First I would like to apologize for the extened period inbetween posts, I have simply gotten caught up with work and have had some techinical difficulties. Anyway over the past week as I said I have simply been doing a lot of work at UNIS. An interesting view that I got out my window from work very clearly explained the lively hood of this town during the summer.

In the background of this picture you can see the cruise ship at dock and then the crowd of people streaming from it. Due to the fact that everyone goes on holiday during the summer Longyearbyen is not a very populated place and when these cruise boats come in with 3,000 people on them, they very much overwhelm the town. It is quite an interesting sight to see them all wonder around or hop on buses for a quick tour of the valley. Luckily I am able to hide in UNIS until the ship leaves and the town returns to normal until the next boat. It is also very asuming that whenever a cruise boat comes in it seems to get dark and cloudy, then as the boat sails away the sky opens up and the sun comes out, as I will show later on.

This weekend I got my first chance to go out with some other students from UNIS. Now when I say students they are both PHD students, so a little bit older than myself and have been at UNIS for a while so they had many stories to share. To start off the night we went out to the Norwegian version of a sports bar for dinner. Although it did not show the type of sports that one would expect and through all of dinner there was a extreme snowmobile movie playing that was quite entertaining. I am continually amazed at how seriosuly they take snowmobiling and it is certinaly not what I would expect to be shown in a sports bar.
The next thing that I found to be interesting was dinner, due to the fact it was a small menu I of course went with a hamburger to see how it was done in Norway. Now from my many picnic and grilling experiences I do not know if I have ever seen someone eat a Hamburger with silverware. I would consider it a strictly "hands on" food. This did not seem to be the case for my friends that I was eating with but that still did not deter me from eating in the traditional fashion. The rest of the night contained the swaping of numeruos international stories. It is truly amazing how many different countries are represented in such a small town. There are always interesting people to meet from all over the world and every one of them has thier own unique story. I think most of this is due to UNIS bringing in students from all over the world and it truly makes Longyearbyen a more unique place.
Later on that weekend after the last cruise boat had pulled away the cloud broke and we got a wonderful day.




The last thing that I would like to share with everyone is a sign that I see everyday and always think is very amusing.

These are the door into the post office and bank. As you can see you are not allowed to carry a gun into the bank.