Rocks and Dirt!

On Friday we returned from our long awaited and anticipated Geology Field trip. Our leader, along with Eric of course, was former Gustavus professor Mark Johnson. He was so much fun and it was so fun to watch him interact with his long time buddy Eric.

We left Jönköping early Monday morning and boarded the bus headed to Göteborg where we picked up Mark. After a morning introductory lecture, we got the afternoon to explore the city in the almost too warm sunny weather. We spent several hours at a huge park which even had a zoo in it! Göteborg had a very different feel from Uppsala or Stockholm and I can't wait to spend more time there on my next visit.

The next morning we got in our two eight passenger vans which would practically become our home for the next week and began checking stops off our list of about 26 in 4 four days. After a day of looking at different things and formations, we ended up on the island of Hållö. What an incredible place and experience! When I say "island" what I really mean is a huge rock face which has 2 buildings- a lighthouse and a hostel. We were the only 14 people on the entire island- the Gusties took over. I can't really even describe how incredible it was and I have never watched a more beautiful sunset.

It was interesting to watch myself evolve over the week. At first, it was difficult for me to think of the things I was seeing as anything besides just rocks and dirt. As the week went on, however, I started to be able to look out my van window at land masses and structures and know what they were and what the land might have looked like millions of years ago. I thought that 500 year old churches in Stockholm were impressive, but they might pale in comparison to standing on billion plus year land masses. We have learned so much about Swedish history over our last few months and this gave us a whole new prospective. The area we were in is so central to Swedish and European geology.

We really had a great week. A few people in the group did not bring computers and in the second hostel we went to after the island, there was no internet so we were forced to -gasp- socialize with each other. (Really though, we really are quite good at that anyway.) It was a really nice break from more formal classes and homework. As someone who is quite visual and hands on, I really appreciated the opportunity to learn about science in a way other than sitting in a classroom.