Thursday was a pretty standard day. Wake up, go to UNIS, fall asleep during really interesting lectures because you had zero energy, go home, procrastinate by baking. We made a chocolate brownie cake with chocolate dime pieces and chocolate paste filling as well as two new loaves of bread for the next week. Then revise for the next 3 hours, as Stu puts it “the most boring hours he has ever spent on a bed”. Get a huge stabbing headache, swear death pain against Maxwell’s soul after deciding he is the Shakespeare of mathematics, and go to bed as early as possible. So yeah, standard day!
On Friday after a lie in till 0930 we started on the revision again, taking a break to watch the new 30 Rock and then one for lunch to watch the new Bones (so happy the TV is back). We then headed down to UNIS for some seriously last minute revision before the exam started at 0200 (which is one hour before the guys at home had to take it). Sitting in the exam room Frances attempted some literally last minute revision while I ate some of the brownie me and Stu had made the night before. Let the exam begin! The exam started with laughter around the room (and the invigilators joined in. Told you more relaxed here) and for the next half hour I wrote like a mad man.
Frances left the exam first quickly followed by me, then Andrew, and Stu stayed till the end. During this time I had a quick meeting with the money group to sort things out for the Icebreaker party, which reminds me I have some tickets and posters to design. When we had all finished and met back at the couches by the cantina we headed to town for some dinner before the Sea Ice party down on the beach.
The beach in Longyearbyen is similar to beaches back home a couple of million years ago, if you can imagine that. The fjord is completely frozen across to the other side of the inlet and there is a thick layer of snow covering the frozen and iced over ground. There was a huge bonfire in the middle of an improvised seating area which was a two layer circle of compact snow with fox skin blankets covering the “seats”, a place to get hot drink and a BBQ where you could grill your own food. We quickly found some people we knew commenting that the only thing to top the image off was the aurora overhead which we were rewarded with just half hour later.
I spent a lot of the time changing my mind about going in the water or not (Frances, Stu and Andrew had decided that there was no way in hell that they were going in). Thankfully Stu knows some choice words that convinced me to just bloody well man up and go in the water. The tents that are used for people to change (and when I say change I mean we took most of our clothing off as we went in the water in just our swimming stuff), were really, really warm. When I went outside it was not as cold as I thought it would be, my feet taking most of the shock as it was not windy and only around -5. I ran down to the hole in the ice and climbed in. The rule was you had to lay down on your front and back in the water so that you were completely wet and I was surprised to find that the water was actually quite warm. This only lasted a little while, however, and I quickly got back out to run back to the tent.
We headed back to UNIS after this to start the Friday gathering with the intention of drinking a fair amount and having a go at tight rope walking (which they call slack rope) as we were now free from out Exams and ready to enjoy the fact that we’re in the “Fricking Arctic!”.
I am now going to go and make some more brownie mix for Stu to put in the oven for tonight’s Guitar Hero and drinking party.
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