around town

hi! after work today i went for a wee walk about town. when i left it was snowing these giant beautiful snowflakes (but about 2 minutes after i got outside it stopped). the weather here is really funny and very unpredictable. today it was about -3 with no wind so it was totally reasonable. the last couple of days, however, have been VERY windy and thus very frustratingly cold. i took some pictures on my walk because i know that's what you're really looking for. i'll just see myself out.

there are two reasons why i took the picture above. one is the ravens. since we've been here, ravens are the only birds we've seen. they're HUGE and sound much more like humans trying to impersonate birds than actual birds. it's creepy and very loud. the second reason is that little cluster of lights off in the distance above the blue house. i think that's the final sealift of the season coming in. 

most people who live here order much of their year's worth of non-perishables via sealift. we missed it this year, but it's a good way for nunavummiuts (this is the nunavut version of "ontarian" or "saskatcheweiner") to stock up on cheaper products for the year. basically they spend lots of money on toilet paper, dog food, alcohol, kraft dinner, etc. and it comes in a crate on a giant boat. once it gets here, people store their products in their sealift room. our apartment has a sealift room (also known as our second bedroom). 

people drive cars here, but they also drive ATVs and snow machines. 

i found this weird boat graveyard. i got here by walking through the yard of a men's shelter.

these two pups were the first dogs (of many) i've walked by in iqaluit that didn't want to eat me. usually dogs run at you barking and drooling rabid saliva whilst picturing your juicy thighs on a platter. thanks, cute dogs in this picture.

as you can see in most of these pictures, the architecture is kind of unique here. i'll probably post more about that later. one thing you can probably see is that nothing has an actual foundation. because of the permafrost, everything is built above ground and usually on stilts. 

last but not least, i wanted to show you this funny trend. when people have big things shipped up here (cars or even just large sealift orders) they come in these big shipping containers. it's expensive to ship the containers back to quebec or ontario, so most people use them. they're all over town and are used for things like storage, a big freezer, and some people even use them as apartments.