I had a lie in this morning as we had the logistics class which is just a short walk around the uni and a look at how to do the paperwork. I woke up at 0830 but did not get up until 0910, so had a nice lie in. I find that the later you are allowed to sleep in the less time you give yourself to get ready, as this morning I had to leave at 0920 to get to UNIS for 1000. On the way down to UNIS I passed by the primary school where, what looked like reception children, were out in the playground. They looked only slightly bigger than Alf from a distance and they were each thoroughly wrapped up in their ski suits and fluffy hoods happily running around in the -17, which is positively warm up here, well it felt really warm today. Relatively speaking, of course. To avoid looking like I was staring, which I was I suppose; I carried on walking down through town to UNIS arriving perfectly on time. The class was totally pointless and was over within half an hour meaning that we could have had an extra two hours in bed. The whole group headed to the canteen to have a relaxing sit down and wait for everyone else to finish for lunch. Frances’ group was already there as they had just finished the sea-ice course so we sat with them and had a chat while watching the big screen TV from the sofas.
As I had rushed out the house this morning I had forgotten, or really just not bothered, to make lunch. The canteen is a very nice open space, however, has only a small selection of food each day. I ended up having broccoli soup with some bread which was very filling and, not too bad actually. The boys turned up just 10 minutes before the end of lunch so they quickly ate and we all headed to our afternoon classes.
There was only one more class that I had to do and it was the perfect class to end the week with. Sea-Ice. The class started off with an hour lecture about what to do when you are planning a trip out over sea-ice and how to get out of any situation you may find yourself in. I am sorry to say that I think I fell asleep about 5/6 times during this hour and in the 5 minute break we had before talking about going outside I did actually fall asleep with my head on the desk. At the end of the break Robert (horrid German, only kidding) shook me awake, not my favourite way of being woken up. We then had a chat about going outside onto the Sea-Ice to practice getting out of the water for real. Well when I say sea ice what I mean is Longyearbyen’s drinking water reservoir just out the back of UNIS. We all headed down to the storage room to put on a scooter suit, boots and mittens. As it was quite a warm day, we were all going to have to jump in. Once we had all changed and made sure that the suits and boots were as sealed as possible we headed outside to the track truck that would be driving us over to the hole in the ice. The truck was basically a big blue box with seats that was put on top of some tracks so it could go across the snow. The journey reminded me of going across the desert and along the streets of Dahab in Egypt to get to our dive site, which is kind of what we were doing. When we got there we all jumped out and headed over to the hole in the ice. There was a man leaning over the hole with an axe breaking the ice that had reformed on the surface of the water since the morning session where Frances had gone in. To the side of the ice hole were huge cubes of ice at least a foot deep which had been chain sawed out to form the hole. First the instructor showed us how to use our ice picks to pull ourselves along and hopefully out onto the ice from the water. We headed over to the hole to try it for ourselves. The first in was one of the women from logistics who was in the rescue suit (a bright orange waterproof overall for the ski suit). She sat down at the edge and eased herself into the water, the suit was filled with air and she floated easily putting her ice-picks into the edge and with the help of the instructor pulled herself out onto the side. Next up was the rest of us in just our scooter suits, not waterproof, and boots that when filled with water would be like concrete blocks (this would only take 10 seconds). Stupidly I decided that volunteering to be the first to go in was a good idea. So, having the rope tied around me I got ready by sitting on the edge of the ice hole. On the count of three I threw myself into the water and to the other side where I attempted to plant my ice picks in the side. The ground was rock hard and my boots had already filled with water dragging my legs down with them making it very hard to pull myself out. With what little upper-body strength I have and the help of the man on the other end of the rope I managed to eventually get out of the water and onto the ice where I was met with a happy cheer.
The temperature of the water cannot really go below -2 so it was not bad at all, however, the cold comes when you get out of the water the ground and the air around you at -17. The water in my boots at first felt like it had frozen into a solid block. I quickly started to move around and then settled to just wiggling my toes constantly so that the cold blood in my legs, which were soaked, would not get forced to my heart. After me everyone else in the group had a go at jumping in the hole Oddy (crazy man) jumped in three times until he was happy that he could get out by himself. I only managed one other jump in and out the other side just to see if I could do it by myself. I could not! We then piled back into the truck, I sat in the front this time where it was much warmer, and headed back to UNIS to get warm.
it all sounds amazing
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