A year ago today

I stepped off that Canadian North plane into the bright yellow airport terminal in Iqaluit.

I'm not feeling all that profound today, so I will skip the post that reflects on the past year, and sum it up with a "repost" of my first northern blog entry.

From September 25, 2007.

The eagle has landed!

Do we even have eagles up north? The only birds I've seen since I arrived yesterday are MASSIVE crows. Just when I think I've escaped the land of over-sized vermin (*ahem, Ontario squirrels)... along come Nunavutian (I KNOW that's not the right word to describe the Nunavut residents, but I can't remember how to spell it right now) crows the size of ... well... cats. Flying, black cats. Yikes.

 

So yes, I have arrived. And I will post some pictures in due time. At this point, I don't have internet from home ... I tried hooking up to a wireless signal ... but I couldn't get the "network address" ... so no dice.

 

I took this wild video of us landing in Iqaluit. You can really get a good feel for the style of housing, and the landscape. And it finishes off with a grand view of the BRIGHT YELLOW airport terminal. I had heard about it, but it still caught me by surprise.

 

It's interesting though, the landscape, the ground and the hills and the roads are all very... bland in colour. But the buildings, so many of them have a really distinct colour to them... or at least a bright blue, green, red etc. trim. All the houses are on stilts because of the permafrost... and Iqaluit is a really hilly town, so the stilts vary in length from one end of a house to another. I went for a walk yesterday, after I arrived and got mini-settled in my place, and saw this one house, set on a hill, anchored in the front, level to the land, and easily... twenty feet off the ground at the back, supported by metal stilts. 

 

Had my grocery shopping experience yesterday. It was about as bad as I expected... unfortunately the closest grocery store is about a 20-25 minute walk from my house, so I tried to hit up the convenience store next door first... and really struggled because I couldn't think what to eat... they had no meat, no produce (except for bananas). So I settled for pasta, sauce and cheese... and an $8 2L carton of milk. 

 

BUT then I headed down to the "real" grocery store... and found the strangest thing. Asparagus, fresh (and VERY TASTY) for $4. Now asparagus is generally REALLY pricey back home... so its funny to see it so reasonably priced up here. And cheese isn't that bad either. So I think I'll just cut out milk and get all my calcium from cheese. 

 

And my Vitamin C from Tang. 

 

I also died a little when my TWO largish-potatoes came to almost seven dollars. This is going to be the best diet ever. Only half-a-potato for supper for me! Haha, or at least till I get paid.