“First day of school! First day of school!”

Monday 17th of January, day one of lectures at UNIS. Lectures started at 0915 so once again an early start and, it was going to prove to be a very long day. The temperature outside was a barmy -9 and you could happily walk outside with just a fleece if it were not for the small amount of snow falling from the sky. We got to UNIS with enough time to get a cup of coffee before the start of class.
The classrooms at UNIS are relatively large with two walls of windows. One that leads to the wide wooden corridors of UNIS and one that displays the outside, or it would if it were not so dark out there and all the light in the room was not reflected back into the room. Each room has a large blackboard that would make Martin Wilding rage if he saw them. There are only 6 people in our class so it really is an Aber takeover. It made it seem worse when we each had to introduce ourselves and what we had already covered on our courses we might as well have answered as one. Prof. Lorentzen was there for the first hour to introduce AGF-301 (The upper polar atmosphere) to us and go over the lecturers, reading list and course structure. The rest of the day we were taught by Prof. Jøran Moen from the University of Oslo and we jumped straight into looking at the ionosphere and particle motion.

We spent 2 hours before and after lunch going over single particle motion in the ionosphere and magnetosphere and finally all of the things that we did with Xing in 2nd and 3rd year made sense. The beauty of the course here is that it all applies to physical parameters that were are able to and going to observe. Although we had spent a large portion of the day in lectures it certainly did not feel like it. What would have felt a lot longer back in Aber felt quick and simple, though I am not sure if it is because we covered less in the amount of time than we would in Aber. There was a student council selection meeting at 1700 so we popped out to the Co-op to get some food and more supplies for the week also taking a gander around the shopping center while we were out.

At the student council meeting the student leader, Mari, informed us about the different groups that we could take part in at UNIS. I myself signed up as the leader of the Movie nights group, having already decided that Ice Age was an appropriate first movie showing. We were then told that we would have to organise and run an icebreaker party without the aid of old students each person having to sign up for a role in the running and organization. I will be making the posters, once they tell me the time and theme that is. By this point it was nearly 1900 and Stu was getting very agitated and hungry, when we were finally released he storm trooppered our way back to Nybyen to get some food. We managed to be back at home and have our dinner finished before any of our flat mates made it home something Stu is proud of, obviously.
The evening ended with revision in the living room with the projector playing The A-Team as Magnus and Oddy felt like watching a fun movie and I would be watching one anyway. After a long night of gruelling revision looking over some more things that Xing has tried to teach us it was defiantly time for bed.