First Three days of Classes

The rest of my week has been pleasant, filled with introductions and lectures. I had my first three days of lectures with my teacher Lena Hakarsson, who is extremely enthusiastic and energetic, and she reminds me a bit of my stratigraphy teacher, Sue Kidwell. Lena brought in dough she had made to illustrate the movement of glaciers and then picked up some pebbles and sand she brought with the sticky dough to illustrate englacial transport of sediment. That was a waste of dough, but a good scientific illustration. The subject material I think will be really interesting, exactly the kind of glacial earth history that I want to study. We also get to take 15 minute breaks every hour, which is really nice. I wish we had that at UChicago more often. My classmates are quiet, except for the Australian girl, Sisi, and the petite German girl, Svenja. They and me are really the only people who give more than one sentence answers to the professor's questions or ask questions of our own. I think many of my class-mates are very intelligent, it's just difficult to quickly process science lectures in a language other than their mother tongue. That must be frustrating.

Everyday after school, I always plan to work on my blog, my comic, Sliced Bread literary magazine work, etc, but the 45 min uphill walk with a backpack filled with groceries always tires me out to the point that I just want to eat dinner and then talk to people on Facebook. Slowly I've been working on things. I've paid my tuition, got a SIM card for Telenor, and applied for an overseas ballot.

On Friday evening, UNIS had the big Icebreaker party where people from all the programs as well as a number of Longyearbyen locals came to drink, eat hot dogs and dance. I helped to set up, signed up to help make hot dogs, and promised I would help clean up afterwards. The party started, and people trickled in. I spent like an hour making hot dogs, heating up buns, and serving people. By then, people had started drinking the copious alcohol that was available. I had a Isbjorn bear, which was a little light, but it was free and had a big polar bear on it.

The whole party was sports themed, so the planners had us all split up into teams to compete in little games. I wanted to start a team with my friends, another American and an Australian, and I thought it would be funny to name the team The Colonies. Unfortunately, they were both volunteering when the first game, a sack relay race started. Other partygoers were added to my team: an extremely energetic Indonesian geology masters student named  Armando, a Russian woman named Anastasia and a native Longyearbyener named Heinrich. I was very bad at the sack race, and racing with a  ping-pong ball in a spoon in my mouth was even worse. Somehow (Armando lying or something) we got into third. Armando's yelling was a bit much for me and the games stopped being fun. So I went and hid in the corner and talked to some people I knew as well as a Scotsman and a northern Irish girl. A very tall Norwegian sat down and started loudly talking to me, and I had no idea what he was saying. The music was getting louder, but it was still very bright outside. I had tried to yell my introduction info (name, country of origin, area of study) so much that my voice was going, and I wished I was somewhere else. At around 11, people started leaving, and I wanted to leave too, but I promised to stay to help clean up. 

The party at about 11pm.

 So I instead went upstair and found some comfy couches with a window view looking over the fjord. I watched the sun nearly set over the ocean. It was beautiful, but I was suddenly very homesick. I stayed up there alone for a while, and then some native Longyearbyen residents came and talked to me a little. Then one of them got out a toy helicopter and I watched them play with it for about ten minutes. They left, and I was alone again. I went downstairs, and people were dancing even more wildly now. I danced a little, but in the end, I didn't want to be stepped on by one of the huge Norwegians, so I spent some time just sitting, letting the party wash over me.

Finally it was 2am, time to clean up.  Some drunk Norwegian guys kept asking for more hotdogs, of which there were none. I gave them some hot dog buns instead, and they grumbled, then made a big mess putting the leftover condiments on it (aside: What is "Hamburger sauce"? It looks like chunky Russian salad dressing). One of the girls helping me clean told me that Scandinavian guys are nice to look at but have no in between state between sober and completely smashed. At around 3:30am, we were finally done cleaning and putting everything away. I walked back with my classmate from Tyrol, all the way back to Nybyen 45 minutes away, and then nearly immediately went to sleep. Astonishingly, the sun was still brightly shining, so there was no sense of time having passed.  

Longyearbyen at 3AM

Next week, I have my first field excursion, so stay tuned for that.