And now, after some intensive lectures and discussions we are now off to the field. Off to find new things, different things and just generally awesome things.
As with all awesome things in life there is a lot of boredom followed by short periods of excitement. Although I am hopeful that in this case there will be medium periods of boredom followed by long periods of excitement. A healthy aim for any life I believe.
So, to battle the boredom there are many weapons, although mine weapons of choice today are my ever trusty kindle and earl grey tea. The stuff good science is made of. Of course I could be doing something like reading course material, as any good student would be, but it will become apparent that I’m not really the ideal student. Additionally I’m currently much too excited by the whole prospect of field work to do anything like sit and read science papers about other peoples adventures.
As with all awesome things in life there is a lot of boredom followed by short periods of excitement. Although I am hopeful that in this case there will be medium periods of boredom followed by long periods of excitement. A healthy aim for any life I believe.
So, to battle the boredom there are many weapons, although mine weapons of choice today are my ever trusty kindle and earl grey tea. The stuff good science is made of. Of course I could be doing something like reading course material, as any good student would be, but it will become apparent that I’m not really the ideal student. Additionally I’m currently much too excited by the whole prospect of field work to do anything like sit and read science papers about other peoples adventures.
After much waiting at UNIS we finally made our way to the airport. Here we were greeted by a very friendly lady in an air hanger, a box full of ear plugs (never a really reassuring sign) and an incredibly colourful door. I’m sure this door has meaning, I’m not too sure what meaning however.
We then sat and drank coffee and swapped war stories.
This was followed by a short period of excitement when we discovered that the luggage was 50kg overweight. So there was a time of rummaging and scrimmaging and trying to remove weight, however in the end we just left behind some equipment. Sadly it’s turned out that that equipment was actually fairly important, but this is part of the life of research. It’s give and take.
Then we flew, 16 of us in a teensy weensy plane for 30 minutes. There was infinitely more waiting around involved than actual flying.
We were welcomed in Ny Ålesund.
Fed, which is incredibly important.
And learnt all about how to survive in Ny Ålesund. The trick is not to get eaten by a polar bear…