Today we took field trips to three different sites around Kangerlussuaq. First, we went to Lake Ferguson. It is the largest lake in the area and supplies the drinking water to Kangerlussuaq. Once there, we were put into groups in which we went and took water samples and tested the temperature in different locations. Then we went to Tacan along Blacj Ridge. There we classified the clouds and took another look at the glacial polish on the rocks. After that we stopped back in town to pick up sandwiches for lunch. We also stopped in the grocery store to pick up some snacks. Outside they were selling whale meat. I opted for some Danish yogurt, a candy bar, and soda flavored like some sort of Greenlandic berry. The sandwiches were pretty interesting. They were like roast beef with potato salad on the sandwich. That is apparently neither a Greenlandic nor Danish thing so we were all a little confused by it. They didn’t taste too bad though and after finishing we went off to look for fossils.
When we arrived at Fossilsletten, they told us to look for sedimentary rocks that look like solid clumps of dirt. Looking around and being surrounded by dirt and rocks, however, it seemed like they were trying to play some sort of joke on us. We all started digging with the result only being getting very dusty. Finally some people started to find things though. My strategy basically turned into trying to find funny-shaped sedimentary rocks. Rock forms around the fossils so you have to break the rocks open to actually see the fossils. It’s kind of like a geode you could get at the Gem and Mineral show. I was able to find a few small pieces, but some other people found some bigger ones that were already cracked so you could see the fossilized fish inside. I haven’t broken mine open yet, but hopefully they have something in them. Laura told us that these fossils aren’t very old. They are only from around the last ice age, 10,000-15,000 years ago. It seemed a little silly to all of us to think that that isn’t that old. Geologic time is pretty mind-blowing.
After arriving back at the school we took a break to change out of our clothes before getting to work on our samples. I was so dusty I had to take my jeans outside to shake the dust off. Once we were a little less dusty, we set to work analyzing the three flower samples we had taken. We also tested the water from the lake for pH, nitrates, nitrites, phosphate, hardness (calcium/magnesium), and ammonia. We found it was pretty healthy water.
After finishing with testing we went to dinner. It was pretty warm out so I walked to dinner in shorts and flip-flops. As we were walking we could see some rain moving in from the coast so it started to get a little bit cold on the way home. For dinner we actually had musk ox. It wasn’t too bad. It just kind of tasted like beef. There were also French fries and I was able to find some normal ketchup as well as a Danish sauce that was kind of like tartar sauce to dip them in. During dinner we continued practicing our Danish. It took us awhile but most of us can now say banana, but the red is still kind of tricky. After we got back we started a Bananagram marathon. It is a word game similar to scrabble. We attempted to play a game where we all had to play words in our second language so it was more fair for the Danes, but we found it was pretty hard to make words with the letters in Spanish. We walked over to the little store next door after a little while and got some Danish chocolate milk stuff that was really good. Then it started raining after a little while and eventually there was a double rainbow. We all ran out to take some pictures. It was a nice end to the day.
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| Bananahenge |
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| Collecting damples at Lake Ferguson |
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| Double Rainbow! |
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