Workaholic's weekend and progress meetings

For some people in Holland, the weekend starts on Thursday evening. But if you go with the flow in Portugal, there can be no such thing as a day off. Well, maybe on Sunday for some. So what would our students do?

Before continuing it is important to realize that they have been working hard since the first week of May in Twente. Upon their return in Amsterdam, they had a few days to wash their clothes and then they were off to Faro and Tavira to learn system thinking and well surveying. Due to this packed and efficient schedule, their energy levels had been depleted by the time they arrive in Aveiro. There was very little time, one day to be exact, to recover as the equipment needed to be deployed as soon as possible (see previous posts).

On top of that, work plans for the next few weeks had to be made and coordination between the groups was required to plan the use of the available equipment. That meant long evenings, often until midnight, before one could go to bed.

What would you do then during the weekend?

Here is what our students did this Saturday: They didn't stop working. They went back to the field to check if their equipment was properly working. The spent a few more hours to make sure precious dataloggers are properly protected. The staff in the meantime was packing the van in the garage as some of our students had even made bolder plans for Sunday: To install an 8m-well on the Ilha na Ria, the small island we are studying as a side-project.

Installing such a well should not be taken lightly. The weight of the augering equipment and the friction between the soil and the casing and the pebbles that get stuck require brute force to be applied sometimes. The goal of 8 was not reached but we made it to a respectable 7.2 m.



All thanks to great teamwork by Samuel and Caroline, although they did not really get off on the right "foot". To be exact: A little mishap occurred and Samuel's foot ended up in Caroline's eye but all that was soon forgotten. After almost 10 hours on the island we had ice creams in Costa Nova to celebrate the successful installation. These ice creams were so big that they did not fit on any photograph.

Then on Monday, it was time for progress meetings. Using time lapse photography, we made an impression of such a meeting. The movie below is played at 270 times the actual speed.



The plot of this movie is as follows: Staff members arrive right on time but the students are a bit late. Therefore, staff members chat with the owner of the bar and good friend Mario until the students arrive. Students get their coffees. Locals come and go to buy bread in the bar. Clouds pass by. Staff and students discuss previous activities and the work plan for the weeks ahead. In the end, the camera's battery is exhausted so the subsequent work meetings were not captured, but similar scenes would have been shot.



Today it rained and more rain is expected over the next few days. That means the hard work is not over yet...