A beautiful day in Resolute...

After a night of howling winds, the morning was beautiful and sunny in Resolute Bay. The temperature was -22 C but the winds were still high making the wind chill about -35 C.

Over breakfast at the South Camp Inn, we heard that the plane to take Clive, Michael, Richard M. and Jennifer home was supposed to arrive at about 4 PM. There would be an update at 1 PM and, at that point, they would find out if they were going to be heading out today. A little after 9 AM, we trekked over to Qarmartalik School to meet with Principal Brian. Our group was rather large. We had Keith, Annemarie, Keeyoon and I, who were going to be visiting the school for the next two days; Clive and Jennifer, who were looking for something interesting to do while waiting for the plane; and the Korean journalists, who wanted to do a story on the school and the traditional skills the students are learning.

We all squeezed into the school office to meet with Brian, Earl (who teaches the science program) and Tracey (who is the principal in training) and discuss the plans for the next two days. As usual, Brian was very gracious and would say "what ever you would like to do, Kaley" when I suggested a program we could do with the students. The Korean journalists were also given a lot of latitude to film where ever they wanted to in the school. There was going to be a traditional doll making class this afternoon and Tracey was going to arrange for a demonstration of throat singing on Friday afternoon.

After the meeting, Tracey, Annemarie, Keith and I sat down and reviewed the presentations to see how they should be fine tuned for each grade level. The school has about 70 students from kindergarten to Grade 12. We made plans to visit with each class starting with the oldest students. After lunch, we would work with the Grade 10-12s and next it would be the Grade 8 and 9s. We returned to South Camp Inn to find that there had been no update on whether the plane would get here to pick up the rest of the team. Over lunch, Annemarie, Keeyoon and I put the finishing touches on the presentations for the afternoon. We split up the talks so that the four of us rotated through each part talking to the students.

Our first class of the afternoon was the senior class which has several Grade 10 students and about four Grade 12 students who are following the Alberta curriculum and have been writing their final year exams. We gave them a presentation about the atmosphere, molecular spectra and ozone depletion. It worked well because they had just completed studying the atmosphere and the different layers. As a group, they were a bit quiet but we knew that we were doing ok because they asked really good questions. We had not planned to have the senior class pretend to be oxygen atoms and act out how ozone is produced and destroyed. However, when this idea was suggested, one of the more vocal students said "we can do that!". It turned out that this worked really well to reinforce what we had been talking about.

After an indoor recess (because it was very windy), we met with the Grade 8 and 9 class to talk about the different types of space science that are done in Canada and how to become a space scientist. We discussed a few of the Canadian atmospheric missions (ACE, MOPITT, and MANTRA), microgravity and life sciences experiments done on the shuttle and the space station, space exploration and Canada's participation in past and future missions to Mars. They were really interested in space exploration and the different satellites that Canada has in orbit.

We returned to the South Camp Inn to find the Rangers having a briefing in the living room. They were to be going out on the land with some of the local Inuit for training. We snuck through to talk to Clive, Jennifer, Michael and Richard M. They were in good spirits because the plane was coming to get them. They were trying to ignore the fact that the plane was only a bit larger than Twin Otter so they would have to stop in Nanisivik and Hall Beach on the way to Iqaluit. They were lucky that they were able to book the last 4 rooms at the Discovery Inn in Iqaluit.

We think they got to Iqaluit. At least, they did not end up back at the South Camp this evening...

Best regards,
Kaley.