A week in my life...

Hi there! I've been writing quite sporadically and I figured that this week is a great time to take things day by day and let you in on what I'm up to! This is also perfect because Kenny seems to think that I don't even go to my classes anymore and just slack off to go skiing so here is the proof that I do both :)

Sunday, February 25th

I am a firm believer that weeks start on Monday, but Sunday was such a good day that I had to include it too!! I spent the morning waking up slowly and enjoying the sun shining in through my window. Then I cleaned my tiny apartment (which doesn't take very long) and started on some of the homework that I had neglected over the past week. After a morning of writing notes, sending emails and reading, I set off for a sunset hike!

I met up with a French guy I went skiing with in Sweden, another French guy (coincidentally with the same name as the first guy) and a German girl to go to Bymarka, the massive nature area just outside of Trondheim.

We climbed up the icy hills and along small streams and made it to the viewpoint just as the sun was setting! There were amazing views of the city and the sunset and the weather was absolutely perfect!!

The way up wasn't too too slippery but the way down demonstrated the importance of spikes!! 3/4 of us had spikes and one of the French Antiones did not and as such, he spent much of the descent sliding on his bum!

A note for Grandma: I knitted myself a headband and wore it on the hike!! It's most definitely not perfect and it is deformed in some areas but I'm so proud of it!!

Monday, February 26th

So maybe I should provide a bit of a disclaimer... I typically have a quite light class load but 4 times this semester we have 2 day-long seminars for a class and this week is one of those weeks. So this is the perfect week to prove to Kenny that I'm busy because I'm usually not this busy!!

But Monday was a very busy day!

I started off in the lab. I am taking an "Environmental Biotechnology" class which, prior to starting this class, had no idea what this meant... But I have since found out and will share with you that it is basically the use of organisms to deal with environmental issues. So we mainly focus on how we use microbes to treat our municipal wastewater.

As a part of this class, we have a group lab component where 5 other students and I designed and started a bioreactor to remove ammonium from a solution we provide. It's pretty cool!! There is sludge, which is exactly as gross and mundane as it sounds that sits in a beaker and is fed with ammonium-solution and air and it converts the ammonium to nitrite and nitrate! How fun!!

What is slightly less fun is that in Norwegian the words "nitrite" and "nitrate" sound even more similar than they do in English and it is nearly impossible to figure out which the lab instructors are talking about!!

So we started our lab projects last week and ours has not been working perfectly... We had some issues where the sludge was leaving the reactor and not returning meaning that the efficiency is not where it should be... but the process is still kind of working so we are letting it slide and just checking the process more frequently!

This is the gross brown colour the reactor should be....

And this is what our reactor looks like this week...

After running some Dr. Lange tests and trying to help our reactor as much as we could, I headed to the city centre to sit in a cafe to have a coffee and a snack before my next class!

This seminar is for my "Fish Health and Welfare" class. The topic today is Fish Immunology & Vaccination!

That class lasted from 12 PM - 6 PM and felt very long. We had to take a whole Fish Immunology class in Ghent so this class was an attempt to condense all of that information and instead, it was just disorganized pandemonium. We were assigned a topic to present on Tuesday morning so I had to learn all about nanoparticles to administer oral vaccines for Infectious Salmonid Anemia Virus.

But my day is not over yet! I typically play tennis on Mondays but because of this seminar, I missed my regular spot! So instead, I booked one of the group fitness classes at the gym. This one is "StepPump" and was my first one of this type. It's pretty funky!! It's a step class, where you dance around with the step-up-block-thing and every 10 minutes, you stop to lift some weights... Funky, but effective! This was the most tiring workout I've done here yet! I was sufficiently tuckered out!!

I headed back home after my long day, showered and got ready for my presentation tomorrow!

Tuesday, February 27th

This morning was an early wake-up! Even before the sun! And at this point in the year, that is starting to mean something! The classroom where these classes take place is in the city centre of Trondheim, right next to the fjord (I guess it makes sense for the aquaculture classes to be on the water), but this is a 40-minute bus ride from my apartment. But bright and early, I got on the bus and headed towards the SeaLab. It was such a beautiful morning and I got to watch the sunrise on the bus, this was very peaceful! Speaking of weather, it's been about 6 degrees every day for the last week so almost all of our snow is gone and just the most stubborn ice is still around.

We had lectures and all of the student presentations so this was another long day... These two-day seminars really take it out of me but thankfully we only do it 4 times per semester and this was the second, so we're halfway there!

On Tuesday evenings, I do a Tabata class with some friends that I've met in the class! This class has 8 rounds of 20 seconds of work with 10 seconds of rest that you do 8 times. A lot of math. Even better, all the math (and instruction) is in Norwegian so I am getting really good at my numbers 1-10! I think this is my favourite workout class at the gym!

Wednesday, February 28th

The whole day-long classes don't stop there! On Wednesdays I have my "Experts in Teamwork" class. How fun! This class is again from 8 AM - 4 PM but somehow feels so much longer!! I guess I haven't really explained what this class is about besides all of the reflecting, but we are split into teams to make a project. My team is focusing on an awareness campaign about deep-sea mining in Norway. In case you haven't heard, Norway has approved a massive area in their waters for exploration and mining of rare earth minerals and this is creating quite a stir in the scientific community! So my team is hoping to conduct some interviews and make some posters at NTNU to inform the student body.

But anyway, this week we were reaching out to some experts to set up interviews and we finalized our question lists, as well as a ton of reflecting (of course). Most of the experts we reached out to were very willing to talk to us so next week we have 5 interviews with very impressive deep-sea biologists, marine historians, petroleum engineers, and economists.

This week was also a special week because our class got selected to be photographed for the online version of the course so you might be lucky enough to see my face if you ever take this course from NTNU or just happen to be perusing their website ;)

One major positive thing about this course is that each team had to create a "cooperation agreement" where you set out your expectations, rules, etc. at the start of the term and my team decided that each week there will be people assigned to the roles of note-taker, chair, and motivator. The first two tasks are pretty self-explanatory but the motivator role is the best thing we ever could've done. The motivator is responsible for bringing a snack for the team that week. It's like the soccer mom & orange slices thing and it makes this class so much more bearable! This week, Emma brought us fruit and cinnamon rolls.

Happy to be over the hump of this week, I had a pretty easy night! Exhausted from my three full days, I relaxed and read lots of Harry Potter, I did some yoga and went to bed early!

Thursday, February 29th

How is it already the last day of February? We have FLOWN through January and February this year! It's crazy!!

But the nice thing about Thursdays in my schedule is that I don't have classes!! I do have one class that meets on Thursdays but that only happens 3 times all semester and this week is not one of those weeks :) thank goodness :)

So on my day off from school, I slept in, went grocery shopping, did my laundry, went for a run and caught up on some of my work!

A side note: at the grocery store I think I've found my new favourite snack. It's called Smash and it's like chocolate-covered bugles! Delicious! Just all the chocolate here is so good!! I think I'm getting addicted...

In the afternoon, a student association that I'm a part of had their annual general assembly! This association is for the Marine Resource Masters' students and they have kindly adopted us AquaH students too:) This was the group that did the Winter Olympics in January and do tons of fun activities throughout the school year!

I got nominated for a board position and after making my speech and answering some questions I got voted in! So I am now the official Foreign Minister of the Njord Student Association🥳. Aside from supporting the board and all of the events, I am responsible for helping out all of the new International students from both programs:)

We celebrated the new board with pizza and celebrating at the SeaLab then I went home and started watching Harry Potter 5 with James!

Friday, March 1st

Fridays are also a nice day schedule-wise for me!! I only have Environmental Biotechnology from 10 AM -12 PM and we are starting to work on our group project (as opposed to our group lab) where we are presenting Integrated-Fixed-Film Activated Sludge treatment systems next week.

After working on our presentation, we all went to the lab to make sure our reactor isn't doing any worse than before!

Then, I headed to the library to work on some notes and then went to my last workout class of the week! This class is a "pump" class, which basically just means lifting weights in a room as opposed to a gym with machines. It took me a couple of weeks to get used to this class because, as it's taught in Norwegian, I didn't know what the move was going to be before I had to load the weights on my bar so there were some exercises where I had way too much weight and some where I had way too little... Thankfully now, I've figured it out :)

Saturday, March 2nd

In an attempt to make the winter last just a little bit longer, I am heading to Vassfjellet to go skiing! This is the ski hill only 45 minutes from my apartment and completely accessible with just public transportation! Pretty cool!!

As it's been so warm lately, the ski conditions were not ideal but reminded me of skiing in Ontario so that's a plus:)

It was a lovely day and the views were very nice!

To finish off the day, I went into the city centre with some friends to check out some cool student bars! This was really fun and they even play Avril Lavigne in Norway!! Can you believe it?!

On the walk home, we passed the Cathedral and I think it looks even more majestic than usual at this hour...

Sunday, March 3rd

To finish off the week I am sleeping in, catching up on homework, chatting with my family, and cleaning my apartment, overall, taking a very easy day!