Australia Day above the Arctic Circle!

January 26, 2010

Australia Day! That’s right—the celebration of the arrival of the first fleet in Australia in 1788—and here I am 200 miles above the Arctic Circle! Kind of amazing to think about really.

After a quiet weekend in Nuuk that included a reindeer fondue meal at the home of one of my hosts, it was time to pack up and head north. The weather in Nuuk on Sunday was dreadful, so I chose not to leave the hotel…just worked on my classes and watched DVDs.

Monday at noon I flew from Nuuk to Kangerlussuaq and then connected to the flight to Ilulissat. It was amazing to fly in over the ice and to see amazing icebergs. The photos in this blog are taken out of my hotel room window. Talk about a room with a vieI guess I should also mention that these photos were taken around 10am. There will be some light here for just a few hours, but if it brightens up I hope to get some more photos.

I met most of my students last night and was pleasantly surprised that many of them had some English language capacity. However, I also found myself facilitating an after dinner meeting where the students wanted to talk about how the classes would be conducted. Turns out that they are very unhappy about not having time to discuss issues and that they do not want to sit passively through long lectures: sounds like we will be a good match for each other.

I also met my teaching partner Dr. Anton Hoem for the University of Oslow (Emeritus). It was a brief meeting, and I suspect that Anton and I will do our own thing. He will teach from 8-12 and I will teach from 1-5.

Did I mention that there are a lot of dogs in Ilulissat? There are reportedly 4,500 people and 6,000 dogs. I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of dogs howling—not quite a full moon—but enough to get the hounds excited. This morning I can see that a dog team lives about 50 yards from the hotel. I have been told that all of the dogs north of the Arctic Circle are sledge dogs and that they are bred specifically for the purpose of dog sledging. In fact, dogs from the south are not allowed in this area for fear of cross-breeding and weakening the working dogs.

I will blog again after my first class today.

Cheers

Geoff