Planning...

Welllll things are a little complicated right now. I have a few decently good ideas about where I will be going and when, but some of my Canada plans just fell through and I need to find something else pretty soon.

I was going to be traveling on an icebreaker (the Amundsen) doing research in the Canadian Arctic, starting August 18th out of Quebec. I was officially invited to join an expedition on said icebreaker from September 28th to October 16th out of Kugluktuk. Turns out that while I will definitely be on the ship starting in September, there's apparently no room during the first leg of the trip for me to come along. This is a bummer, not only because being on the icebreaker for the first few months would be fantastic, but also because it means I'm suddenly needing to find something to do - and somewhere to go - in Canada for the first two months. And since I have to be gone by August, that's really pretty soon.

I still have a few leads - the ship may find room, I may be able to work in a lab somewhere in Canada - or I may be in touch with some brand-new contacts and who knows what willl happen! I'm trying to avoid just sort of showing up somewhere...but if I must that'd certainly be an interesting experience.

Moving on! The next stop after that will most likely be a little place called Ittoqqortoormiit in eastern Greenland, starting mid-October. To my current knowledge, I will be teaching English in the local school there. Really a stroke of luck - the regular teacher is going home to Denmark for the exact time period that I was planning to be in Greenland. I am very excited about this opportunity, but hope it all works out...the plans are a little hazy at the moment.

Interesting fact about Ittoqqortoormiit: seems almost impossible to actually get to. There are no flights from Canada or the USA to Greenland - none whatsoever, ever. So I'll fly from Quebec to Iceland, then to southern Greenland, from where I will have to take a helicopter or some kind of chartered flight out to Ittoqqortoormiit.

After Greendland: Norway! Starting in January 2007 I will be staying in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, which is an archipelago north of mainland Norway. Longyearbyen was the city base of the research I did last summer on the little auks. In Longyearbyen I will be working with the local Arctic university doing some biology work.

Finally I will be getting into Russia, most likely starting in May. I really am not sure where I'm going in Russia yet - it's a bit of a problem that I don't speak Russian, especially in northern Siberia. We'll see.

So there's a basic idea of whats going to happen. Unless I pull together something really fast for Canada, then I will probably be leaving at the tail-end of July. I'm also in the middle of getting together my gear. I just got my jacket last week, now I'm looking for a backpack and some other specialized clothing. Almost none of which can be found in southern California, in the middle of the summer.