The best day ever in Resolute...

As we learned yesterday, it appears that almost everyone in Resolute comes to Ozzie's (officially known as the South Camp Inn) at least once a day. I worked out all our freight shipping with Jeremy from First Air at dinner last night. Later yesterday evening, Clive and Richard B. met Brian, the principal of the K-12 school, and hatched a plan to go and visit the school on our extra day in Resolute. It definitely pays to be staying in the hotel that is the centre of all the action in town.

I heard about these plans at breakfast this morning when Clive said "it would be good if you could pull something together to tell the students about what we have been doing up in the Arctic and we have to be there in less than 2 hours". It is good to have a challenge thrown at you over your first cup of tea.

The ACE Arctic team went into action. Within minutes there were four laptops on the table, pictures we being chosen by Tobias and Keeyoon and topics were being thrown around by everyone. The big challenge was trying to pitch a talk that would cover grade 2 to 12 students. Meanwhile, Annemarie took care of cancelling our hotel reservations for this evening in Ottawa (since we will still be at Ozzie's) and checking with First Air about the changes to our travel plans.

We arrived at Qarmartalik School (almost) on time. Luckily, this was not a problem for Brian. He was really happy that the whole team had come over for the visit. The school has 76 students in 6 classes and, in the last year, a new part was added to the school building that doubled the teaching space. The facilities are quite nice. There is a room which is a home economics room on one side and the other side will be a science lab. We got to meet the only lizard north of 70 degrees. There is also a classroom that is being outfitted to teach traditional skills. Everything from soapstone carving to making clothing out of caribou hides to how to carve seal meat. Brian is trying to forge stronger links with the elders and the community to ensure that the students are learning a full range of skills.

Brian took us to each class and we were introduced to the students and their teachers. In the upper year class (grades 10-12), we got our first questions about what we were doing up here. One of the students has been working at the National Park on Ellesmere Island for the past two summers and had visited the Eureka Weather Station on his trips up to the park. He was one of the most talkative students we met. He was doing a very good job of trying to lengthen our visit with as many questions as possible so he did not have to get back to his lessons.

We heard the story of how one of the other upper year students had had a run-in with several polar bears this past fall. He was chased by three bears and he had to take refuge in the closest house he could find. Luckily, no one locks their doors in Resolute! I think that Tobias was paying extra attention to the story since people about town have started referring to him as "bear meat" or "bear bait" due to his penchant for talking walks on the ridge above the town.

Next, we visited the grade 7-9 class and had a bit more time to interact with the students. One boldly asked "so, why are you here?" I replied "Do you want the whole slide show or do you want the quick answer?" I opted for the quick description and told them about SCISAT-1, validation and going to Eureka. While I was doing this, Clive took Brian aside and said we had a longer slide show that we could do for the students if he was interested. Brian (and all of the teachers) thought that it would be great if we could come back in the afternoon to present the slide show to the school. We made plans to come back at 2 pm after a lunch break at Ozzie's.

We arrived back at the school to set up for the presentation a little before 2 pm. All of the students were assembled in one of the classrooms. The flu has hit Resolute so there were only about 45-50 of the students at school today.

First, I talked about SCISAT-1 and Canada's involvement in space. The questions started out slowly but picked up as the talk went on. Before I showed the video of the ACE launch, I asked one student to come to the board and draw a picture of the rocket that would take the satellite into orbit. I got what I had hoped for - a nice big Delta-type rocket. Then they watched the movie and learned that not all rockets are launched directly from the ground.

The second part of the talk covered Eureka, AStrO and the Arctic validation campaign. I showed pictures of most of the instruments and introduced the people who worked with them. I also showed pictures of an ozonesonde launch and got asked what could cause the flight to end other than the balloon bursting. In answer to this, I told the story of an arctic wolf that got its foot caught in the cord, that connects the sonde to the balloon, during one of the launches several years ago at the Weather Station. This story seemed to be the hit of the talk. There were many questions about how we got the wolf out, how high the balloon got with the wolf attached and what the wolf did when it got caught.

There were quite a few students who asked questions after the presentation. Tobias and I talked to some of the upper year students about the Antarctic ozone hole. They were quite disappointed that I did not have the TOMS 20 year time lapse movie for the Arctic as well as the Antarctic one. Several of the younger students wanted to talk about what we do as scientists. In the end, we had to leave because they had to resume their lessons. I told them that we were staying at Ozzie's and they could come and see us later if they wanted to.

As a sign of their appreciation, Brian and the students presented us with "Partners in Education" certificates for participating in their school day. We also all have new pens from Qarmartalik school and Clive got a copy of the polar view map that he had admired on the wall of one of the classes. I think that I speak for the entire team when I say that we really enjoyed our time visiting with the students and will plan to come back the next time we are in Resolute.

After dinner this evening, we had almost 10 students who we had met today come and see us. They usually come to Ozzie's anyways as it appears to be the second home for quite a few of the children in town. They enjoyed looking at our website and we talked about all sorts of things including what you can do in Resolute. The most important thing that I learned was about the best way to slide down a hill - using a "one-ski". It is like a small sled made out of 1x6 wood slats nailed together so there is a seat with a single runner attached to the bottom of it. The speed can be increased by putting metal or plastic strips on the runner. I think that this would have caused many injuries if we had had one at AStrO for our tobogganing.

The students were fascinated with the pictures of us doing our work and having a bit of fun in Eureka. They were a bit concerned when we said Keith was not here in Resolute because we had left him at AStrO. It turns out that I used the wrong words to explain this. Up here you do not "leave" someone behind. I had to back pedal quickly and explain that he was continuing his experiments and would be coming home later. After this, they wanted to know if Keith would get lonely without the rest of us. I think that Keith should visit the school on his way through Resolute so they can meet the scientist who was "left behind".

We had such a great day getting to meet the students at the Qarmartalik school that it seems a shame we have to go home tomorrow. Maybe the plane will be delayed again...

Best regards,
Kaley.