HannekeTravels

May 2004

Sunday May 2
On Sunday Celia invited us for brunch in the Roasting Company, to celebrate that Vincent, a friend of hers from Switzerland, arrived the night before. There were a lot of people, it was fun!
The weather was very good, we walked back to campus. The coming week is finals week, Celia and me, and Vincent of course were the only ones who didn't have to study. So we decided to go for a bike tour through Fairbanks. We biked to downtown where we played tourist, see the photos.. On the photo on the left you can see that the distance from Fairbanks to Amsterdam is 6420 miles... important information!

Monday May 3
The weather was so good that we decided to have a picknick outside after work. Carmen joined us, and later Mihailo came to eat all the chocolate ;-)

Wednesday May 5
Freedom day in the Netherlands, but also Celia’s birthday! I was going to visit the museum with Vincent, but Celia's colleques invited her for a birthday lunch at Pikes Landing. Mihailo, Vincent and I joined them. The weather is still very good, so we sat outside with a view of the river. With pretty Heineken parasols :) I felt at home there!

Saturday May 8
On Saturday Celia, Yavor, Vincent and I went to Chena Hot Springs! This is a 60-mile drive from Fairbanks. Celia drove, she wanted to practice since she'll be travelling with a rental car the coming week. It was a nice drive, we stopped at the river and to watch some moose on the way. We tried to hike, but it was so swampy that we soon gave up and went to the pool. It was great! Nice warm water and we had a lot of fun. Here are the photos! :)

Sunday May 9
At noon we went to the Graduation, it's like in the movies! A whole show with everybody wearing the black dresses and hats. It was so nice to see that! Honie and Carmen were graduating. After a while it got very boring, since there were 1000 students and they had to call all names. There were some speeches and at the end of the ceremony we all had to rise to listen to the national hymn and the national song of Alaska. Somebody was playing it on a fiddle but it was so bad that I had trouble not to break out in laughter. After more than 3 hours it was finally over and we had some time to congratulate Honie.
That night, both Kim and Yavor left. I will miss them! Nerland Hall is deserted, there's only about 8 people left. They are closing this hall for Summer, but we have to wait until Wednesday before we can move into Wickersham.

Wednesday May 12
Wednesday morning at 9 AM Millie and me went to pick up our keys for the new room. It is nice! We have a bedroom (but smaller than the one in Nerland), and in the middle of two such rooms there is a Common Room. Here there are 4 desks and a bathroom and a sink. We are at the back of the building (on the North site, which is good with the amount of sunlight here) en we have a view towards Wood Center.

Friday May 14
At night, Vincent treated us on dinner at the Coffeehouse. Lousiaska was playing that night, it is a bluegrass band. (or swampgrass as they call themselves). Here's a photo of them with their biggest fan ;). The cute little girl is the daughter of the singer (second one from the right). She plays a very unusual instrument: kitchen supplies!

Sunday May 16
We went for ice cream at Hot Licks, it was very good!!

Friday May 21
On Friday I had lunch outside, the weather was good! When I walked home from work to Celia's building to pick her up, I saw a special optical phenomenon. Halos are visible very often here, but this time I saw a complete parhelic circle! Fortunately I had my digital camera with me, here are the pictures!

Celia and me wanted to visit a real country bar here, and Brandon knew where to find one. Adam wanted to come as well, so the four of us went there Friday night. The guys had to pay 4 dollars, our entrance was free ;). Everybody there was dressed in cowboy boots and cowboy hats... and country music playing. We had fun watching the people there... some were licking their fingers before starting dancing! There was also line dancing, unfortunately we didn't know how to do that.
Celia and me wanted a photo of us wearing cowboy hats... Brandon asked two guys if we could borrow their hats for the photo. We got them, but their faces didn't look very happy... and especially the faces of their wives. But we got our photo! Brandon later explained to us that asking a cowboy for his hat is like asking someone to borrow his underwear..... oops!

Thursday May 27
Oscar arrived in Fairbanks! We went for a dinner at Pizza Hut. Celia, Brandon and Adam also came with us, we had a nice dinner together! Here's a picture of Alaskan humour... They don't like McDonalds... look in the tree on the upper right!

Friday May 28
Here's a picture of a beautiful stained glass logo of the Geophysical Institute, and one of me paying for my room at the Pay Office.

Saturday May 29
On Saturday we went to Pioneer Park/Alaskaland with Celia. We didn't know what to expect, but it's sort of an open-air museum and quite fun! The weather was very good and we were all in a summer holiday’s mood! Later we got a thunderstorm and some rain, but it didn’t matter. At the end of our visit, Celia and I went to a photographer who took a photo of us in "old Alaska style", with dresses and hats and an umbrella, it was so much fun! The picture is very beautiful! I couldn't take a lot of photos cause my batteries died, but here's the photo we had taken and one photo of Pioneer Park:

May 30 - June 23: trip through Alaska, see the seperate trip report

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Continue to June 2004!