Icey Icey

The snow began to fall again which really excited everyone! The ski slopes will be opening soon, some project this weekend. But...

Soon the rain started to fall, melting and then during the night it froze again, so for the last three or four days there has been a thick (1-2inches) of ice over the ground surface, making traveling extremely difficult. I have bought attachments for my shoes which have spikes on them; althought they are loud, they make walking much easier!

My exam was returned to me and I passed with a 70% which I am really pleased with. The next course that I have entered into is called Ecotechnology and is more technical than the first two. The first topic was on Systems Thinking, which I really enjoyed- I found the articles really interesting. Now we have moved on to heating and cooling systems and biomass for fuel- the articles here are not so interesting: they are mainly research study reports which are very specific and full of numbers. Possibly when the topic of buildings comes about, things will become more interesting for me.

Well, the snow has disappeared and it seems as though we are going through a heat spell. Temperatures have been houvering around 7 degrees this week...but darkness is descending on us over here. The sun begins to go down around 3 oclock and by 4, 4:30 it is dark (pitch black).

School is going well... there is alot of work involved: reading, group work, discussions, etc. but I am managing to work my way through it all. The exam for this course is on Friday and I think it might be a tough one!



This past weekend I spent at Lina's family's farm... well forested property. They own approximately 1000ha of land, which is forested and swampy with an old farm house that dates back to the 1700s. Although there is electric heat available, the preferred method of heating the building is through fire because the electricity is very expensive... it was a cold weekend! Lina is funny... on the way up (which took about one and one half hours) she says that she hopes I can start a fire, because she does not know how... thank goodness I can or it would have been a REALLY cold weekend. I guess there has always been someone to do it for her, so she has never learned, until this weekend.