Even more photos...

Hello everyone!!!!

just in case you wanted to see even more photos (my select favourites from 30 rolls of film.... yes, I know) you can go on www.lomohomes.com/gringo_milla to look at the beauty of Svalbard that A New Shade of Green misses so much.

enjoy!!!



Melinda

Ruby's update: Back in the UK

Hi everyone, thanks for leaving all the comments on our blog! Unfortunately, the internet connection went down on about the 3rd day of our trip, when we sailed North in the Polaris boat (satellites don't go that far up!), so our blog has fallen way behind. Now that we're back in the UK, we'll all post an entry telling you all about the highlights of our amazing trip. Here is mine.

Having boarded our ice-breaker boat, we sailed all up the west coast of Svalbard, frequently going out in the zodiac motor-boats to visit abandoned towns, whaling stations and tracker camps. One place that I'll always remember is Barentsburg: a Russian settlement of around 500 people that still maintains a strictly communist way of living. These people have little to no connection with the rest of the world. The men work in the coal mine, and there is a school with 9 children in it. Every month, each person recieves the same amount of electrical points, only of value in Barentsburg, with which to buy food. In the main street there is a large statue of Lenin, and written on the hillside is 'Peace across the World'. It gives you a fresh view on life to see that such places can still exist.

A few days later, passing through a narrow fjord, we saw a male polar bear, carrying a large fish in its mouth, on the moutainside. To actually see such a large and elusive mammal in the wild was amazing. During the trip we also saw minke whales, fin whales, seals, arctic foxes, walruses and puffins.

On about the 7th day, we reached the pack ice at 81 degrees North. Some of us, including me, were lucky enough to stand on the ice - if we kept walking for about 90km, we'd reach the North Pole. At that point, we were probably about the furthest North children in the world.

You may have seen pictures on the BBC (google 'BBC project polar') of us swimming in the Arctic Ocean - apparently, if you stay in for 5 mins, you freeze to death! Running in and running back out again was long enough for me.

On the last day, we went dog-wagonning back in Longyearbyen - all the dogs were soooo cute!! They can go up to 60km per day, and apparently work best at -10 to -15 degrees celcius!

I made some great friends during the trip (we're already planning reunions) and met some inspiring scientists. Please keep commenting on this blog, and check the edge and BBC project polar websites for more photos. Thankyou SO much to Edge for organising this trip; it has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I'll always remember. Any kids reading this HAVE to apply for next year's competition - the prize is absolutely unbeatable. I have now got a terrible case of 'Svalbard Sickness', as the locals call it: those who go to Svalbard once tend to return again and again, and again, and again.....

July 6th: rifles, getting lost and vacuum packed tuna

Hi everyone, thanks for all your comments, keep them coming!
Below is the web address for our podcast yesterday. You can also check iceedge.wordpress.com and iceedge.com for more photos etc.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-7935637699421939047&hl=en-GB
This morning we went to UNIS (University of Norway in Svalbard) for a safety training lecture by a world expert, which made us aware of dangerous situations on the ice. Then we went to a rifle range to learn how to deal with a polar bear encounter, and more importantly how to avoid one.

After lunch at the institute, we went (without the teachers who were practicing their rifle shooting) to the harbour, and went round and round in an attempt to find the right people. It ended up being a rather repetetive tour of the same stretch of harbour. Eventually we got our special orange suits on, which made us feel like we were vacumed packed, and we went in the arctic sea!!! It felt wounderful being in the freezing water, but actuallhy not being cold, and having the snow covered mountains behind us.


Now we are in a mad rush to finish this quickly so we can promptly leave for our bbc radio interview at the bbc lady's hotel.. then we're off to a posh 3 course dinner which should be lovely!!!!

melinda (me) had some VERY worrying problems with her beloved fisheye but all was solved very quickly so she is euphoric =D

BBC breakfast tv on saturday (morning, i assume) will have soething to do with our trip if you're interested..
also bbc told us that a video conference hosted by our school might be a possibility so we'll keep you posted!!

lots of love from us all!!!!

July 5th; reindeer, satellites and feet

Hello everyone.

WE ARE HERE!! After 2 delayed flights, we finally boarded our last plane to Svalbard.
We eventually got in our rooms at 3am after having just seen a reindeer outside the guest house's restaurant... =]
The midnight sun was in full effect, we were completely not used to sleeping in broad daylight (and still aren't) but after the day of travelling we had, we were very happy to sleep, light and all.
After breakfast and about 4 hour' s sleep, we were driven up to the top of a mountain to see the largest satellite monitoring station in the world. It monitors over a hundred satellites from all over the world, and we were lucky enough to see one of the antennae in action. We also listened to a very interesting talk by one of the engineers working at the station; we now know what causes the Northern Lights, and how much impact on our lives satellites have.
We then walked around Longyearbyen, taking even more pictures of the amazing snow-covered mountains that make up the background. One of the slight irritating points is the tradition of taking off your shoes when ever entering any building, which is especially annoying when wearing walking boats.
We've had a great day, and know that it only gets better from here on. Above are just a few of the pictures we've taken.

Almost there!

Hi everyone, especially if you're reading our blog for the first time - we'll make sure we update it most days and there are lots of photos for you to look at! We'll be leaving for Oslo at 1pm Wednesday, then we're going to Tromso and then to Svalbard for 10 days, where we'll be on an ice-breaker boat

(40 kids + boat - parents = FUN!), going out onto glaciers, seeing reindeer, polar bear, walruses and lots of birds - and going dog sledding!! We can't wait!

Leave a comment if you like,

Ruby xx

nearly there

Its the last Friday before we leave, and this is the first time I’ve had time to write on this blog (its Megan, the furthest right on the winners photo) because everything has become so hectic. What with all the coursework, the slow accumulation of artic stuff, and the amount of times I’ve had to explain why I get to go to the artic.

Only 4 days before we go and I’ve only just started to realise I’m actually going. When we were coming back from London after winning it just seemed so far off, but now, now I’m starting to decide what I need to bring.

To all of you from other teams, I look forward to seeing you there, and to all you others well you have good reason to be envious.

What we're up to now...

For the next two weeks we have left of school, we're knee deep in Shakespeare coursework, science GCSEs, a very peculiar media coursework (don't get us started on that) geography, history and photography coursework, and just generally, lots of work at school.

Which, to be quite honest, is probably fair, but it IS the summer ... so morale is low......


BUT the one thing that keeps us going is knowing that in just 2 weeks and a day we'll be off on an awesome adventure (yes, cheesy as it sounds it's actually true) that we won't easily forget.


So on behalf of all of us green gum team members, we'd like to thank all the wonderful teachers and friends who spent their time helping us, and also those cocky people we know who knew we'd make it all along.

we'll keep you posted!




Melinda
xxxx

Blog is just getting better and better...

Hi everyone, it's Ruby again (How cute are the Svalbard doggies in the photo?!!),

You may have noticed the video bar at the bottom, or you may not have, so scroll down now and take a look. Basically it's just a load of videos from youtube on svalbard doggies!!which you can watch from the comfort of our own blog. It took me a while to work out how to use it though, because when you click on the video, it actually plays right at the top of the blog, so you have to scroll right back up otherwise you just hear the music and that's a bit weird. That was a bit mentally challenging for me at first.

Here is a nice website I saw where you can look at webcams for Ny Alesund and Longyearbyen (and did you know that longyearbyen means town of the long year in - um - Norwegian!)

http://www.svalbard-images.com/

Ruby xxx

yea, carrying all our stuff to London was quite a workout..

Svalbard... we really got lucky with the prize didn't we?? It still hasn't really sunk in, the full depth of it, it comes in waves to me =] but we're all ecstatic, the scenery will be breathtaking, the weather'll be perfect, and it will be a ton of fun too!!

We've built it up quite a bit so we can only hope it'll be as nice as we think it will be.

We hope for the best

melinda (one on the far left in the winners photo)

xxx

After the finals...

We got back from London, pretty tired from carrying all our equipment on the tubes in rush hour (nearly taking some people's eyes out along the way with our 7ft metal poles), and were told we'd be on BBC news breakfast TV, live, the next morning at some crazily early time - god, it's tough being famous - but it was really worth it, because we had quite a long interview (Ben Saunders was there as well) and it was great to see the BBC studios, see a few famous faces...(well, you can't prove that we didn't) and get our make-up done! I think the hype has pretty much calmed down now, there's only a few paparazzi still outside my door.

I know everyone's saying this, but Svalbard is going to be A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! I was in New York last week and saw these gorgeous polar bears in the zoo, swimming right up close to you, and now I can't wait to see them in the wild! Even though they can rip your head off, they're just the cutest! But what I really really can't wait for is - dog sledding!!

Hi to everyone else on the trip, looking forward to meeting you again soon!

Ruby (second from left) xxx

the blogging process

our blog will be to write to all of you guys about the amazing trip we'll go on to the Arctic!!We are very excited and can't wait to be there!