By Janee Petersen and Jacob Gant
All Work No Play
Today was the first time that work dominated the entirety of the day. Many of us were on cooking, dishes, or cleaning duty. This even included cleaning the guesthouse bathrooms. Everyone is expected to help with the day to day operations of Skálanes.
The course work began immediately after breakfast with an orientation of the weather stations which we will be installing here within the next few days. The weather stations will monitor conditions such as precipitations, temperature, wind speed and the barometric pressure. They should collect data at Skálanes for years to come.
Next was a lecture and lab exercise on hydraulic river modeling. We took various measurements and readings from a stream running through the property. The rest of the day was spent working on individual research projects. Some of us have projects relating to Skálanes and those of us who will be doing research in other parts of Iceland were paired up with our friends from Liverpool to help with their projects.
Although today was low key and we stayed inside for most of the day, it was still an all-inspiring experience to be able to do homework, listen to music and hang out with our new British friends in such a beautiful place.
Ps. We all needed the rest anyways considering Iceland is the land of no sleep (New York has nothing on us).