Natacha's working experience in Tromso, Norway

Hytta tur just for girls

2007-11-29T19:59:00.000+02:00

Al ready two weeks ago Trude, Ingvild, Bente, Lisa and me were on a trip all together. The 5 of us were picked up by Ingvild on friday. First we made a stop at COOP, the local supermarket, to buy everything we need for food. What we bough, was mainly a lot of chocolate, chips, snoep and wine :-), pancakes and other good stuff to feed us. Than we were on the road to the cabin of Ingvilds parents which is at about 1h30 minutes driving from Tromso and is on Ringvasoya. Great cabin with water and electricity. A nice open fire inside and lots of candles. It was really a fantastic place!!
Once arrived and settled down we made a good dinner and relaxed playing cards and drinking wine. We basically just relaxed, had nice long talks with nobody to telling us that we talk too much or talk bull shit :-) Just 'the girls' and I really enjoyed it.

Here you can see some pictures of our trip

girls weekend on ringvasoy

We also tried some shooting with a airgun , brought some wood to the house and did some knitting. We had loads of fun really !

Visit of Oyvinds sister

2007-11-11T20:30:00.000+02:00

Two weekends ago on a Sunday we had the nice visit my housemates family.
Oyvinds sister was here with her husband and her little girl Amalia. Amalia is 8 months old and a really nice baby.

Of course she had all the attention from everybody and she was crawling around in all the living. I took advantage of the situation to take out my new camera and tried to take some nice pictures. It's not that easy in the beginning, but you just have to try in the beginning ;-)

Here

Oyvind's family

you can see some of the pictures of that really nice afthernoon.

9th of October first snow!

2007-10-10T22:23:00.000+03:00

Very suddenly snow appeared on our little Island!

On Monday evening 23:00 the first snowflakes started falling silently from the sky like cotton in the wind. I never expected it would stick to the ground as the floor was not even frozen and temperatures had been up to 14 degrees a few days before. But yet, very suddenly there was a drop in the temperatures and in the morning when I opened the window .. there it was .. lying on the ground like a little carpet covering every thing and sticking to all the leaves of the trees. Beau-ti-full! But way to early!!! This time no body was prepared to it. Nor was I. Suddenly it feels like Christmas and staying home warmly with a fire in the chimney and candles on drinking hot drinks.

(View of the university on the way to work)

Kroken- and tromsdal-dalen 31st september

2007-10-09T20:27:00.000+03:00

(Pictures of this trip on http://picasaweb.google.com/lays.natacha/KrokenAndTromsdalDalen )

All ready two weeks ago we had a splendid weekend. Two days of bright sunshine and very warm temperatures for the area and the season. We had 14°C on Saturday, when I went to the center to have a hot chocolate on an terasses, and up to 17°C on Sunday. On Sunday Laura (ex-house mate, Nationality dutch) and I went hiking together. We adventured ourselves on a totally new way, unknown territorials. We had climbed before the mountains Kroken, Rundfjellet and Tromsdalstinden, but had never walked from one valley to an other. So with a good map and a compass the both of us started walking in kroken valley. We started really gently walking up along a river flowing in between the two mountains.

Suddenly we arrived on a total flat piece of land with some rivers ending up in a kind of delta. There we rested a little and took up some drinking water. (picture left)

A little bit further there was an other flat area with a lake of drinking water. Spectacular views and amazing decors that none of us had expected. From the lake on we had to climb up on huge rocks along a waterfall. That was a bit scary, but while orientating us with the compass we managed to reach our objective. This was to reach the platform where Kroken, Rundfjellet and Tromsdalstinden have some ground in common. There we decided to sit down and have a deserved lunch with a nice view on the tromsdalstinden and Tromso Island.
(picture: laura and me after lunch)
After that we started walking again and picked some blue and red berries on the way and saw some reindeers. We were really relaxed enjoying every step and every view. But we weren't suspecting that a hard part was coming.

The way down into Tromsdalen was a bit dangerous and unconscious with moving and slippery rocks. We missed the path there, but managed anyway. It was just a little bit less cheerful than the rest of the trip. (Picture: the steep way we walked down and the thumbs stand for, 'good job right' )

But we had a good day and I even managed to get some freckles on my nose ;-)

GappoHytta weekend 22-23

2007-09-24T23:31:00.000+03:00

Relatively unpredicted I decided on Friday to leave Tromso for the weekend and go hiking in the mountains. It was a proposal from Bente, who would drive up to Signadalen together with an other friend, Ingvild. They would go to a cabin called Gappohytta situated at 700m altitude, a few hundred meters from the Swedish boarder. With no second thoughts I decided to join them....and so we left on Saturday morning 8 o' clock, just the 3 girls, for an adventure weekend. It was really THE weekend to go hiking as the weather was terrific, just 2 plain sunshiny days, and the autumn is at its best now. The colors are really amazing... and together with tainted forests of a million happy colors there is also quiet a lot of snow on the mountains yet! The sun rays were first shining through the multicolored leaves and a bit higher reflecting brightly on the snow on top of the mountains. There is no such painting as the one of the autumn!!
So we walked, first through a forest next to a river with high debit, than above the tree level and later through plateaus of rocks formed by tectonic activity a million of years ago. The cabin we reached after 4h of walk.
Finally there we found a nice little house striped with heavy chains to the ground so that it wouldn' t blow of with the heavy winds that can occur at that place!!! It was very impressive and the whole place with the decor was evoking fairy tales.
We spend the night there cooking ourselves some great food and sipping wine while having girls talks. The night also brought up some surprises....While the tree of us were having a pee in bush, keeping an eye on each other and possibly bears (!) suddenly the sky lighted up in green from the northernlights! It was amazing again.....You have no idea how beautiful this country is...!

More pictures on http://picasaweb.google.com/lays.natacha/GappoHytta

Finally pictures of my house

2007-09-14T18:08:00.001+03:00

We moved in on the 8th of september and now all ready one week later the sun finally showed himself and I could take some nice pictures of the house. Unfortunately my camera totally broke down in the middle of the photo shooting, so I don`t have any outside pictures!

But I think you can all ready see quiet well how we are settled down. We`re hiring the house fully fournished. This is a great advantage, but also means that decoration is not up to us. I think the fourniture is a little bit `kitch` (like we say in Belgium), but I`m not too difficult, I can live with that at least this semester ;-)

here are the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/lays.natacha/NewHouseVesterlivegen169013Troms

week-end: whale watching and hiking

2007-09-03T17:22:00.000+03:00

Second weekend in Tromsø, the sun was at the `rendez-vous` as well as nice temperatures, not too cold for the time of the year :-) but yet only 5-10 degree celsius!

On the program for saturday; whale watching!! Great, I love it, even if I have to wake up at 5:00 in the morning! We left Tromsø harbour around 7:00 and sailed through the beautifull fjords untill we reached the open sea. Once away from the fjords the waves became bigger and many people got very ill on the boat. I didn`t experience any sea sickness and could fully enjoy the view and the sun on the deck. After one more hour sailing in the open sea we got to the gattering point of the whales, which is exactly were the continental shelf steeps into the abyssal plate (deap ocean). On that spot there are a lot of currents bringing a lot of invertebrates and fishes, so a lot of food for baleen and other whales. We had the chances to see 4 Sperm Whales breathing at the surface and suddenly deep diving, showing us their tale. It was beautifull!!

On Sunday afternoon, in order to enjoy the precious nice weather, we went for a small walk on the mainland walking along a river. There we stopped at a sunny place to have some coffee and thee. I was with Bentha and the two Oyvinds I`m living with right now. We had a nice chilling afternoon, recovering from the partying of the night before ;-)

Belgium hockey team beat Germany and goes to the Olympic games!

2007-08-30T18:47:00.001+03:00

Here is a little patriotic news. The Belgium man hockey team won a few days ago the 3rd place at the European Championship and qualified themselfs for the Olympic games!

Here are a few sites were the briljant victory can be visualized. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ucsf_resume-match-belgique-allemagne-sur_events
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ucnt_derniere-minute-de-jeu-belgique-all_events
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ueq4_retour-triomphale-des-hockeyeurs-be_events

I may be far away, but this news makes me very proud of their achievement!

An intruder

2007-08-29T17:12:00.000+03:00

29th of August! As far as I know, it is still summer, even in the Artic! But this morning I though I saw an intruder in the landscape. There was some withe powder, usually coming from the sky in the winter and falling first upon the highest sommits...I though I wasn`t well awake...but check for ourself on the picture...I`m not hallucinating!

The first snow fell upon the tops surrounding Tromsø! INCREDIBLE but true and slightly to early if I may express my deepest feeling :-)

First day

2007-08-27T16:44:00.000+03:00

15:30, end of my first day! A short day it was, but exhausting for sure. In fact to day looked more like a race; signing contracts, opening a bank account, looking for an available office, finding keys for that office, getting passwords for the computers, etc.
Tomorrow I will start an internship at the medicin building in order to learn how a specific machine works that measures all kinds of hormones. For this I got some homework, I should read through the protocol to night and get ready for it tomorrow.
Things are only starting to get interesting....

A new start, a new job, a new blog

2007-08-21T22:29:00.001+03:00

After 6 years of studying, I'm finally moving on to a new phase of my life which is the life of a working person. Everybody has to make this step and as some may be anxious about it, denoting the working life as "what you're going to do for the coming 40 years", I'm pretty excited about it. For me this means becoming fully independent and leading a very own life of choices and decisions...

On the verge of a new start, a new period of life, I decided to create a new blog for all my friends and family. I hope you will read enthusiastically through all my adventures and notify me with lots of comments and mails.

Natacha