Vanessa here!
Wow,
what a week. We had our workshop with Tavis and long days, which you
will here about from some of the others. And it is bright outside!!!
Like properly!!! For the majority of the day!!! :D
Our
weeks at uni are pretty packed with lectures and one thing that is
quite good, presentations. We have to repeatedly give presentations, a
way of teaching each other various material rather than having the
lecturers doing it.
Thus,
last Thursday we had to hold a
presentation about various things related to the benthos. Connor, Sil
and I were in a group and put together about what we named 'the new
king' of the Barents Sea, the snow crab. Everyone enjoyed it due to a
video of 'the deadliest catch' that involved swearing. The day was
rounded off with a couple of beers and social activities among the
biology class.
Last Friday was
rather eventless for me, but it did involve home-made cake and pizza from
Barrack 11 (both super yummy).
Saturday was
the day of the sport competitions against the Russian miners from Barentsburg.
The disciplines in which they competed in were table tennis (Sam & Felix),
volleyball (Sam & Felix), football (Sam), basketball (Sam), badminton,
indoor hockey, chess, and swimming (unless you also count cheering (Connor
& I)).
It was a
very entertaining and fun day at Svalbardhallen. The day kicked off with several
games of table tennis against the Russian miners, one of them being rather old.
Sam and Felix competed against them and it was quite interesting to watch. The
Russians were really passionate about their table tennis and overall beat the
others. Sam & Felix did win some games though.
Volleyball
immediately followed table tennis and oh boy those games were intense!!!
Connor
and I were cheering and swearing left, right and centre. Some of the student players had insanely strong
serves and the overall team work was fantastic. The Russians’ team work
crumbled at some points, as they were getting more and more annoyed/angry at
each other (but only when they were losing). It was
extremely close, but the Longyearbyen team lost by two points in the last
round. Everyone was gutted, but determined to kick some Russian butt in March.
BUT,
overall Longyearbyen won!!!
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| Sam and his beautiful table tennis expressions |
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| Felix ready to serve |
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| The old Russian man |
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| Blocking |
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| Sam serving |
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| Football! |
On Sunday,
we had a big pancake breakfast, as we missed out on pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. After
the filling and yummy breakfast, we (minus Felix & Lucy) went up 'Trollsteinen'. The sun has been teasing us for a while now. It is illuminating the sky, but it has not moved into our sight yet. That is why we just had to walk up a mountain to see it, and boy did we walk...
The walk up the slope was really steep and at one point Connor and I were convinced that it was never going to end (seriously, the slope just kept going). We started playing a game to distract ourselves until we reached the ridge and then finally we saw what we had come for, the SUN.
I was never so happy in my life to see it. It was just so astonishingly beautiful. Everything around it was bathed in hues of red, orange and yellow. Parts of the sky were also going over into green, blue and purple hues. The mountains looked more mesmerizing than ever and yes as you can tell I love the sight. The darkness was no problem, but the sun is just...
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| View of the sun from the top of Trollsteinen |
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| Me and the sun |
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