Search

So much of my life recently has revolved around meeting challenges - personally and professionally. One challenge I took on in 2009 was training for and running in a half-marathon (13.1 miles!) as part of a fundraising campaign for the American Stroke Association. I chose this charity because my

As our PolarTREC Orientation week came to an end, I was left with conflicting emotions. I was feeling excited to go home and share all my new knowledge with my friends, family, students, and colleagues. I was also feeling a little sad to be leaving my new friends-the cadre of the 2010-2011 PolarTREC

While we were in Fairbanks, Alaska for the PolarTREC Teacher Orientation, we finished the week with “Field Trip” day. We began the day by squeezing into the van and heading to Creamer’s Field, a wildlife preserve and nature center on the former site of a large working dairy. We visited the small

We spent our second day in Svalbard preparing for the field. We had a lecture at the University Center in Svalbard (UNIS) and then had the opportunity to meet with the Congressional Delegation from the United States. Several senators and Representatives are visiting Svalbard, Norway to learn and

We arrived in Longyearbyen, around midnight on Friday night after a day and a half of travel. It didn't seem like midnight because of the light but we all felt exhausted. We had a long layover in Oslo (about 8 hrs) so we had taken a bus/train to a famous Vigeland Sculputure Park. It gave us a chance

This morning we had a wonderful time with Dustin as our tour guide in downtown Petropavlovsk. The plan was to be back to the hotel by 1 PM so that we could accomplish the other tasks that needed to be done before our departure tomorrow. As we sat together as a group at the hotel things began to

An early morning departure by bus brought Dustin, Florin and I to the bottom Petropovlovsk, essentially the bottom of the Earth. We saw the beach, the volcanoes and several sites at the oldest part of the city. Our ultimate destination was the Kamchatka Museum. Kamchatka has a rich history of

Today we will begin our adventure to Svalbard, Norway; a small group of islands half way between the northern tip of Norway and the North pole. The region is located just below 80 degrees north latitude and located east of Greenland and west of the northern Russian territories. We are a group of

The evening proved to be a very interesting experience. We had a meeting with Tanya, Irina, Vera, Dr. Orehov, Greg, Dustin and I. The group gathered at about 7 PM and after our Russian friends were sure that we were comfortable in our hotel accommodations we progressed to the organizing of the next

While in Moscow I visited quite a few of the points of interest in the downtown area. I found that although the architecture of the buildings was quite different in Russia's capital city, there were some similarities to what the building stood for in Washington D.C, America's capital city. In