pretty

yarrrrrrrrrrrr! sometimes iqaluit be pretty.

exploring

hello loyal friends! thanks for coming back for more. i thought i'd post some more photos of our adventure last week. after we drove to the end of the boring road to nowhere, we did some more exploring. iqaluit has a lot of cool nature to look at. although i really miss trees, it's nice to live somewhere with very high coolness-visibility. sometimes it's like having x-ray vision. 

here is a picture of the sea. 

this is also the sea.

we ended up going to sylvia grinnell park (a provincial park) and roaming around. remember that time ian beat me in a race i didn't know i was participating in? payback alert! i totally rocked this race. 

after we explored the park, we drove past the landfill (i took pictures but i don't know if i'm going to post them. the landfill is really sad and stressful) to the old breakwater. well, i'm pretty sure it was the old one. there's the "old breakwater" and the "new breakwater". either way, we were hanging out on a breakwater and looking out on the bay. 

ian spotted a seal! unfortunately it had been bludgeoned to death and tied to a rock. he kept touching it and poking it. i was all "???" and "let's go!" but ian insisted on making friends with it. he took some very close up photos that make me barf. 

backyard

last weekend we went for a walk in our backyard. it was windy and cold but totally worth it. as i've said before, we live on the road to nowhere. there isn't anything built up behind where we live - it's pure tundraaaa!

i took this from the first hill we climbed. i almost lost my life a few times because it was so slippery.

ian found berries! then he ate one. 

i looked up from taking that picture of the berries and there was ian, winning a race i didn't know was happening. dang! what a scoundrel. 

this crazy rocky tundra just goes on and on and on. that road you see there is the road to nowhere. it ends not too far from there. 

like a true surveyor, ian found a survey monument. hoorayyyyyyy.

windy!

"hey! look at this tall moss! take a picture of how tall this moss is!"

pricey pricey

today was a BEAUTIFUL day in grand ol' iqaluit. it was only -1 and it was hardly windy at all. ian and i went on a long walk all over the city. it was so nice out that i started regretting wearing long johnnies. we started our walk by going to ian's school. actually, we started our walk by going toward ian's school and then walking back to the apartment because ian forgot his wallet. anyway, the school that ian teaches at has a really amazing view of the sea. we walked down toward the water and then did a big loop toward downtown.

luckily, we found ourselves at the top of a hill looking down at the buildings downtown. you can see a lot of the most popular buildings in iqaluit in the picture below. you can see the bright yellow airport on the left at the edge of town. the white square building that looks like an ice burg below the airport is one of the schools. the roundy pointy building to the right of the school is a church. city hall is hidden but i'll take some pictures soon and post them. 

we ended up going to the museum and it was very neat. inuit tradition is so beautiful and interesting. after the museum we got some groceries. since i had the camera, i thought i'd give you an idea of some of the prices for groceries around here. 

$39.14 for a smallish pumpkin! we saw one for $50 last week but it wasn't there anymore so...apparently someone was willing to pay that.

margarine! good thing we don't eat this shit.

we used to drink orange juice. now the plan is just to bite the bullet and get scurvy. 

$21.99 for the smallest box of tide you can get. ughghghg. 

i put the camera away at this point because i was getting some looks re: taking pictures of groceries. 

first day in iqaluit

did i tell you guys that our stuff hasn't arrived yet so we're living in a hotel for the next little while? i can't remember if i did. we're not sure when it will get here and when the movers will get it all into our apartment so the next couple of weeks are a bit up in the air.

anyway, our flight came in around noon today and after we got settled in our hotel room (which is very nice and more like an apartment than a hotel room), we hit the town. we went to the north mart which is the biggest of 2.5 small grocery stores here. it even comes equipped with a tim hortons, but it's more of a tim hortons "express" if you know what i mean. no? well it's a really crappy tim hortons.

cold.

we got some groceries for breakfasts and lunches this week (bananas, apples, carrots, yogurt, one loaf of bread, one package of pitas, a small jar of jam and a small container of peanut butter) for which the total was $66. instead of feeling like that was insane in the membrane, i got really excited about the freshness of the fruits and vegetables. even fresh spinach! my favourite thing! it's very expensive, but if you want to grow up to be popeye it's totally worth it.

after groceries, we walked around the town a bit. there were lots of extremely cute kids running around building snowpeople (and one snow monster with a hockey stick through it's head. it was weird) and tobogganing on any hill they could find. ian made friends with this one juice head who was pushing a giant snowball across the street to her house.

after that, my new colleague emma took us on an AMAZING tour of the city. she drove us all around and taught us a lot about what's what in iqaluit. we were surprised by how much there was to look at. there is also a surprising amount of sprawl here. for some stupid reason i didn't take the camera, but seriously you guys, this place is so beautiful. don't you worry, though, we'll take lots of pictures of everything. after the tour we went for another walk. here are some pictures from that.

everything is written in english and inuktitut. inuktitut is a vvveeerrrrrrryyyy awesome language. it looks cool, as you can see, but it also sounds cool. double threat, english!

a view of the bay (we're on baffin island and iqaluit is on the labrador sea in the north atlantic). the tide is super far out!

this boat just doesn't know what to do with itself. 

a view of part of iqaluit from the beach.

there are bones all over the beach. it's weird. here's one that ian wanted to take home.