Day One
July 15, 2015
One flight. A two hour wait. Another flight. A bus ride. And then an even longer bus ride. Not quite there yet, but we are one step closer to the top of the world. We are in Oslo, Norway!
It’s hard to believe that just 28 hours ago, we were standing in the upper school’s back loading zone tagging our bags and weighing our suitcases in preparation to board the bus off to San Francisco Airport after giving our final hugs and waving our goodbyes to our parents through the bus window for the next two weeks. Months and months of meetings have gone into this. It’s hard to believe we are finally here. We were finally going to the Arctic.
The wait for our plane to take off was almost excrutiating. Watching every international plane before ours line up one by one and then take off was almost like watching the minute hand never move to the desired position during a boring class period. There was a mix of emotions from uncontrollable excitement to see what this rare opportunity had in store for us right to the absolute nauseousness in our stomachs of leaving our normal routines to something so extraordinarily different.
Some of us slept, some of us watched movies back to back to back, some of us played video games, and some of us enjoyed the space of an empty seat next to us. But once those nine hours and twenty five minutes were up, I think it was safe to say that all of us were extremely excited to be off the plane and rid of the mediocre airplane food.
Because of the delay taking off from SFO, all we really had time for at the Amsterdam airport was walking from Terminal E to Terminal B, getting the official Dutch stamp in our passport, and discussing Amsterdam staples like tulips, chocolate, and kinder eggs (which are oddly enough illegal in the United States because of choking hazards). But it was still a good break and refresher for our next flight to Oslo, Norway.
And snap, we were there. That two hour flight went by quicker than ever especially since most of us crashed during the flight only waking up upon hearing the wheels of the plane touch the ground.
Right from disembarking the plane to seeing the two Scandinavian men in yellow Abercrombie & Kent vests holding a placard that read “Harker School”, everyone could feel that awe of a new exciting dimension that they had just entered – but that doesn’t mean we weren’t tired.
We were pooped, but Harker kids don’t take breaks right! Through the rain, we were directly headed to the Vigeland installation in Frogner Park, Oslo.
It would not be an exaggeration to say at all that Vigeland’s sculptures were absolutely jaw-dropping. Centered around the cycle of life, Vigeland’s attention to detail and extreme sense of symbolism took us to a new world. The whole park was absolutely breathtaking, and our tour guide could not have been any better. His calming accent and spectacular sense of storytelling was exactly the thing we needed to wake us up from our tiring journey.
Ready to get some rest now? I’m afraid not. We got all of a one hour break at the hotel to shower up and then back in the bus to visit the Fram Museum which houses the first ship built in Norway for polar research.
But by that time, all we wanted was FOOD. After listening to a rather long welcome address, we were finally able to put our hands on some food at the museum’s buffet. However, some of us didn’t get the perfect meal we were wishing for and so settled for a rather large serving of bread. Must add, that our dinner was slightly interrupted by a man who tripped with a wine glass in his hand and was cut all over from the damage of that fall. With a pool of blood everywhere, it would be safe to say that it was a rather eventful close to our dinner.
But before we left back for the hotel, we took a look inside that ship!
Other guests might have thought that we looked like little kids at Christmas. We ran around the ship looking at every secret room, staircase, or tool. We even enacted scenes from Titanic and pretended to bail buckets of water out of the ship. It was an amazing end to our day.
Finally! We are back at the hotel, but for the ladies it is rise and shine at 5 AM for our flight to Longyearben. The guys get to sleep in (why!) since their flight departs later. They say it is up to Abercrombie & Kent to decide those things, but who knows maybe it’s just Dr.B’s extreme desire for more sleep talking!
Till next time! (or really the next time we have WiFi)