Im soo happy, I got funding for my PhD studies from Rannís which will cover my living expenses the next 3 years wooohoooo :D Now I don't have to worry about student loans... and will be able to eat more than rice and dry bread next semester, and perhaps go to the movies from time to time... ;)

Oxford and Poland

I spent a week with a group of Icelandic friends that came to visit me in Oxford (Sigrún, Snævar, Sólveig Birta, Steinunn, Ari and Pia María). We rented a house which turned out to be a cat heaven, no living cats but hairs of approximately 10 cats scattered around the house and even the non-allergic’s had breathing difficulties. For us with allergy it was pretty terrible so I made a call and asked for some help since the hoover was not working. So a jolly hoover guy came over (with the hoover on his back) and did some cleaning, it felt a bit better; at least we couldn’t see the hairs anymore. Well we didn’t spend all our time in the cat house, we went TOURIST around Oxford, we even went on the hop on hop off bus like real tourists do. We explored the colleges, ate lots of ice cream, walked everywhere, went on a castle tour and tried all the local pubs. We found out that it is Brasenose College that has the nose picking gargoyles; we came across a very angry doorman in Balliol College who threw us out when we were trying to sneak in for lunch. Apparently you have to run very fast past him so he doesn’t recognize you. A group of 5 tourist looking people with 2 children and lots of luggage probably didn’t look very college student-y to him. We walked in the footsteps of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and saw where they lived and worked. We also visited lots of museums where we saw dinosaurs, strange instruments, dodo bird and real shrunken heads (one of which starred in Harry Potter, dangling in the crazy bus that picked HP up). Talking about Harry Potter, we of course went to Christ Church College and walked through the famous dining hall.

Then it was time to say goodbye to my friends and go to Poland to attend the Summer School in Ecology and Biodiversity. I did not know what to expect from Poland. The first hours went like this: Tried to buy tickets to the bus in the airport kiosk and they did not speak English, there is something seriously strange when airport staff doesn’t speak English but ok, I got my ticket in the end. Waiting for the bus I met Fríða, the other Icelandic girl who was going to the summer school as well. We had never met before but she saw the Icelandair ticket on my bag and was brave enough to ask me if I was Icelandic. Thankfully she did because we came face to face to the most aggressive, angry and scary bus driver I have ever met. He constantly tried to close the door on me while I was standing in the doorway and then he started screaming at me in Polish when I handed him the ticket I had fought so hard for. After a minute of cursing in polish he finally gave me some money back (why I do not know) and that was it, we were on our way to Warsaw. We thought we should go off the bus at the end stop but when the bus finally stopped we had noooo idea where we were. We started walking and asking people for directions to the train station and in the end we had to take a taxi. Finally we reached the train station and then we tried to make contact with the information person but she didn’t even look at us, finally some guy took a pity on us and asked if he could help. So HE asked HER for directions to the luggage storage… very very strange. Finally luggage was stored and we decided to have something to eat, found sandwiches that were the worst we have ever eaten. Then we decided to wander off for a few minutes and across the train station we found this biiiiiig shopping centre with all kinds of lovely café’s and restaurants and we thought miserably at the horror-sandwiches we had just eaten and hoped wouldn’t make us sick. There was nothing to do but laugh and be happy that we had found each other and that we were not alone dealing with all these strange things. We met up with our group (65 students) and after a 4 hour extremely hot bus ride we finally reached Bialowieza where we were going to spend the next week studying ecology and biodiversity. It was so much fun and I met fantastic people from all over the world. We learned how to capture a wolf pack, to do bat recordings, how to identify small mammal remains and that lots of coffee might prevent you from falling asleep in the lectures. Not that they were boring (well some were…), no it was just a very tight schedule and not much sleep (and sometimes a little bit too much Zubr beer)…

A question I asked after one of the lectures intrigued the lecturer so much that he wanted to know my name and then he really wanted to have a talk about it. It ended in a 20 people workshop and I had to present the results. Something that I had not thought would happen but the following day I found myself with a microphone pinned to my shirt talking about if we could use pathogens in the battle with alien invasive species. Good practice since I haven’t made a presentation for almost 3 years now… Oh and my poster was chosen the 5^th best poster yayyy, and the price was a gigantic stuffed mosquito, very cute ;)

Saying goodbye to my new friends was sad, but hopefully I will see some of them again… The polish people I got to know were lovely LOVELY, seems to be only bus drivers and people in public jobs that are a bit strange towards foreigners… Im sorting through my pictures, will put them in soon.