrete and I tried to work more on our exercise. I ended up making zucchini pancakes and salmon (not wild Alaskan salmon unfortunately, but I’ve finally broken down… I had to have some fish) for dinner.
Now I’m just hanging out in the kitchen with the boys. We just got finished watching some program about a Norwegian musher, now they’re watching something about money. I don’t understand anything as it’s all in Norwegian, so I have the luxury of being able to catch up on my typing!
- Location:Longyearbyen, Norway
So yesterday I got the key for my room. It was so easy! I was kind of afraid I’d have to fight Hilde a little bit, because she didn’t seem very receptive to the idea of my changing rooms before when the room wasn’t open. It was fine though, so I moved in after we got back from classes yesterday. It only took me two trips to get all of my stuff over here. I guess that’s the nice thing about only traveling over here with a little bit of stuff – it takes very little effort to pick up and move.
The first night over here was fun. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood and we were busy scheming for Sylvi’s birthday. I did have trouble going to sleep last night. I think it was partly because I was thinking about things that I had to do today and partly because it was a new bed.
So today went something like this:
We all got up and had a nice breakfast set out by a few of the boys. Yngve made apple cake and we ate rolls with various toppings – meat, eggs, cheese, butter, jam… and probably other things. Us biology kids had class at 9:15. I walked alone because everyone else was either taking scooters or skis. Most of the boys were going to go out skiing after classes and Margrete and Sylvi were planning on a scooter trip between class and the “whateverday” movie. Mostly that means Wednesday movie night.
Today’s lecture was in AB203 and it was actually very interesting. I thought that today I would have trouble staying awake in class, but it was easy (I don’t think it had anything to do with the coffee that I had with breakfast). Today our lecturer was talking about circumpolar fisheries in shellfish and crustaceans. It’s funny. I’ve always said that I didn’t want to get into fisheries with my biology, but of all the lectures I’ve had the last 5 weeks, this was the one that had me the most interested. I definitely stayed awake easily and I asked more questions today than I have the whole rest of the time I’ve been here. As much as I try to deny it, I guess fishing is in my blood. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up doing something with fisheries… anything is possible.
After class I went out shopping with Sylvi and Margrete until they went scootering. Then I went out shopping again to buy stuff for Sylvi’s party. I had bought the makings for spaghetti yesterday (I was planning on making it for everyone at some point). So today I bought her a bouquet of tulips, some nice orange candles for the table, and a box of red wine to share. After I was done shopping I went home to put it all on the table. The boys were going to cook the spaghetti for me, because I was planning on being at UNIS for the movie night. So yeah, that’s what happened. I went back down to UNIS and we watched Phantom of the Opera. It’s pretty much torture to be sitting with other people while you’re watching that movie (that is if you like to sing along with it like I do).
After the movie we came back to the barrack and Sylvi had no idea. I took her like 20 minutes just to make it to the kitchen, then she was all surprised and happy. Galina had made a different apple cake to compare for dessert. And… yeah… that’s about the point that we’re at now. The rest of the crew just done watching a program about the history of skiing, so I guess I’ll go back to the kitchen and join them singing songs. I hear the sounds of a guitar and voices. :)
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