| February 2004
Tuesday February 10 At 11:35 AM I suddenly felt the floor moving sideways, which seems very unreal and weird. There was an earthquake in Kenai, of 6 on the Richter scale. It was 650 kms away, but we still could feel it. For more info, see this site. By the way, here you can see how many earthquakes we have here. A lot!! Most of them are much weaker than this one. But according to Nicole there were two earthquakes last week that I should have felt. Wednesday February 11 At 7 AM I was outside on my way to the swimmingpool when I noticed northern lights!! Finally!! I walked to some dark area, and gazed at the sky for 45 minutes, it was so wonderful! The sky was full of green aurora and right above my head I could see the corona. I didn't go swimming... At night, the aurora came back! This time I took my camera with me, to do a test for exposure time settings. I had a roll of 200 ASA in my camera, but they all turned out well! On the first photo you can see the commons, and on the second (which is a funny one, I moved during the exposure time) and third Lathrop Hall, which looks just like my hall. On the fourth you can see the building where also the swimming pool is located. The rest of the photos are taken more uphill, from a parking lot. The signs are warning you not to go downhill there, there are fences hidden in the snow. On the middle one of the last row you can see Orion!
Thursday February 12 I took more photos of the aurora, since it was there again!! I witnessed a very active period, in which it was moving really fast and even showed some pink/purple colors. It is so impressive! I got my film back, so here are the results:
Friday February 13 This is a photo that I took when I left the IARC, so now you can see where I work!
Kim now also has a tripod and a camera release, and we went looking for aurora. Unfortunately, the aurora was too low at the horizon to be visible from here. But we were at the IARC when we realized that. So we walked around the skitrails, which is not allowed. There is a huge satellite receiver in the woods there! Since we couldn't find the aurora, we tried to do a startrailshot. Considering it was not completely dark and I used 800 ASA film, the result is quite good! Exposure time: about 25 minutes.
Saturday Februari 14 We woke up early, since Kim was working at the Yukon Quest. Milli borrowed a car, and the three of us went downtown. We dropped off Kim, and went looking for a nice spot. The Quest starts at the Chena River, and there's a bridge over it from where we could see everything very well. There were heaters on skis on the ice, so people could warm up! It smelled good, but we were freezing on the bridge... It was really nice to see the race start!! Some people feel sorry for the dogs, but they should see the excitement of the dogs, they are impatiently to start, they seem very happy. Because it has been so warm for the past days, there is water on the ice, and the dogs were wearing socks, that looked so cute! And since I have a digital camera now, I can show you some photos!
Wednesday February 18 When I walked back from work I noticed a strange view. See the bigger photos for that, it seems you see clouds in the distance, but these are the tops of the mountains almost 'floating' in nothing!
And since everyone is so curious about my room, here are some photos. First of all: a photo of Nerland Hall! Our room is at the back. On the second photo you can see my bed, on the third Kim's. It's easy to see who's less messy ;). On the lower part you can see our door with the cards they made me hang on it... Kim put a card of Minnesota cows next to it :). And you can also see the hall, very interesting!! But well, there were people asking me to take photos of the bathroom... I didn't want to do that!
Thursday February 19 Here's another photo of the building. Actually it's three buildings, but they belong together and the Geophysical Institute is in all three of them. The nicest (and newest) one is on the left. As you can see we have enough radar and communication opportunities... the one on the right sometimes rotates pretty fast! I have also been on a tour through the building and discovered a conference room with a stunning view on the 5th floor! By the way, in the Netherlands this would have been the 3rd floor. But in the USA they start counting at the lowest level, even if that is a basement. So in the case of the IARC, you enter the building at the second floor!
Saturday February 21 On Saturday I had breakfast with Millie and Trevor. After that, the three of us walked up to the IARC. The skihut is right behind that and today was Trails Day! That means free ski rentals and free lessons. Trevor didn't need lessons, but Millie and I did. We got private lessons. The university has many trails for cross country skiing. It is not so hard to learn compared to downhill skiing, we learnt it in half an hour. But it is very tiring! We realized we put on too many cloths, we got so warm! But our teachers were complaining about being too cold since we didn't move so fast ;). After an hour we were so tired that we decided to stop. But we liked it a lot, we sure want to do it again!
On Sunday I could finally sleep until late. I was lazy :) Later during the day I took some photos on campus. We have a lot of polar bears here, fortunately they are very friendly and even invite you to come sit with them. The campus is full of these ice statues, and in March there will be World Championships held here in Fairbanks.
Tuesday Februari 24 There were mirages visible today! Not as spectacular as the ones I didn't photograph, but they were good. You can only see them in the big versions. In the one at the right you can see that the hill suddenly has a 'hat' for example. Ken also pointed them out to me, and showed me that even Mt. McKinley was visible!
Friday February 27 I took this photo on campus, this temperature is warm for me now!
At night went to the Native Arts Festival in the concert hall, this was free. There was a sort of market where they sold a lot of stuff, beautiful things! Masks, dreamcatchers, little statues of soapstone etc. I really like their art! There was also a room with student art. It was so beautiful!! A lot of things refer to a raven in native arts, and I really like birds and especially crows and ravens. I don't know if I was allowed to take photos, but when nobody was watching me... these are masks!
Saturday February 28 On Saturday I walked with Mihailo to Diana's (post-doc from Bulgaria) appartment, on campus. We were going skiing!! Diana's neighbour, Marion from Norway, was also coming. And a Russian girl, but I don't remember her name. We went to Mt. Aurora Skiland, a half hour drive from Fairbanks. Very nice to see some of the surrounding! It was beautiful.. I also saw the famous Alaska Pipeline and I saw the proof of the goldrush.. little hills next to the creeks. Renting ski equipment and a pass for the lift cost $40. For me it had been five years ago since I last went skiing, but fortunately I still remembered. I had to get used to it, but soon I felt like I could almost hear all the comments of my former skiteachers. It was quite a big ski area, although there was only one lift.I really enjoyed it, I had forgotten that I liked skiing so much! At lunchtime I bought a hotdog and we had hot chocolate with Baileys ;). Here some photos of this day!
Sunday Febraury 29 At night Millie and I watched the northern lights, it was a good show! This time we walked to a place where there was not so much light pollution. Here are the photos!
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