Day 112: Children and other things

Every morning I wake up around 6am and have a telepathic conversation with Benjamin (the 1.5 yr old baby grandson) that goes something like this:

Me: Benjamin.
B: What's up!
Me: I'm surprised the windows haven't shattered from the volume and pitch of your scream. No seriously. How are you even breathing.
B: I'll take that as a compliment.
Me: What do you even have to cry about? You do nothing. You're warm and, trust me, I know you just pooped, and your mom's probably feeding you right now.
B: Oh, I'm not crying. I'm just screamin'.
Me: But why?
B: Why not?

The noises that come out of this kid are incredible. When he gets really happy, he sits...and screams. One huge, long, banshee scream.

Yesterday we also had adventures in yogurt:



And the introduction of "if you don't let me vaccum I will scream until your ears bleed":



Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the boys have a gentlemans game of mini-checkers:



Outside, down one of the streets:



A dog:



Puppies, because I know you're all suckers for puppies:



(Also, note the "snow chains" on that bike)

View of about 80% of the town:



An artistic look at the helicopter pad:



The town iceberg:



Hunter's home at the back edge of town:



School's smoke stack:



Duka wants so desperately for me to come say hi that she twists herself in a knot trying to get closer:



That's it.

Day 110: Some Observations

High noon:



Yeeeah...

There's no bacteria out here. Well...that's a lie, obviously. But there's VERY few. It's really remarkable, actually. Normally (in CA) cuts get at least a little infected or red or something unless you're super careful. Here - nothing. My host father cut himself rather badly last week (dish washing accident) and the cut is healing amazingly perfectly. My little thumb accident didn't even hint at infection. Let's hear it for the power of cold.

Also on those lines - my host family leaves all the food from dinner out on the counter through the next day. Whatever anyone doesn't eat for dinner gets fed to the dog. I didn't touch this food for like the first week because I thought for sure it was rotten. But it's totally fine. I get freaked out if leftovers are left out for like, an hour in California.

I'd really like to avoid having this blog turn into a gauge of my boredom, so...photos, since that's my, you know, JOB. My apologies for the lack - school takes up a lot of the daylight hours, but my ankle finally looks good enough for the normal abuse I lay upon it (it pretty much was just a big ol' bruise from heavy boots worn too long). So more adventures are forthcoming. Until then...

Janu and friend playing in the massive pile of winter clothes in the entrance hall:



The "fire station":



Its a hole in the ice kept open by a metal barrel. Some guy comes out here (this is out on the ice) a couple of times a day and breaks up the ice that forms inside. In case there ever is a fire here, this is the water supply.

Which brings me to another observation. There's no pipes through town, because to make something that wouldn't freeze solid 90% of the year would be ridiculously expensive if not just impossible. So while we do have running water, it runs off a small tank in the house that gets filled twice a week. We have to be very careful about water consumption to make sure there's enough for everything we need. Showers, for example - turn on the water and get wet, turn off the water, get soapy, turn on the water, rinse, done. At least its warm. Toilets - yeah, no. They have this system that looks like a toilet, but it's actually a big heavy-duty plastic bag where the bowl ususally is. This special bag gets collected every other day by the brave men who do that sort of thing. There's 7 people living here now (if you include the baby) so this bag is, indeed...special.

There's no haircut place around here, so everyone does whatever themselves. [Side note - someone in the US asked me to check for something at the "yarn store". The YARN STORE? I said I'd check the "One and Only" store.] Today my host mom permed my sister's hair:



They're being silly, its not just horrible timing...

OMG!!!

My host mom just made me a seal-skin hat. There are not enough multi-syllabic words synonymous with awesome to describe this. I was going to delay posting photos, because I'm in my pj's and look ridiculous, but honestly, I can't resist.



The hat? So awesome. She made it of natural-colored seal (sort of silver-brown) with a stripe of blue down the top. Most of the hats around here are made of dark seal skins, so this one's kind of special.



Awwhh.

And dinner tonight? On a scale of 1 to delicious, it was unfathomable. It was boiled potatoes and musk ox shoulder. I realize that makes me something less than gourmet, but man...that was good stuff. My host family are relieved/happy/proud of how much I like Greenlandic food, and I have to say it suits me very well. Except the lack of vegetables and fruit. Sometimes I get a little desperate in my head. I would pay...a lot of money for a Jamba Juice.

Anyway, dinner was extremely good. My host mom likes to eat meat right off the bone, so while the rest off us ate slices my host dad carved off, she sat down with an enormous shoulder blade and picked pieces straight off with her fingers. I had to get a picture of this shoulder blade. After dinner I went upstairs for my camera, and when I came down again my host dad had managed this incredible balancing act:



That things like, over a foot long.



Delicious. A pretty good evening, barring the fact that I still need to come up with a lesson plan for 5th grade for tomorrow [shudder].

Wow, ok. Back by popular demand - Day 106: Why is this normal

Yesterday was intense. And a little to close to potential disaster for me to be comfortable with. Everything's ok (well, I think), but it was the sort of situation I have bad dreams about, and I'm still somewhat amazed it turned out totally ok.

I apologize in advance for not having nearly as many good photos of this as I should. My camera was unhappy because of some weird lighting and how cold it was, and for a signficant portion of the trip my mind was consumed with things other than photography.

Yesterday I went out hiking with a girl I met recently who seemed really nice. She's native Greenlandic and her English is pretty good, and she's one of the few people who has tried to make friends with me (she's 17). We ran into each other the other day and she said she was going to walk out to Kap Tobin, a nearby settlement. You can see Kap Tobin from Scoresbysund - its across the ice at the tip of the land.



Distances are weird out here. It doesn't look very far away, but I knew it was a fair distance, and I had seen it on a map before. To get there it's pretty much a straight shot across the ice, you can see the Scoresbysund and Kap Tobin either ahead or behind you the whole way. Almost impossible to get lost, but even though you can see the towns, you are very much extremely isolated while between them.

So this girl comes by around 1 in the afternoon. She tells me to bring gloves and a scarf because its a bit cold (which I would have done anyways) but isn't wearing much clothes herself. I dismiss this figuring that she's a lot tougher than me since she's native here. She also doesn't have a gun with her (which should have been a warning sign as to her foresight), so I borrow my host father's rifle. There's a lot of polar bears in this area, and while I haven't seen one yet, a lot of hunters get bears on the ice between Scoresbysund and Kap Tobin.

We head out and its wonderful outside - good weather, beautiful sky, and being out on the ice is incredible. Everything feels huge.



A hunter we passed:





Looking back at Scoresbysund:



I'm wearing my new Baffin winter boots which are totally awesome, although enormous. We get farther and farther out on the ice (which is quite thick, very safe) and it becomes obvious that its going to take longer than expected to get to Kap Tobin. About half-way between starting and when the girl said she needed to be home, we're still about a mile or two away from Kap Tobin.



When things go wrong, especially out in the wilderness, theres a difference between bad luck and bad decisions. This is probably where we crossed that line. By this point it was around 2:30 and the sun was setting. I wanted to turn back and head home, but the girl was already getting tired and wanted to finish the walk to Kap Tobin and see if we could hitch a ride home with someone on a snowscooter. Although I know a lot about hiking and traveling in the wilderness, I almost always figure that someone native to the area knows what they're talking about better than me. So we push on to Kap Tobin.



What the girl DIDN'T mention was that Kap Tobin isn't a permanent settlement - it's just a collection of summer cabins. When we got there, there was absolutely no one around. Theres an empty cabin at the top of the hill thats left open for anyone who needs it, so we went inside and tried to figure out what to do. By this point the sun has set, and although it was still light out I was very much against the idea of trying to race the light home (it took us about two hours to hike out, I doubted the light would last another 2 hours). So I thought we should rough it out and just spend the night in Kap Tobin (would have been miserable, but safe). But the girl said she thought we could make it, and she wanted to go home, and she thought we might run into a hunter who would give us a ride back. Not totally unreasonable, and I didn't want to make my host family nervous, so we set out again.



By this point, I am seriously worried about bears. I can see Scoresbysund in the distance - we're not going to get lost - but the night winds have started and we're walking into the wind, so its very, very cold. I'm a pretty good hiker, especially when driven by the adrenaline-fueled need to get home before dark and not to be surprised by a bear, so the walk really is not so bad for me. If I had been by myself, I could have made really good time. However...this girl. She's tired, and cold, and she is moving very, very slowly. It doesn't help that she's tiny and it takes her about three steps to match one of mine. As it gets darker and darker and we're still not close enough to home for me to feel safe, I get more and more torn between the desperate need to move faster and the fact that theres nothing I can do to make this girl move.

Eventually I end up giving her some of my clothes - it's very cold but I think I'm ok, and I'm less sure about her. I can tell she's not paying any attention whatsoever to the ice or the landscape, so I'm constantly scanning around (and behind) us for bears, and leading her around the few cracks in the ice that we come across. It gets to the point where I'll walk for five minutes, then stand and wait for her to catch up, then start walking and get way far ahead again. I can't even discribe how insanely frustrating and scary it is to know that we are in a potentially really bad position, knowing we HAVE to hurry before it gets too dark, and knowing that I could make it on my own, but also knowing I have to stay with and take care of this girl. It's getting colder and now I'm worried that even if I see a bear my hands might not be good enough to use the gun well enough.

For the last hour, its horribly tantalizing how close the town looks but never seems to get any closer. I can sort of tell in the back of my mind that I'm getting tired and something's wrong with one of my legs, but my overriding instinct to get home makes me totally ignore those things. For the last half hour, I try to ignore the fact that I really cannot see well enough to be safe. Its not completely dark yet, but I have to struggle to confirm if lumps in the distance are ice or...something else.

FINALLY we get into town, and I get the girl home to her mom, and my body suddenly just gives up. The hardest part of the hike was getting from the edge of town to my house.

And once I'm inside, things don't seem so bad. My host dad had been checking on us periodically with his binoculars, so if something had gone bad (or if we hadn't shown up), he would have sent someone out to help us - he knew where we were. My host mom was kind of freaked out that I might be too cold, but I was ok (those boots definitely saved my toes). We made it back ok, no bears, and beyond being tired I figured it was an adventure. All told, the round trip was about 12 miles.

But really, that's the sort of situation that scares me more than anything - this story could have ended very differently. If we had hit a bear, no one could have gotten to us in time to help. I'd like to think I'd handle it well - I know how to use a rifle - but you never know how a bear will act, and if I actually had to shoot it (and not just scare it) I'm fairly certain it would take at least two really good shots to take down a bear with the gun I was using. We were on the border of being too cold. I made the mistake of listening to a young girl, who wasn't nearly as strong as I assumed she was, instead of my own common sense. We should have turned around earlier, we should have spent the night in Kap Tobin - things that would have kept us safe for sure, instead of ending up in a risky situation that luckily turned out just fine.

And then today I look down and see this:



SWEET JEBUS! Normally, I never bruise. Very rarely. So I don't know what's going on down there. Currently my "doctor" is my own common sense+googling my symptoms, which leads me to the conclusion that I either have ridiculous shin splints or possibly I have some kind of stress fracture. It doesn't really hurt to walk, so I'm just going to assume I'm ok and that my heavy boots did something weird to me.

PS. Mom and Dad, you really probably shouldn't have read this post.

Day 107: If you have a weak stomach stop reading now

The following stuff doesn't bother me, so I photograph it and post it with no problem. However I do understand that some of my readership are a bit more...delicate, so if you don't like animal parts (animals...in parts) I suggest you leave.

It's ok, we'll wait.

Why don't you think about...puppies.



Alright! This evening my host mom unceremoniously dragged in a huge black garbage bag and dropped it in the middle of the kitchen floor. I was in the living room typing on the computer when she started yelling for me because she wanted to show me something.

And what a treasure she had!



That, if you can't tell, is the upper half of a walrus skull. Somewhat fresh, but not fresh enough to not totally stink up the kitchen. It was quite a beast.



Walrus are more feared out here than polar bears. Four of Therecie's relatives, including her grandfather, an uncle, a brother-in-law, and a son-in-law have been killed by walrus. My host father says his worst nightmares are about walrus hitting his boat. In the water they're the most dangerous thing, because you don't see them coming until they come up under your boat and hit you down with those teeth.

The Discovery Channel nerd in me would like to take this opportunity to recognize the parallels between Africa and the Arctic, in that water animals are in fact the most dangerous animals in both areas (hippos and walrus, respectively) rather than the assumed most dangerous land animals (lions and polar bears).

Denoting a bitter end:



In case you're curious, although they do eat walrus, this guy was already picked over so I haven't gotten to try that meat yet. The hunter who brought him in is related to Therecie and she wanted to have a look at it. The skull was going on to someone else who paid quite an extraordinary amount of money to have it.

Photo-a-thon

I've developed a bit of a photo back-log so I'm going to take care of that...right now.

Clothes hanging to dry/freeze in front of the cemetary:



Musk-ox fur padded sled:



Speaking of musk-ox - we eat a lot of musk-ox around here, its delicious. I've also had raw narwhale skin and boiled seal. While I can say it was a baby seal (humans eat the babies, the adult seal meal is given to the dogs) I unfortunately cannot say that it was very good. Seal tastes like a cross between a lamb and an old fish. Narwhale skin, however, is remarkably good. It's sort of like trying to chew on a tire that tastes a little like...meat jello. I've heard it compared to hazelnuts as well, oddly enough.

Cozy:



At the top of the hill:



View over the town:



Icebergs in the distance - this photo needs a little explaination...those far-off mountains are 200 km (about 125 miles) away - we checked on a map. Those mountains are about 2000 m (6600 ft) high. That means some of those icebergs are ridiculously high. My host dad has been sailing around them before and says they are difficult to believe.



Sun over the town:



I realize that about 80% of my photos appear to be some kind of sunrise or sunset, but with how the sun is now (rising around 10 and setting around 3) the photo above is around 2pm...high noon isn't much better. This weird light schedule means I'm pretty much constantly hungry, since my internal clock associates darkness with dinner time.

Dead seal on a sled:



I can, however, tell the difference in the light between sunrise and sunset. This is a particularly nice sunset:



Lots of people out on the ice (somewhere I haven't ventured yet):



More of the same:



Back edge of town in some snowfall:



The other day my host dad and little brothers went out with me to the nearby Whalrus Bay for a walk. Since we were leaving town we had to bring the gun - I haven't gotten out of town much because although I'm allowed to borrow the rifle, I don't really like walking by myself when I want to take photos but have to watch out for wildlife.



Looking back across the ice:



The road to Whalrus Bay, one I'm glad I'm walking and not driving:



Konrad and Janu:



Ice in the bay:



Annnnd back in town again...they do have these things around here, apparently:



An interesting note: I find myself practicing a role here that I really didn't anticipate having for another decade, if ever - that of the domestic housewife. I have perfected the art of washing dishes while helping Konrad and Janu get ready for school while holding a screaming baby and feeding said baby all at the same time, and in a language I don't even speak. This brings up something else - this is not MY baby, its Benjamin, my host parent's 1.5 year old grandson. He's mostly a pretty good kid but I spend a large part of my life babysitting him. He's also taught me all of the Greenlandic that I currently know (so if the situation calls for it, I can ask for my mommy or demand to be given something pointed at to eat). This house is not remotely baby-proof, which makes things...exciting. Anyway. The point that that brings up is that I am a fairly unusual figure in town (well...duh) because I'm 22 but don't have any kids. Almost every female in town has had a kid by the time she's 20.

Sooo...another look at those icebergs:



Duka likes Konrad, and big musk-ox bones:



Konrad sledding through the town:



Someday I'm going to do a series called "Every house here is built exactly the same" and have a lot of photos like this:



Another look at Konrad:



The other night I went with Therecie (my host mom) to the woman's house. Among other things, the women's house is a sort of community center that is open a few nights a week where women get together and sew.



(My host mom is the third from the right)

Therecie is an extraordinarily good seamtress. She's famous for her seal-skin jackets. I'll try to get a picture of one...for now, here's Therecie helping out a younger girl. As it happens, this young girl is one of the few people remotely my age who has been friendly to me. We might go hiking tomorrow!



Walking home at night from the women's center with Therecie (left) and Lena, another English teacher at the school who's just moved here from Denmark:



And finally, some kids playing on the school computers at night: