September 24, 2011
Today was a great day, because we finally landed in Kugluktuk and got on board the Amundsen! The five students who met in Quebec City met the other 4 students today. We’ve learned to get along really well in such a short period of time.
One of the students needed to go back to Kugluktuk before getting on the ship, so I went with her and got to see a part of the town. Everything is so different! It’s a small community of 1,300 people, and everyone knows each other. The houses are built on supports in such a way that they are not touching the ground. The freezing and refreezing causes the soil to shift a lot, so they need to adapt their houses to the conditions. We drove by the hospital, the grocery store, the hotel, the arena, and the elementary and high schools. It’s not hard to tell that life in Kugluktuk is very different from Montreal, but I’ll find out much more once we get off the ship and spend a few days there.
We got to take a helicopter from the airport onto the ship. That was definitely the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. I can’t believe how much stuff there is on this ship. It never looked so big from the outside. The space is used effectively though, with narrow hallways and steep staircases. We’re free to go almost anywhere we want, and there’s so much to explore. We just went up on deck, and it’s actually really cold because of the wind. I’ve seen many instruments and scientific equipment and I’m really curious about how it all works.—Karen Butt ’12