Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Day 10: Community Activities

Our arrival in Clyde River was welcomed with warm smiles and gracious greetings. This community which is so small greeted us like a town ten times its size. All this past week there have been community activities ranging from traditional Inuit games to cake decorating contests to hip hop to ice sculptors to dog races to a giant community feast. We have tried to attend as many as we can. They have really brought out the cheery and unified feeling of Clyde River.

Here's Jeff and a few local kids at the school presentation with the Global Warming 101 team. The students wrote a proclamation stating 101 different ways to help change our lifestyles for the better. They presented it after Simon's Inuktitut presentation and John Stetson's English presentation about the expedition. To see the full proclamation, which will be traveling with the expedition members to Washington D.C. as testimony before the U.S. Senate, visit the Global Warming 101 website.

Jeff and the kids get along great. They are very high energy and love to play games. But they are immensely clever, too! One of the girls JoAnn figured out Joe's camera quicker than he did! Another girl Laura, the younger sister of Anna (one of the exchange girls coming to Minnesota) gave Allison a beautiful beaded bracelet and matching earrings. And Joe has been emptying out his suitcase full of candy and hackey sacks. Needless to say, the kids love him!

The kids even like playing rock, paper, scissors with Allison! They were playing after the cake judging contest at the community hall which is the second biggest building in town. The hip hop group had their own event here Monday night. They are amazingly talented. You should see the head spins!

Even only being here a week we have been able to see that community is an important part of the culture up here. Tonight we're going to the community feast. We are quite honored for the great experiences we've had so far and are looking forward to the time ahead!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey--what happened to the great "cozy" igloo photo? You know, I already copied it and sent it to Kelly & Clark so it EXISTS!

Viper said...

Viper to mum - I thought some pictures have disappeared. Could you forward the cozy igloo picture to me? Just in case they haven't saved some of what they took? Thanks!!

mamacee said...

Jeff hanging with kids and having fun, go figure. Take photos of the food!!! so very important. Try everything and remember the tastes and textures. Jeff please try blubber if it's there.

Anonymous said...

Mum to Viper--I have saved most of the photos, including this one that will bring a smile to your face! Contact me at cmills@valleynaturalfoods.com.

Now about that blubber--it would be very interesting to know more about its tradition. Doesn't it provide very important nutrition to that particular environment? How is it prepared? What is it served with? How does this community balance traditional foods with modern processed ones?

Amills said...

You guys haven't even seen HALF of our pictures--you just wait! And we had some country food last night at the community feast but we'll be having a dinner with Jeff Ivaney (science teacher here) and some other locals with more. We'll have some more caribou and char and, yes, muktuk. But we'll write about that later. In other words, we'll keep you updated!
-Allison