Getting Ready to Go

Monday, January 18: Getting Ready to Go.

It is a strange experience getting ready to travel to Greenland. I am from the west coast of Australia where temperatures this time of the year regularly exceed 40 degrees celsius (100+ F). It is still in my blood to think about January and February being the HOTTEST months of the year! So here I am, packing long underwear, a newly acquired North Face down jacket, snow boots and crampons! My greatest fear is that I arrive in Greenland without the clothes necessary to stay warm in -30 degrees Celsius!

My journey will start tomorrow, Tuesday, January 19 at 11:00 am with a flight from Medford to San Francisco. I then connect to a direct flight to Frankfurt. After arriving I will have a couple of hours to find my flight to Copenhagen where I am scheduled to arrived about 2pm Wednesday (local time) or 5am PST after 18 hours of traveling. I will stay overnight in Copenhagen before catching a Thursday morning 9am flight to Greenland (Kangerlussuaq). The four hour flight to Greenland is offset by a four hour time difference. So, I will actually arrive in Greenland about the time I leave Copenhagen. Kangerlussuaq is the only commercial airstrip on the country and it where the one flight a day lands. Kangerlussuaq is the "hub" for all of the STAL (short take off and landing aircraft) that service the small Greenland communities. This will be the first of three trips to Kangerlussuaq on this trip to Greenland.

From Kangerlussuaq I fly to Nuuk--the nation's capital and my home for four days while I meet with University of Greenland officials. I was last in Nuuk in April, 2004 and found it to be a modern, pleasant city of 15,000 people (the largest city in Greenland where the total population for the country is approximately 56,000 people). This trip is in the middle of winter, so quite a different experience for a boy from Australia!

I will be staying at the Hotel Hans Egede--the only large (140 room) hotel in Nuuk. Not much at the hotels website to share (in terms of photos) but hopefully I will have a little daylight for taking photos to post.

On Monday, January 25 I will leave Nuuk and fly to Ilulissat via Kangerlussuaq. Ilulissat is 200 miles above the Arctic Circle and I will be staying at the Hotel Arctic--the most northerly hotel in the world. I will have a lot more to say about Ilulissat, but suffice to say, staying at a hotel located at a UNESCO World Heritage Site is something special, especially if you go in the summer and choose to stay in an igloo :-) My real work starts on Tuesday, January 26 (which coincidentally is Australia Day--Australia's celebration of the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788) when I will meet with my students for the first time. All 17 students will fly in for the week and we will all stay at the Hotel Arctic.

In short, this is what this trip is all about--working with 17 students who are half way through a masters of education degree at the University of Greenland. I am taking over this teaching responsibility from an old friend and colleague, Dr. Frank Darnell (an Ashland resident), who has been working in Greenland on and off for 30+ years. Most recently, Frank has been teaching these students educational research using my text "Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications" which is one of the reasons I was asked to work with these students for the last 18 months of their programs during which time they will plan, conduct, and write up an educational research study.

I have much to learn about Greenland and life in the polar region before I can really hope to grasp the magnitude of the problems these students will investigate--it will be an educational journey for all us.

On February 1, I will once again fly through Kangerlussuaq en route back to Copenhagen where an overnight stay if required before connecting to my February 2 flight back home. A long, busy two weeks lays ahead. I am hopeful that as my work in Greenland continues my wife Donna and son Jonathan will be able to come along to enjoy the adventure. My next trip to Greenland is scheduled for early June followed by another in early October--neither of which will be as long as this first trip. Travel to Greenland is complicated by a couple of unusual restrictions: you can only fly (on a regular basis) to Greenland through Copenhagen, Denmark. You can also only fly in and out of the country on a weekday--no weekend flights. If you could fly from the east coast of the US, it would only take about 3 hours instead of the long trans Atlantic flight and then 4 hour return flight to Greenland.

Well, time to finish packing. I'll post again when I get settled in Nuuk.

Think warm thoughts.

Cheers

Geoff