Drinking Jenga, Arctic BBQ, High School Musical and the last Auroras?

Hello there! i've been a proper little tourist this week and walked down to the Polar bear sign down by the docks, with my tripod on my back to take the customary picture of me standing by the sign. Apparently Polar Bears "concern all (Gjelder hele)" of Svalbard. other than that its been work as usual, learning about reconnection of the Interplanetary magnetic field with the geomagnetic field and the large scale structure of the Earth's magnetosphere, as well as discussing our up coming trip to Eiscat Svalbard radar with our lecturer.

On thursday night a contingent of barrack 9 ventured to barrack 4 (my favourite watering hole!) to put James' drinking Jenga through its paces. this was followed by another heavy night at friday gathering. which brings us to the weekend.

Sunday started with Dayles idea to go skiing as it was such a lovely day, but there were very few skis and even fewer boots left, so whats the next best thing to do on a sunny day in the Arctic?...ARCTIC BBQ!!!

thus the men, in keeping with traditional gender roles headed out to hunt for some meat (which was conveniently killed, processed, frozen and sold by Svalbardbutikken supermarket), on returning to barrack 4 we left the women to prepare the food (chopping onions, defrosting the bread and microwaving the frozen meat) whilst men make fire, ugg!

Unfortunately, we had to use disposible BBQs in lieu of real fire! (how much of a market is there for disposible BBQs in the Arctic?!)

Colin with nicely cooked burgers and burnt sausages, it wouldn't be a BBQ without burnt sausages!

Me, now fully fledged beef eater (through necessity!) munching on a beef burger

Colin, Lisa, Judith and Dayle around the BBQs

the same group moments later, included solely because its such a flattering picture of Lisa and Dayle scoffing their faces!

Judith and Brendan

Colin posing with a burger.

Apparently me and Colin's singing around the 'campfire' reminded Judith and Lisa of High school Musical (not sure whether thats a complement or not) and that we simply must go inside and watch High School Musical 2 and 3, with ice cream. By this point it was so cold and the offer of ice cream so tempting (don't point out the obvious stupidity of that sentence, I haven't had ice cream for nearly 3 months!) that we were powerless to refuse.

Paul and Hannah would have been proud of me, watching 2 and 3 back to back. in the necessary break between the two, it was decided that what we really needed to cap off a day of unhealthy eating was a cake, so I quickly through together a chocolate sponge mix, which the girls filled with chopped up toblerone, delicious!

sounds like a good day so far? hmm, maybe some Aurora to finish it off, eh? so with the Sun barely down (still quite light on the western horizon) out we went for what could be the last Aurora I'll see because polar day is pretty much here.

Nybyen and Longyearbyen at 11 o'clock

Barrack 11 in the twilight

Green Aurora over Sacrofagen

Longer exposure, Green (and maybe some red) Aurora over Sacrofagen.

bye for now

Ash