A day in the life: weekday

6:30 Alarm

6:35 Stumble into kitchen, blearey-eyed, and make a hasty breakfast/lunch of 1/2 loaf of home-made bread, traditional norwegian brown cheese, salami, and bananas with peanut butter.

6:45 Get dressed for -25 C and begin walk to the gym. Fall on bum once thanks to ice.

7:15 Morning swim-- it's free for students on Tuesday/Thursdays!

8:30 Leave gym, properly awake this time, just as 10,000 adorable norwegian children arrive for swim lessons.

9:00 Arrive at UNIS in time for a quick tea with friends before class.

9:15 Geography Class: cartography and remote sensing from a guest lecturer grad student who could model for GQ.

11:00 Lunch, study, research-work, hang at UNIS. Plan to get more accomplished than I actually do.

2:00 Grocery shopping, walk back to Nybyen. Hitch-hike a ride for the last 1/2 km.

3:30 Ski up Larsbreen (steeper of the two local glaciers), enjoy the pink-color on the mountaintops. The sun will return soon! Enjoy powder on the moraine, curse the ice on the glacier. Safety equipment carried: rifle, avalanche beacon, avalanche probe, shovel, extra clothes, cell phone, first aid.

6:30 Cook lasagna dinner with barrack-mates, then watch trashy vampire TV show because it's fun to be scared during 24-hour darkness. Learn 4 new Norwegian words and 1 new Finnish word over the course of the evening (not including the trashy pickup line I was forced to repeat).

9:00 Student council meeting-- argue about the budget, talk of UNIS administration drama. Digress to skiing-talk.

10:00 Celebrate random swedish holiday that nobody knows the reason for by enjoying traditional cream-filled sticky buns.

10:30 Learn to drive a stick-shift from the taxi driver who came over to celebrate the random holiday. Successfully navigate the 2 roads in Longyearbyen and don't slide off the road or hit a reindeer.

12:00 Skype/email/IM friends from home till the sugar wears off.

1:00 Crash into bed, promising myself that I'll go to bed earlier tomorrow.

Some days I climb in the evenings instead of swimming in the morning. Some days I have 6 hours of lecture and lab or field trip. Some days I go ice-caving or hiking instead of skiing. Some days I have volunteer work in the evenings other than Student Council. Some days I eat 6 meals instead of 3. Some days we celebrate a random norwegian holiday instead. But you get the idea.

p.s. see new pictures in the 'changes' post farther down the page