Well, its certainly getting lighter here, although I still haven't seen the Sun! this weekend was the start of a fortnight long celebration called something like Sunfest, but its been overcast and snowing, so the Sun maybe above the mountains, but I still haven't seen it! As you can see though, we've had some nice blue sky over the last few days.

We somehow managed to miss the majority of the festivities this weekend (Brendan and Dayle mucking about with their scooter again) so we decided to go for a walk past some of the abandoned mine paraphenalia instead. this eventually took us down to the sea ice (a lot of which had gone since friday, meaning there were no seals to be seen this time!) and finally for a nice lunch in the Lompen centre.

I guess I should apologise for the lateness of this blog, I found it difficult to find something to talk about, so I'll tell you about my transformation to domestic god! this week I've made bread, cheesecake and, with Colin, chocolate covered marzipan balls. the problem with food up here is that if you want it to taste good you either have to pay a ridiculous amount for it or make it yourself. I would like to point out to Hannah, if shes reading, that I can not only make a very respectable victoria sponge, but also a great lemon cheesecake (no photo, you'll have to take my word for it) and passable bread (which is about the best you can hope for up here!), at least it doesn't cost about £3 per loaf!

I've also decided that if they are not going to give us much work to do, and if I haven't got a snowmobile to be off visiting places, then i should use my time in an attempt to get fitter. to this end, I yesterday attended 5 aside football in the Svalbardhallen sports centre. due to my lack of trainers, I am suffering for it today! I have cuts or blisters or something under both big toes, a bruise on the inside of my foot, and worst of all a slight swelling where my leg impacted a goal post! We'll see how committed I am to getting fit at 6 oclock tomorrow morning when i have to get out of bed for morning swim!

I'll keep you posted!

Ash