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Saturday, June 30

This morning was rough. I swear the hallway in this dorm is at least a mile. It’s the hallway that never ends, it goes on and on and on… Although that may have something to do with the fact that I’ve had maybe five hours of awful sleep each night for the past four days. And something about being in Greenland makes you both tired and starving 24/7. I’m not kidding, I’m always hungry and it drives me insane. I’ve eaten six pieces of bread with Nutella or jam on them today alone. Anyways, after breakfast we had a pre-program test that Shynes (Shelly Hynes, the teacher in charge of the U.S. students) told us it was okay to do poorly on, so I spent all of ten minutes trying, and the other 45 minutes lying on the couch trying to feel less exhausted. After our test we learned all about GPS and how it works, including how the satellites in space that are used for GPS are exactly 38 microseconds fast because of relativity making time move faster as the objects move fast, and slightly slower because of gravity. Thank you Einstein. After that we put our GPS knowledge to the test as we looked for Geocaches and for GPS coordinates to hide our own Geocaches. After receiving the coordinates of an actual Geocache near our location, while the rest of the group listened to Kasper talking about other Geocahce locations, Dana and I rushed off to find the one closest to us. You might say we were a little to excited when we found it. Inside was a box of matches, which we left, but we also added a scorpion lollipop that I had brought with me as a token of what Arizona is kinda like. After Geocaching we had our lunch break, which Dana and I spent half of sleeping in our room. Let me just say, I slept better in those twenty minutes than I have in the last five days. It was amazing.

Although even after that rest the mile and a half walk out to see the sledge dogs still seemed awful. But it was totally worth it, they are the most adorable things I’ve ever seen. There were about thirty big sledge dogs, and three puppies! They were all so friendly and loved being pet and loved on. But they were all shedding, so once you got close to them you were covered in dog hair.

Future Sledge dogs :)

Then we had about an hour before dinner, can you guess what I did? Laid in our room and Marisa and Maeve’s room, trying to sleep. Cause - shocker- I’m tired. Although right before I went to nap was probably one of the funniest parts of the trip so far. There was a mosquito on Danas forehead and I was trying to help her out by killing it but when I squished it, it smudged blood all over her forehead… It looked like Simba after Rafiki smudged paint on his forehead. Hahaha it was awesome.

After dinner, which was more Thai food, yay… Dana and I got ice cream again. I’m thinking it’s gonna be a daily thing cause A) it’s delicious and B) it reminds me of home. Then we came back to the dorms so that the Greenlandic students could teach us a little bit about their culture. They taught us tomns of new words, so heres just a few:

·         Allu-hello

·         Inuugujooq-bye

·         Sinilluarpt?- Did you sleep well?

·         Qujana-Thank you

They also taught us some of their “tounge twisters” and just funny sentences. I garuntee you can’t guess what they mean.

Tuttuttut tututtut tuttutut tututtutut tuttutuuttut- that literally means- Dirty reindeer hunters who are eating reindeers and dirty reindeers.

OR

Tuttut tututtut tuttutut tututtutut tuttutuuttut- which means- Dirty reindeers who are eating reindeers as dirty reindeers.

OR, my personal favorite, the longest word I’ve ever seen in my life:

Nalunaarasuartaateerannagualiornialikkersaaleraluallaraminngooraasiinngoorukua – which means- They were talking about to make a little telegram station. However apparently you can make the word longer by mentioning the color of the station, cause it’s not long enough as is. -__-

After we had our culture lesson we decided to play name games to learn every ones names better. Which was highly entertaining till I kicked Shynes and she slapped me, leaving a handprint. Actually, I learned that this was all Danas fault. See I was cuddled up on the floor cause I was so tired while we were playing the game, it was already almost ten! And Shynes was sitting next to me, towards my feet. She jokingly hit my butt and I dared her to do to again. When my butt got hit again I kicked (not hard I swear) Shynes, who then slapped my butt leaving a handprint -__- hahah Only after that did I learn it was Dana who had hit me the second time, causing the whole thing.

The handprint Shynes left on my butt....

 Haha once we came back to our room, the mission was to make our room darker, so we can actually sleep, which was, uh, quite the experience. Rikke told me I could just open the window and tuck garbage bags behind it, well as soon as I opened the window the whole thing feel out of the wall into Danas suitcase and covered everything in her bag with dust. Which was hilarious and laughed so hard I snorted. Hahahah she was PISSED. However now when you look at our window… IT’S DARK! Let there be darkness!! Thank God.

Our make-shift garbage bag curtin

But now that it’s finally dark in our room I’m gonna go cuddle in bed with my book and my favorite playlist of acoustics, and hopefully get my first good night of sleep!

I hope you’re doing well, I miss you like you wouldn’t believe.

Much love,

Sydney