Week 5: March 2-8

After a nice weekend traveling as a group, we were refreshed and ready to begin the second week of RES602. Our professor for this week, Dr. Dusan Holoubek, was from the Technical University of Kosice in Slovakia. Similar to last week, he had entirely too much information to cover in a very short amount of time. Nonetheless, with our heads down and our eyes forward, we pushed on. Surprisingly for me, much of the subject matter focused on non-renewable energy technologies. We worked specifically on the details of a number of coal fired power plant technologies and nuclear reactor designs. Although a bit confusing at the time, it was important we cover this, I think, as energy solutions in the future we be from a variety of sources and to think we will be able to simply kick our addiction to fossil fuels is delusional. How it will all fit together is anyone’s guess. This culminated in a project at the end of the week. I worked in a group, which evaluated hydrogen production using next generation high temperature nuclear reactors.

The anticipation for the weekend was high as we had two big upcoming events. The first was organized by one co-author who could probably explain it much better than I. In any case, dinner was prepared and served for practically the entire class. The apartments in Kjalarsida were used. The scene was chaotic as plates, silverware, and pots and pans were used from any willing donor and the entire 3rd floor was used as the dining hall. In this picture you really can only see half of the hall that we took up.

The food was well worth waiting for and had contributions from a number of students. There were also some good drinks which was a nice change since many people were getting tired of the Viking brew, especially the Polish students who had not had any proper vodka for over a month! I think everyone had a good night.

Saturday evening held a party at the home of RES rector, Dr. Bjorn Gunnarsson in the south of Akureyri. Students from last year had told us a few stories of these parties and expectations were high. Getting to Bjorn’s home a bit difficult though. We only had the van for the Skjaldarvik students and we had to run a makeshift shuttle service. To make matters more trying, this particular night was one of the worst snowstorms I have experienced since I had arrived. The snow was heavy and wet and once outside the city, the visibility was about 30m. Once we all got to Bjorn’s, everyone forgot about the treacherous time we had getting there and had a good time. There was pizza, drinks, some board games, good discussion, and dancing - lots of dancing:


And a congo line:


Even Bjorn showed us some of his moves!

I remember specifically the short speech Bjorn gave sometime that night. He mentioned that he hoped our experience at RES would be not only educationally challenging but also one that allows us to grow outside of the classroom.