I'm free! since being up here in longyearbyen I've had the spectre of my Semester 1 Aberystwyth Exams looming over my head. This is perhaps part of the reason why my blog hasn't been more exciting a read of late, I haven't been trekking along Glaciers and Mountains and visiting Ice and Moraine caves, learning to ski or digging and sleeping in Ice caves. i've been revising (although, as you may remember it hasn't all been work as witnessed by my swimming last week). but now I'm free! I've had a very busy week though, my exams in Electromagnetic theory and Quantum physics were on tuesday and wednesday, so all my lectures from The Upper polar atmosphere and radar diagnostics of space plasma had to be moved to monday, thursday and friday. consequently we've had 6 hours of lectures some days, which, trust me, with material like this can be quite heavy going! I should probably, before moving on to more interesting things than work, say a little more about the exams. well, to be frank, none of us liked them, but i think on the whole we are reasonably confident we have passed because our coursework grades have been pretty good, but only time will tell!

Ok, moving on, I've been told to put more pictures on my blog (not quite sure what that says about the quality of the text!) so this week i'm trying to put up quite a few, including some from this morning. As you can see its getting much lighter here in the middle of the day (although the sun still hasn't made an appearence which is starting to affect Colin!), meaning on the way to UNIS you can see the hills on the opposite side of Adventfjorden (who wouldn't want to go to a university in a setting like that?), and can look up towards the Glaciers from Nybyen and see views like the one to the right (from this morning). It also means I can show you a picture in which you can actually see the barrack that is to be my home from the next few months (woo! Brakke 9!) and not just an outline of a building in the dark as per earlier posts. quite a winter wonderland, I think you'll agree! which leads me nicely on to the climate. Its still too hot! I walked home from friday gathering last night with no hat or scarf or gloves and with my sleeves rolled up, but I guess I did have my beer jacket on! There was a rumour circulating last night that the worlds most northernly kebab van was going to be open, it wasn't when I passed at about 11.45, but apparently it did open later, but which point I was safely tucked up in bed!

Anyway, back to climate, the forecast is for the weather to get much colder on monday, back down to around minus 25 degrees with stronger winds, but encouragingly its going to be quite settled and clear, so we may have a good chance to see some Aurora when the particles from an earth directed coronal hole reach the geomagnetic field some time next week! we're starting to believe that the Aurora are just a myth perpetuated by scientists who make a living lecturing about them! whilst on the subject of science, we have a new lecturer on the radar diagnostics of space plasma course who is hopefully taking us up to the Adventdalen Auroral station next week to see the Eiscat Svalbard Radar (something with which we get practical experience later on in the semester), which is used to measure various plasma parameters in the Earth's ionised upper atmosphere.

okay, on a less scientific note, it was barrack mate Marie's birthday on thursday, so we had a hat party, I, having got home from lectures quite late decided to make a cake (I know Hannah, two in a week!) which turned out to be one of three at the party, which was probably a good thing given the number of people who turned up. we were encouraged to wear a stupid hat, or if we lacked a stupid hat, to make one. I, ever inventive and environment conscious, recycled six pages of quantum mechanics revision notes and fashioned then into a large (although not large enough for my head) Bishop's Mitre! various other people made indian headbands or hats out of beer can boxes, whilst others wore snow scooter helmets, caving helmets and russian hats! Hope you like the pictures of Pirkka, Nils, Marta, brendan and Michi (left) and Jennifer, Laura and Margrete (right) enjoying stupid hats and Amsterdam Beer in the kitchen!

So, as you can see its been a quiet week! other than all this, I've also managed to obtain a D number, which kind of makes me a citizen of Svalbard, which is quite cool, and entitles me to the same hunting and national park access as locals (I think), meaning I'm no longer a tourist! However, given I'm now free and Svalbard is ready to be explored, I'm starting to get mixed feelings about not having a driving license. I'm disappointed that I don't have one because i can't (legally) drive a snow mobile, but relieved because if I could i'd have probably bought one by now and hence would be living off corn flakes for the next few months!

Ash