Fin des vacances scolaires

  • La peau de l'ours du 3 janvier

For Christmas, the full moon is illuminating icepack and mountains. At Grise Fiord, this is ten happy and friendly days, the best way to spend holidays in the middle of the dark period. Every evening, people are gathering in the gym for seven or eight hours of various team games. Many prizes are to be won, often useful: sleeping bag, stove, thermos, rope, skidoo oil, smoked ham, electric coffee maker... even an air ticket; our daughters won a lot (too many!) toys, but also a bilge pump and 200 litres of gas. During these ten days, roasted turkey and Santa Claus, midnight mass and fireworks are in favour. But also a seal hunt contest, traditional Inuit games, skidoo race... On January 1st evening, after having enjoyed, raw, the two seals hunted during the contest, as well as frozen caribou, Arctic char and narwhal skin, each hunter is given a satellite tracker device.

Tomorrow morning, kids are going back to school, and everyone is trying to go back to normal hours; it is even more difficult for children, used to go to bed at 5am and to wake up around 3pm!

In front of town, ice is already 80 cm thick. Around the boat, snow has been accumulated to improve insulation. Not easy because there is only 2 cm of snow on the ground, the climate is very dry.

Thursday morning, Jeffrey hunted a bear which was hanging around the community, he skinned it and cut it up with Simon near Vagabond.

Local medias are getting interested with our story (read here), and France 5 TV is today broadcasting Sur le grand ocean blanc, a documentary film about last winter.