After a long day of travel, we finally arrived in Trondheim around 11:15 a.m. on Sunday hungry and exhausted. After the group settled into the hostel, we headed out for a quick lunch, beginning our exploration of Norway! It didn't last long before the jet lag hit, and we were back to our beds.
Today, we started the day in the classroom, getting to know both our peers and our faculty. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) campus is very welcoming, and the faculty are incredibly engaging. We spent the first portion of our day learning about stormwater in the classroom and learning a bit about the things we would be testing in the field after lunch.
After lunch, we headed to the field to work with the rain garden and the multipurpose stormwater management pond system used here at NTNU. In the rain garden we used a cylindrical device, called a Infiltrometer, to determine how quickly the soil absorbed water.
At the multipurpose stormwater management pond site, we observed the flaws in the system, trying to determine the short comings of this water filtration method. We also took various samples of the water here, to test tomorrow, as well as measurements for pH and turbidity (aka how cloudy the water is).
To finish off the night, we had a welcome dinner at Kristiansten Festning, an old Norwegian fort built in the sixteenth century. The food was delicious, including a wide array ranging anywhere from raw fish to ribs.
I'd say it was a fairly successful first (official) day in Norway!
