Courses and the first excursion

This week uni finally started. After an exhausting 6 days of safety training it is nice to be back on a more relaxed schedule. The first lectures were mainly an introduction to the geology department as well as the main objectives of the courses. We already went on a little excursion today also.

During the introduction to the department I was stunned how important student satisfaction is to UNIS. They really seem to value us as a big contribution to Longearbyens as a location for science and education.

My courses appear to be a lot of work but also a lot of fun. In both of the courses I'm taking we will have to submit a term paper which is based on our own field observations and literature research. Therefore it will model the development of a scientific research paper. I think that this is really nice opportunity to train for the work that is coming up in my studies and further future.

Another major aspect of studying at UNIS is fieldwork. We will go on several different excursions. Some are only day trips others will be several days long. I think this is great because I always felt that I learned the most during field trips.
As if to show how field oriented the education at UNIS is we had our first excursion today. Our lecturer took us on a walk through the settlement and explained the difficulties of building/living in the permafrost.

One of the things that have to be considered are avalanches. We visited the place where an avalanche hit about ten houses and took two lives on the 19th of December 2015. It is frightening to see the remainings of this terrible event. The raw and brutal force of nature is easy to see but still hard to capture. This disaster is present in the daily life of the locals. Such a small community is very vulnerable as most people know each other and everybody has their place. But the event was also an example of the huge solidarity between the people. Within a very short time almost the entire village was involved in the rescue operation and they could save the lives of six others that were buried.