Liza van Kapel
Study: BSc Soil, Water, Atmosphere.
Destination: Norway.
Exchange student.
Hi Everyone,
My name is Liza van Kapel and I am a third year bachelor student Soil, Water and Atmosphere. Starting this august, I will spend half a year studying in Norway. At this page you can follow my adventures. You can also follow me (@lizavankapel) and other WURldexplorers on Instagram: search for #WURldexplorers!
From Mountain to Fjord
Hi Everyone, My name is Liza van Kapel and I am a third year bachelor student Soil, Water and Atmosphere. Starting this august, I will spend half a year studying in Norway. Before I started my study in Wageningen I did some travelling. I got slightly addicted to it than and I knew that I wanted to go abroad during my studies as soon as possible. So when the opportunity came to do a minor, I wasted no time in deciding to do it abroad.
A new home
This is what my new home town looks like from 1100 meters. Not bad right? As you can see, it’s not big, what leaves more room for beautiful surroundings. Starting from today, I will study these surroundings the next couple of months.
Fieldwork Norwegian style
This picture might need some explanation ;) In the tube is a sediment sample, fresh from the bottom of a fjord from around 80 m deep. Even though I would love to do soil drilling on 80 m, I did not go down there myself to get it. Instead we put the black tube into a bigger metal tube, of which you can see the tip in the left side. This special tool was lowered by a rope to the bottom, where it closes automatically. Then you can take the tube with sample out, as we are doing on the picture. We opened it the next day, involving some kind of circular saw (don’t worry, everyone still had their fingers;)).
Autumn has come
So far I have only written about what I’ve been doing here. I did not pay a lot of attention yet to things that are different here compared to back home. One big difference that I cannot deny anymore is the weather. From the moment I got here, I have been in a lovely summer: around 20 degrees, sun all over and not a lot of wind. This weather was so good that it was almost getting suspicious: it could not last long. And indeed, around the 21 of September autumn kicked in.
Norwegian wild life
I think I’ll just keep on writing about special topics for now, since not that much happened since last time, except for more excursions of course ;) So, topic of the day is wildlife. It was not the first thing that popped into my mind when I thought about Norway. I was more focusing on the mountains and the glaciers. But it makes sense of course, since there are a lot of forests and not a lot of people here.
Oslo, Stavanger and Bergen
I already promised in my last story that I would tell about my autumn holiday that was not that long ago. After completing our first exam we got a week off. I have I spend it travelling by myself, something that I really like to do. Even though I love it here: the mountains, the fjord, the river, I was secretly missing bigger cities. So time to fix that! I started of pretty good, by going to Oslo, Norway’s biggest city and capital.
Preikestolen
I said in my last story that I would show one more awesome holiday picture, and here it is! This is Preikestolen, a very famous rock and view point, chosen by lonely planet as one of the top ten views in the world. Since I’m totally into cool nature stuff like this I decided to go to Stavanger to be able to see it in real life.
Exams
This might not be the most exciting title or picture, but it’s more fun than you think. So far I did not pay a lot of attention to the study here, but I am doing that of course. In fact, I already had three exams. Before the first exam we got this paper with rules, as you can see on the picture. Now you should understand that there are some differences between Dutch and Norwegian exams.
Student life
After the exam rule picture, I got another shot that I really like. On this picture I am performing at “bandstand”. It took some effort to get there though.
Holiday season
Yes, these are freshly baked “pepernoten” that I made for Sinterklaas. Since I was missing out on that now, me and two other Dutch girls decided to celebrate it with our class. Half of them were Dutch so actually knew what it was, but that didn’t matter.
Last month
By now I’m already home, but it’s never too late to tell you about the last things I did in Norway.
The road to home
This is sadly my final story (awww...). But it’s a good one :) On the picture you see the Hilton hotel in Copenhagen, where I stayed. How did I end up there?