Tim's Daily Dispatch

Here’s Tim’s take on the past day’s events:

Hello again from across the pole!

It still hasn’t really set in that we’re in Iceland, it’s just totally incredible that I’m seeing and doing everything that I’m seeing and doing. A snowstorm in August, following the tracks of the original moonbuggy (driven by Neil Armstrong), hearing five or six different languages at meals, bathing in a luxury geothermal resort spa (free of course)... it leaves me at a loss for words. It is really amazing how fast we developed different routines and even social circles. Some things really do transcend cultural boundaries, and not always what you would expect; for example, Wheels on the Bus Go ´Round and ´Round and musical chairs.

Oh yeah, the reason we’re here... the forum is going well, although I start to realize more and more how inexperienced we, the youth, are. Yet we are still coming up with some good ideas and many points of insight. I think my biggest contribution so far has been trying to sythesize all the isolated topics and provide some structure that I think the designers of this program want but can’t mandate without ruining the independence that we have to use.

I have one last random and unstructured comment to add before I go: I just want to say that Iceland is really amazing, they are using only 20% of their potential renewable energy, yet are already producing surpluses of electricity. Long after the rest of the world runs out of oil, Iceland will still be sustaining itself in their beautiful, primordial landscape.

A sidenote: we visited the largest hydropower plant in Iceland, a small community hydropower plant, had lunch with Tony Blair's wife (unbenownst to us at the time), swam in a geothermal lagoon, visited the mid-Atlantic ridge and checked out a cave in a part of the crack that runs diagonally across the country created during the earthquake in 1979.