The epic skies of home

Look! Amy and i made it back from Ecuador, samples and all despite a botched permit, a random luggage search, and a short time being detained, but that story is for a later post :)

July 24th, yes sirs and ma'ams, tis July 24th here in Nebraska where the monumental vistas created by the clouds in the skies are nigh unparalleled by those of any other place i have been.

i have officially been home for over a month now. Is anyone surprised that i am just catching up on my blogging now? Probably no :) i am back from my six months of travel that ended very wonderfully with a South American twist. i left off my last post with stories of Svalbard, that seems so long ago now - and so different from my last experience! But i will do my best to pick up where i left off. Sometime soon i will have to write a lot down - before the vivid accuracy with which i can think of events and the potency of so many emotions escapes my mind, leaving only the hazy altered flashes and dulled blurs of color we call memories. That happens much faster than we would like to believe!

i am holed up in the Mo Java coffee house near NWU today, as lab work that needed done was minimal. This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite near-campus haunts, though the little used bookstore called Yellowed Pages is running a close second. i rarely drink coffee, and the goal is that the jolt of caffeine will set me fingers to typing at a good speed. Lets see...it seems as though i had written about our introduction to the frozen north, next step - excursion! The highlight of the trip and something i am assuming will be a once in a lifetime for yours truly (though i would have it otherwise).

This was, of course, a science oriented sort of mission. We were to take the snowmobiles out, sledges and all, and head toward a frozen fjord. The goal was to cut a hole in the ice and take round-the-clock plankton samples to examine dial vertical migration or DVM. This is where the little fellows move up and down in the water column - a balance of finding food and avoiding predation. In typical situations, plankton can move up during the night (so their predators can't see their little silhouettes from below, yay visual predation!), but for half of the Arctic year there is no night at all! We were going to take samples from a deep and shallow depth at each sampling and look at who was swimming where and at what time in the water column. Sound tedious? Maybe a little, but anything is made more interesting when you are wearing survival suits, playing with snow mobiles, and hanging out in a true Arctic landscape under the Midnattsol.

The first step was getting there. i didn't want to drive. In all honesty, i'm not super adventurous in terms of motor- powered things (though after this trip, i may be more so.) Whether i wanted to or not, they needed all licensed drivers. i ended up driving with my flatmate, Ellen, as my passenger. SOMEHOW or another, we ended up skipping the snowmobile practice session that had been promised to those of us who had never been on them. We packed up and headed directly out into the snow in the bright bright Arctic mid-morning. Hooray for learning via experience!



Us and the landscape. The land looked more or less like this all the way across. How lucky can you get? i think we all felt a bit like we had landed square in the middle of some National Geographic special. It was hard to stay focused on driving when all you wanted to do was stop and stare in awe and wonder.

The thing about driving - mountains and bumpy snow. It looks smooth, but it sure isn't. It felt like a continual arm exercise to keep the scooter going straight. The other big issue was the gradient across which we were cruising. They had told us that we would need to really lean to counter-balance the scooter. What they didn't emphasize was how much we needed to lean. When they say "really lean," what they actually mean is to get your whole self off the silly thing and hang to the side so the scooter doesn't flip and break your leg in the process. It took Ellen and i most of the 3ish hour trip out to get the hang of it. i was up on one ski so many times for the first bit; i fairly certain i would loose control and my flatmate as well! Interestingly, we learned later that they had sent us out on the type of scooter that is most easily tipped...

Yay! a flat space and a break for the arms. We crossed this valley fairly quickly.


Flatmates :)

We managed to make it out to the site with little incidence, despite the many inexperienced drivers. We stopped for one "restroom" break. Pardon me if this is crude, but have any of you females out there ever attempted to relieve yourself in a survival suit? It was emphasized over and over to drink plenty of water, and statistically speaking, we were told that women are more prone to dehydration when out on these sort of trips. Apparently we have a tendency to drink minimal water so we can take minimal breaks. In retrospect i have to admit that that is exactly what i did. Despite that effort, the art of squatting was nearly mastered on this trip. The hardest part was missing that danged furry hood...

Post arrival, the next step was setting up camp. We had packed a hefty canvas tent and a heater for it. The tent was large enough to comfortably hold about half of the group; in a pinch, it could hold almost everybody, but not comfortably.

It was a team effort to get everything up and going, and it took quite some time to get our base camp workable. One group took the ten or so minute drive to our sampling site. They would get the hole cut in the ice while the other crew finished establishing camp. i remained at camp and stood the first shift of polar bear watch duty with Morten. We passed the watch gazing across snowy horizons and discussing education across different cultures. i'm still amazed by the fact that they generally don't have homework in Europe...

Another incredibly important part of setting up camp was the construction of the ever vital latrine. Basically you dig a hole, carve out a seat, insert a bucket and keep a trash bag nearby. We had a very nice latrine, complete with steps and privacy walls. Latrine etiquette? Firstly, whenever you leave camp, a rifle and someone to stand guard always goes with you. Second, no liquids in the trash bag because all solid wastes must be carted out. Liquid waste is relieved somewhere out of the latrine. Next, line the bucket with a small trash bag, do your business in the bucket, tie waste and paper up in the little bag, and place it in the larger bag sitting very close by.

Camp from the latrine area on the "dirty" side of the mountain

One of my favorite pictures - a good example of how isolated we were out on the ice.

A team of dog sledders crossing Svalbard - the trail we followed is fairly well traveled by Svalbard's standards

And below...sampling! Fredrich, a Swedish student from UNIS (the University Centre in Svalbard) who accompanied our group, cut a hole in the ice with a chainsaw, and the sampling station was set up. Zoe stood close by on polar bear guard. If a bear was not known to be in the area, the rifle could be kept in the case. Theoretically you would be watching well enough to see one on the horizon and would be able to get the rifle out in time. If a bear was known to be around, the rifle was kept out and half loaded.





The sampling process involved lowering a unit to a certain depth and pulling it back up with a snowmobile (yay for pulley systems! cranking 70 meters of rope by hand would have been awful.)

It was a long day and night of sampling overall. We were split into two groups, and we rotated standing guard, sleeping, and sampling every three hours. We were extremely lucky with the weather. An icy wind only blew for several hours and one sampling session. Sleeping was difficult, due to limited room in the tent. And believe it or not, the tent became far too hot with its heater running at full blast! Some just of us simply took naps on scooters while waiting for our next job.

Ketil, our instructor, slept like a baby almost all night long on his scooter. i swear, that man was more at home out on the ice than he was in a classroom.

almost as low as the sun would get that night

It was a tiring sort of trip, and break-down of camp took almost as long as set up. We took our time leaving, enjoying the weather and the scenery and letting those who hadn't slept much take a nap. As we rolled (skied?) out for the trip back to Longyearbyen, i realized just how glad i was that Ellen and i had gotten the hang of keeping our scooter under control - as the gang successfully got underway, it began to snow, alot.

We proceeded slowly as the visibility around us progressively decreased. We finally stopped to take stock of the situation and managed a group picture in a brief break in the snow. Its funny the habits we have - we all found ourselves posing with big smiles every time the camera snapped another shot. Why we did that? Goodness only knows!

We traveled slowly and in a tight line, never letting the scooter in front or behind us leave our sight. If the person behind you dropped out of visible range, you were to stop and wait. Ellen and i had an excellent system worked out - we couldn't hear each others yells due to our helmets and the wind, and i hated having to turn around a lot, so she would simply whack my leg as hard as could if the team behind us dropped out of view.

We made it back safe and sound, after a stop in an emergency cabin and only one or two near disasters. The minimal visibility and the ground blizzard combined resulted in a flipped scooter or two. i was so impressed by my dear friend, Zoe. She hated driving and was terrified of flipping, but she kept going, even after an unexpected fissure in the trail caused her scooter to roll. It was slow going, and the two UNIS students who accompanied us newbies and our prof had their hands full guiding us in, but Longyearbyen appeared on the horizon at last. We unloaded equipment in a hurry and proceeded to crash - a well earned sleep.

And there you have it, the expedition, one of my most memorable experiences from the entire semester. i should probably head out, it's time to meet friends and see a movie. i might pause for a moment here though - i love people watching. A group of vegetarian/work-out fanatics left recently, making room for the two over 55 miniatures/purse enthusiasts and a very bored husband. i'm contentedly eavesdropping on their discussion that has turned to politics. i'm learning quite a lot about television years ago and their opinions on health care.

Happy day all! i will try to keep putting down stories and getting pictures up, despite the fact that it is rather after the matter. This blog entry leaves me with only one question...does anyone out there know how to get a job with National Geographic???

78.2˚ North

The midnight sun welcomed us to Svalbard :) it is never completely dark here in Bodø now, but this was the first time we got to see the midnight sun and probably the only time we will see it quite like this.

Goodness! It's been a long time since i have blogged. The last time i put up a post, i managed to get some things in before my Easter break trip. Unfortunately, it looks as though i will be mixing my time lines with this post. My marine biology class returned from Svalbard just a matter of two days ago, and i can't wait to tell about it. i'm afraid that my 800+ pictures from Italy and Croatia are still being sorted out. oops :) Perhaps i shouldn't be allowed a camera?? Either way, i have fewer pictures from this trip, and they will be supplemented by pictures blatantly and shamelessly stolen from my friends. Lets begin with a few facts, shall we? Just in case you would like to know exactly where i was, i put in a map below. It is from http://www.scantours.com/Spitsbergen_Wilderness_Camp.htm

The Gateway to the Arctic

Svalbard sits between 74˚ and 81˚ north - for some perspective, this is above the northernmost tip of Alaska, which is somewhere around 71˚N. My home town of Laurel, Nebraska sits at a latitude of around 42.5˚ N. Svalbard is 1338 km (831.4 miles) from the North Pole. i strongly doubt i will be this far north again in my life.

About 60% of Svalbard is glacier, and the land is has permafrost and tundra.

Svalbard: approx. 23,550 sq. mi (61,000 sq. km) - Population: somewhere under 3,000 people, possibly about 2,600. Our professor, Ketil; however, lived up there for eight years and said the population is going up pretty quickly - Density: (if we go with the estimate of 3,000 people) you get something like .13 people per sq. mile Nebraska: 77,421 sq. mi. - Population: 1,796,619 people - Density: 23/sq. mi.

There aren't very many settlements on Svalbard. The capital, and where we stayed is Longyearbyen (where the majority of people live - 2,060 as of 2007, thank you wikipedia) and is the world's northernmost town with a population of over 1,000 people. The other main settlements are Barentsburg - a mining community, Ny-Ålesund - a research community, and Sveagruva - a mining outpost. The settlements aren't connected by any roads. Snow mobiles and ships serve as transport. We stayed in NyByen just outside of Longyearbyen in a guesthouse that once held barracks for coal miners. The series of buildings are now guesthouses and student housing for UNIS - University Centre in Svalbard. It was approximately a half-hour walk to get to UNIS where we spent a lot of our time.


Here is building #2 where we stayed. To the right you can see the an area where two girls were attacked by a polar bear in 1997. One was killed and one jumped to save her life. It is now illegal to leave town limits without a rifle. Below is a view of the area from the side of one of the mountains nearby.







Longyearbyen! The capital city with as many people as my hometown of Laurel. Where we would have cars in row, they have snowmobiles. Oddly, we did see a limo, and of course, there was a Radisson Hotel. Go figure. Below is the walk to UNIS. UNIS is pretty interesting really. It is a field-work based school and is not a school that awards bachelor degrees. Its courses are supplemental to many different programs, and there are lots of masters and Ph.D. students taking courses and doing research there. It teaches courses in Arctic Biology, Arctic Geology, Arctic Geophysics, and Arctic Technology, and there is no other place of higher education so far north.


They have a pretty sweet location in terms of research, and as you can see by the picture above, they are well equipped to do the work. It's really great for studies because where you need to be is right outside your door. They have perfect view of the auroras and have the unique chance of studying processes in the polar night. We all thought this was pretty sweet. Hooray for being a bit of a science nerd :) We got a taste of what it would be like to do field studies here, and we borrowed all of our equipment from UNIS. We spent a night out, a several hour trip by snow mobile from Longyearbyen, and took plankton samples every three hours all night long.

more midnight sun

Just how prepared do you have to be to head out of town? We arrived in Svalbard around 1AM on Thursday night/Friday morning, and we began preparations for an excursion with a 10 AM safety overview the next day. A rather abrupt gentleman (the head of safety at UNIS) told us calmly and in patchy English about all the ways we could die, pictures included via powerpoint. If caught by an avalanche, try to stay on top; if you have a hypothermic victim, keep them flat; if you fall through the ice, swim fast or in about two minutes your survival suit will be too heavy for you to support; if you slip into a crack in glacier, don't panic and wait for your team to find a way to get you out - if you went straight down it will be a much easier rescue. Travel in groups, and everybody has a role when an accident happens. - "And of course, if you don't like the shit you don't gonna be the one doing the first aid."

Concerning snowmobiles:

"If you are out driving one hour and the shit stops, you have one day to walk back, so think about that."

Concerning polar bears:

"Then you have the boss."
"Other times they give us shit in that and they looking for some dinner and that means you."

Naturally we were all very comforted by this lecture.


Then came rifle training. As it is illegal to go out of town unarmed, we all had to learn how to handle the rifles. i've used smaller rifles and shotguns, but many in our group had never shot a firearm of any sort. We learned to half load, to shoot from three different positions, how to handle the flare gun, and where to aim on a polar bear. Guns are a last resort and ONLY for self defense. Usually the bears can be scared away with snow mobiles, but sometimes you get a bold teenage bear, and if they make up their mind, they can move fast. There has been an average of about five bears shot per year for the past several years. The last one they killed was about a meter and a half away from people when it finally dropped.

My favorite section of the lecture concerning guns was gun etiquette in town. If in a building, you leave the gun empty and the bolt open so people can see for themselves that the gun is empty. Most stores have gun lockers in the front, so tromp in and hand your rifle to the person working. Technically, guns shouldn't go in the bank, but if you have no one to hold the gun for you do as follows: walk in, remove the bolt and put it in your pocket; next, make eye contact with the teller and make sure they see you place your empty gun by the door; then go about business as usual!

Only in Svalbard my friends, only in Svalbard.

We were left the shooting range and headed back to UNIS for lunch the then to learn how to suit up and pack sledges. We were to have a lesson on snow mobile driving as well, as half of us had never touched one before. i personally wasn't too keen on driving, but we needed everyone with driver's licenses to drive. yee! Things with motors and i often oppose each other.



The survival suits were bulky and heavy. Fully assembled they left practically no skin exposed, just holes in the balaklava to breathe through your nose and mouth. John isn't suited up quite correctly above, but i think you get the idea.

Some lovely Canadians :)

yes, the one it the middle is me. i still maintain that i should never wear sunglasses. Sam is on the right. You can see that she is wearing a tracker - its the gray strap slung across her chest. This was a sort of remote sensing device that perpetually sent out a signal. We all wore them under our suits. In the case of an individual getting caught under an avalanche, all other members of the group would shut theirs off, and the search would begin. There is a sensor that beeps when near the device you are wearing.

the gang :) being warm has nothing to do with dignity.

Loading up the sledges. i believe we took six sledges. It's almost insane how many things you need to stay out in the snow. Each sledge had an emergency box, and we took plenty of extras of things. If you get out there and you don't have it, you're in trouble. Our day at UNIS ended in a confused jumble of packing sledges and trying to figure out exactly what was happening (our prof and those in charge were in the process of figuring it out as well - funny how research works the same way all over the world, isn't it?)

It was a long day in preparation for our excursion. We ended the night with a gathering in the guesthouse in honor of April's birthday. It was a funny evening as we were all getting to know each other better. There were nine Norwegians, two Russians, two Canadians, and four Americans i the room. Isn't international study wonderful? :) The Norwegians got a kick out of our stories of living in Høglimyra and our pronunciation of every Norwegian word we attempted. We Americans took the opportunity to extol the virtues of peanut butter, and all of us enjoyed some excellent cakes and good hot tea.


The next day was the beginning of our excursion, and i think i will write about that in the next post!

happy day all! :)

being here

To begin, i believe it is worth mentioning that it is, yet again, 4AM when i am beginning this post. More importantly, it is 4AM and it is light enough that i will need to draw my curtains to achieve a comfortable level of darkness for sleeping. My flatmate, Jen, and i just took a very brief walk in the premature morning, and it was wonderful. Now i am left to debate - to sleep or not to sleep. There are many things you can get done in the early early hours of the morning when you have accidentally remained awake all night. Important things, like catching up on blogging for example. In all reality, we all have so little time when it boils down to it, and i'm a bit frustrated at my physiology for requiring sleep to continue operating properly and with good timing. Have you ever noticed how beautiful it is to watch the day fade into the evening and the evening into the night? Have you sat through the night to watch the pinpointed stars fade in the wake of a glowing horizon? There is so much good in the night. Why would there be meteor showers, eclipses, and other night-time phenomena if we were not meant to be awake and watching the open sky? Even in the hemmed-in city the night produces the photographic opportunities of which Brassai took and people like him took and still take advantage. But you know what is good for your brain? Sleep, and not staring at computer screens at 4AM. oops.

i am headed out for my Easter break trip tomorrow. This time i won't be alone on my travels, which is exciting news in itself. My flatmate, Ellen, and i will take the train (my fourth time on the night train through Trondheim) to Oslo, spend a day and a night with one of her friends, and then we will make our way to Venice, Italy. In Italy, we will be joined by Chris who is built just enough like a bouncer to make my sister feel better about our travels. From then on we head to a small town in Italy and move down Slovenia into Croatia with a few more friends. i'm pretty excited. This will be the first time in my life i have taken a trip quite like this. A highlight should be Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. We are told it is an area of incredible beauty, and the pictures you can find with a simple Google search attest to this. i would also like to see the Edelweiss flower, but i need to make sure we will be in the right place at the right time. i wanted to make sure i put in more Norway pictures before i went on my trip...how odd would it be too see the snowy pictures i take here in conjunction with the (hopefully) sunny ones i will bring back from further south in Europe!

i realized that i have written little about the basics of actually being here, Bodø, Norway, of what the life of an international student is like. It seems likely to me that i haven't written about this because the life of an international student is not necessarily always an adventure, until you think about it :) Perhaps i should write more so i make sure i remember? As with all life, you pick up a role and you adapt. Largely, being an international student is a life very similar to being a student at home, but in a different place - and that adds to the adventure, making it just a bit more intense than the adventures you find when you live as you have for the earlier part of your life.

Enough time has passed that i am very settled in. Life has taken on it's basic routine, one that is comfortably altered from my usual rhythm at home. How odd to think that i will have to change routines back to what they were before when i get back to the States and good ol' NWU. i know how to get around (for the most part), i have gotten to know my basic circle of friends, and am learning to branch out beyond what has become my comfort zone. Comfort zones are interesting; you have to take big steps to get out of them, but then they expand to meet you and you can step outwards again. i really do feel as though i could write for a very long time about this, but my mother did point out that pictures were worth 1,000 words. Perhaps this was her kind way of telling me i type too much in my posts? ;)

**hint to my family - if you hold the shift key and click on an individual picture, blogger will pull up that picture individually and much larger**

For starters, here is a picture of the best set of northern lights we have seen. i believe either Alina or Zoe got this shot. These were the ones i posted about earlier. i never expected to actually see them dance the way they did. i will miss this sort of thing when i return to the slightly more southern latitudes.


One of the first things they did for us internationals was to offer a bus tour. i am putting in some pictures from that. On the tour, we stopped at Saltstraumen - the world's strongest tidal current, and apparently a great area to fish (hooray for upwelling!)


This picture of John is not at Saltstraumen, but i thought is was just such a good one of someone fishing that i could justify putting it in here. You don't need a permit to fish in salt water.

This tide is what a maelstrom actually is, you know, the whirlpools that we see in movies sucking ships under. No, those do not actually happen, but sometimes this does look similar to what the media has hyped up. Images online are much nicer than mine. We touristy types did our best to get a good shot of the quickly flowing current on a day when it nearly froze your hands to take them out of their gloves for proper camera operation.



Here i will simply quote Wikipedia to get a bit of information about the tide to you...apparently "Up to 400 million m³ (tonnes) of seawater forces its way through a 3 km long and 150 m wide strait every six hours, with water speeds reaching 20 knots (about 37 km/h). Vortices up to 10 m in diameter and 5 m in depth are formed when the current is at its strongest; this feature is commonly known as a whirlpool or maelstrom." i have been taught a thousand times over never to use Wiki as a reliable source, but i can't help but feel it works well to give out some basic knowledge. There was some really great scenery around Saltstraumen too.




Grass on the roof! i think that is so cool!



Some of us North Americans - Jen, Zoe, Sam, Ellen, and John.




One of my very favorite shots of Jen. :)






The elusive John, one of the few i know who successfully refuses to get facebook.

Something else that has become part of life in general is the presence of a great hill just a five to ten minute walk from our residence. i suppose you could be a serious individual and practice you ski jumps on it. We; however, have decided it is optimal for sledding excursions. Typically now we have random sledding runs near midnight or one AM, although the first big group outing was during the daylight hours. It's great, the hill is lit all night long, which makes it a perfect place to be in the wee hours of the morning.


To begin, here are two of my fantastic flatmates. To the left is Jen and to the right is Ellen. Together we are the three American girls here. i knew we would work out as roomies when we were all disappointed to be living with Americans and agreed to make an extra effort to get to know others. It's been a great arrangement thus far. :) We also share a flat with a wonderful Norwegian named Trine. i don't personally think we would have a better room.

The view from "our" hill.



This set of pictures is one of my favorite photo pairs. If you play them back and forth really quickly you get that cool effect where they look like they move. It's a bit like those little books we used to have that you flipped through really fast and you got to see a moving scene. Did anyone else have those? i fondly remember how much my sister and i liked them. i think my favorite was one of those cereal box prizes.

roomies!

i actually really enjoy this picture of Zoe and i...especially because the result of this trip down the hill can be seen in the picture below. It was a bit slippery getting to the top of the hill again!



This day was one of the most fun in terms of sledding trips. We had a big group and it required creativity to find things to use for sledding. We opted on shovels, an old broken red sled, and a cake pan. There may or may not be a very big dent in that pan now, but it has successfully cooked several cakes since so i am not too concerned. The guys even managed a ride down the hill on this big green thing that is typically used by snowboarders.

i have to put this one in as a big thank you to Ahad for the many pictures he took that day and then made sure we all had access to. Some of these in this blog are the result of his excellent skills.


Here is the gang headed back to Høglimyra, soaked, exhausted from running up hills and maybe a bit bruised from riding down them quickly.

i have to say that well over half of the experience here is made or broken by the people. i come back to it again and again when i chat with friends here - i am incredibly blessed to have the people here who i have gotten to know.

Valentine's Day was a blast - it really isn't celebrated here in Norway, only recently has it begun to catch on. We Americans decided that just simply wouldn't do and had a pasta dinner for the majority or our building. We made Valentines and cookies (peanut butter/chocolate chip, because Europeans have no grasp whatsoever on the wonders of our dear and tasty friend, pb). People were really excited to get Valentines, and one of the comments included that they thought it was very cool to celebrate Valentine's Day as something with friends and not just lovers.

We made mailboxes for doors - i don't think we actually used the mailboxes in the end, but they were really fun to make...


We opted on cheesiness and had people make little flags out of the word love in their native languages. They are still strung up in the hallway outside our flat.


Thibault teaching John some French inbetween pasta and dessert. How to make a French "r" sound? It's in the back ish area of your throat - i was instructed to growl like a tiger to figure it out.


Tomomi taught us some origami. Coolest napkins ever!





i think i'll just post a little more landscape from one of our hikes. i really have fallen for the land here. What was life like without mountains and seas? Will i go into withdrawl when i return to the landlocked state of agriculture and it's related flatness and crop chemicals? Possibly, although the plains and open sky of the Midwest will forever possess my utmost affection.




The area where i live as seen from higher up.


Tons of these hiking destinations have little shelter-houses, excellent from simply sitting and seeing.




So you see the boat? That was my favorite part.



Hiking back in the dark and in need of a tripod. i found myself really liking the blurriness, however.

i believe that will sum up my entry for this time around. i am greatly looking forward to bringing back picture from my next two weeks. i hope to have a lot of things to write about after this trip.

To all reading, god påske! That is, good Easter :) much love to my family who will be gathering in various groups for Easter Egg hunts with the wee ones and the cooking of good food.

love from the snowy arctic. i hope Spring is finding you all happy and well :)