Day 18

The day began with a trip to the cantina for breakfast since it marked the first day of Science Education week. That means we are back on the meal passes and can choose between the different places to eat. This caused much excitement across the group since, perhaps most importantly, it meant no more mystery sandwiches for lunch. After breakfast we went back to the school. Most people were packing up since they were headed home. Only about a third of us are staying for the Science Education week where we are going up to the ice sheet. There are now 2 Americans, 3 Danes, and 4 Greenlanders. We were able to take it easy for most of the morning since there really wasn’t anything specific planned for us. We watched some of the Tour de France and listened to La Marseillaise in honor of Bastille Day. We were also able to find a rerun of the United States women playing in the World Cup. Eventually we found at that our agenda for the day involved taking some reporters out in the field to tour around. They had just gotten here the day before. They were from the Associated Press, American Geophysical Union, Popular Mechanics, and some other publications. We got our stuff together and said goodbye to those that were leaving that afternoon. We then heard the terrible news that we were stuck having sandwiches again for lunch since we wouldn’t have the chance to come back in town. It was rather disappointing after we had already had a lengthy discussion about what kind of pizza we were going to get. Nevertheless we set out with the reporters in tow. The plan was to hike over this ridge to go visit one of the scientists we had seen before, Julia. As we started hiking and people started falling behind, it was pretty clear that we weren’t going to make it there. I soon realized how different it was going around with reporters as opposed to scientists. While the scientists would be dragging us up hills to go do crazy things, the reporters were more up for taking a break and having a chat. It was definitely a lot different than what we had been doing the past couple weeks. After a break for lunch, we decided to change our plan. We decided to go visit the shaman group that was camped out near where the Penn State camp we had visited was. It ended up being a really cool experience. As we were driving, a musk ox ran in front of us on the road. We quickly pulled out our cameras but the musk ox went and hid behind a bunch of bushes. It was apparently a very self-conscious musk ox. There were a bunch of people gathered when we got the shaman. It was a meeting of a bunch of elders from different areas in Greenland. They invited us to join them and gave us a blessing. One of them sang us a song that talked about how there are only two kinds tears and we should follow our hearts and whatnot. It was pretty cool. Then we got to go inside a big tent where the reporters interviewed some of the elders. It was interesting to hear their thoughts on climate change. It was clear that they had seen changes over the course of their lifetimes and they have had to adjust. It was also amusing watching the reporters compete with each other to get questions answered. I definitely prefer the science world to that of reporting news. Once we finished speaking to the elders, they gave us some wall calendars and sent us on our way so we could get back in time for dinner.

            For dinner we went to the Thai place next door. It tasted really good after all the cantina food from the past couple weeks. Once we finished eating we went to visit the puppies again. They've gotten bigger and are now in the kennel area. They were still pretty cute though. After dinner that night, the reporters came back to talk. It was clear that they were not interested in the American and Danish students at all and only wanted to talk to the Greenlandic students. We sulked in the corner and went to get ice cream. At least one of them eventually acknowledged us and said hello on the way out. As you can tell, we are not biter at all. 

The meeting

Ole and Sylvia with our delicious Thai food

Leaving the meeting

Puppy!