Saturday in Nuuk

Greetings from Greenland: Saturday

Today is a “culture day” celebration in Nuuk and the museums, galleries, fire station, airport etc. are all open for families to visit. My guide for the day called to postpone our 10am start because in her estimation it was too cold to walk around. If it’s too cold for a local, it’s definitely too cold for me!

So, for those of you who want to know something about Nuuk, here’s a short history:

Nuuk means “the promontory” and is located at the tip of the large peninsula by the mouth of the gigantic Nuuk Fjord. The city is the oldest in Greenland founded at Godthab (Good Hope) by the Danish missionary Hans Egede in 1728. Nuuk is also the largest city in Greenland with approximately 15,000 residents.

I spent the afternoon visiting the Katuaq Museum at the old colony harbor (the photos are from this area), and visited an outdoor meat market on the way to art gallery. As you can see in the photos, you can purchase seal (freshly shot and gutted), reindeer, and an interesting bug-eyed orange colored cod-like thing! I am told it is a very deepwater fish and that when it is quickly brought to the surface it’s eyes pop-out. Go figure.

There is a lot of construction going on in the city (a large shopping center and apartments) and there is a huge housing shortage. Folks here can be on a wait list for 10+ years to secure an apartment. Amazing the things we take for granted.

I have been struck by how expensive things are here. It shouldn’t surprise me because all produce comes by sea or air from Denmark (and elsewhere in Europe). It is very easy to spend $50+ for a simple meal, and my love for beer is being punished at $13 a pint in the pub! Fortunately, tipping is not expected.

Tomorrow (Sunday) will be another quiet day as I finish preparing for classes and then head to Ilulissat on Monday morning.

More soon.

Cheers

Geoff

Greenland Day 2

G'day!

Spent today at the Institute for Arctic Education at the University of Greenland. A fascinating day meeting with many folks for whom English is a third of fourth language. I wonder how they they manage to switch so freely between languages...makes a mono-lingual person feel pretty inadequate.

It was a series of fascinating conversations trying to get a handle on the kinds of issues facing the educational community in this country. Greenland has Home Rule (since 1979) but it was really only in 2002 with the passing of law that "educational reform" has really taken off. It is also amazing the amount of social, cultural and economic change facing this country with the discovery of huge oil reserves (that are projected to far exceed any oil reserves in Alaska) and the construction of the largest aluminum plant in the world by Alcoa just north of Nuuk. One forgets that this is a country of less than 60,000 people and all change is very personal. More about this in latter posts as I start to fully understand the situation.

On an unrelated note, decided to go for a walk after my meetings today. A pleasant -20 degrees C...but after 10 minutes and frozen whiskers and runny eyes and nose decided to bag it...not my ideas of a good time.

Well, tomorrow is a "cultural day" in Nuuk with free entry to all museums etc. so I should have a lot of photos to post.

Until then, cheers from the great white north :-)

Geoff

Nuuk at last

G’day from Greenland!

Well, it feels like I have been traveling for two days—which I guess is correct. I left Medford at 6am Tuesday, January 19 and arrived in Kangerlussuaq at 11am (Greenland time, 6am Medford time)) on Thursday, January 21 (exactly 48 hours)! Crikey—makes travel to my hometown of Perth, Western Australia look easy—usually only takes about 30 hours J Unfortunately, my flight to Nuuk from Kangerlussuaq was delayed a couple of hours due to “technical difficulties” but finally arrived around 1:30pm.

After the initial shock of having to leave Medford at 6am instead of 11am, everything has gone very well. The flight from SFO to Frankfurt (10 hours) was pleasant as I was able to sleep for 7 hours (thanks to my friend Ambien). Frankfurt to Copenhagen was a short one hour flight and amazingly my bag arrived at the same time as me. I was lucky to be staying in the Copenhagen Airport Hilton located directly across the street from baggage claim.

Wednesday’s challenge was to stay awake after a 2pm arrival. I accomplished this by spending some time with my friend “ellipse trainer,” a call home, and a drawn out meal at the hotel’s overpriced buffet. But by 9pm it was lights out until 6am Thursday in order to navigate Copenhagen’s airport and amazing duty free shops. You name it, they have it.

I was met at the airport by Aviaja Egede, my contact at Innerisavik and the person responsible for getting me to Greenland to take over from Frank. Aviaja has scheduled meetings at the university for Friday, and then a “cultural tour” of Nuuk on Saturday.

My home for the next four nights is the Hotel Hans Egede—it’s not the Copenhagen Hilton, but it will be fine—although I’m not sure how I will survive without a workout room. I guess one exercises in Nuuk by shuffling around on the snow and ice J.

I’ve added a couple of photos to today’s posting taken on the way in to Nuuk. Really is spectacular.

More tomorrow after I meet with folks at the university.

Cheers

Geoff

Rough start

Well, I am off to a rough start to the trip. United Airlines called me at 8pm last night to tell me that my 11am flight today was cancelled and that my only option to get out was to catch the 6am flight and then spend 7 hours sitting in San Francisco international airport! The joys of living in Medford and dealing with weather issues.

So, after 4 hours sleep it was time to head to the airport at 4:15am. So, the 18 hours I thought it would take to get to Copenhagen just grew to about 24 hours. Nothing like starting a long trip trashed :-)

Hopefully there will not be delays in SFO.

Later

Geoff

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